Graduate school is a number of things. It’s rewarding. It’s challenging. It’s where you meet some of the best people you’ll ever know. It’s where you’ll encounter ideas that invigorate, just as surely as ideas that make you cringe. It’s the culmination of what preceded it, and where you chart your course for what’s to come. It’s where you find mentors that double as colleagues, and colleagues that double as mentors, and some that triple as friends.

But graduate school, perhaps above all else, is not for the faint of heart. Because if there is one thing graduate education demands of a person, it’s passion.

Passion for study. Passion for outreach. Passion for one’s work and its components, for the future of one’s field, for innovation and ingenuity and the ineffable, immeasurable, “unknowable more.”

And that passion is sometimes thin on the ground. Continue reading →