Whining and Dining

It's recruiting weekend again. Twice a year my department brings in 30-35 prospective grad students for a weekend of wining and dining. It's a chance for them to meet faculty they might want to work for, and try to get a good feel for whether or not this is the right graduate program for them. Generally it's a lot of fun, albeit tiring. Most of the department comes out, puts on their happy faces, and enjoys a weekend of free food. Since I love lists, here are the ups and downs of recruiting weekend in list form. :)

Ups

- Free food. Yes, I make plenty of money to feed myself, but I'm still a grad student. Free food is always appreciated.
- A legit excuse to be unproductive for a couple of days.
- Most of the recruits are cool people. They come from all over the country from a lot of different backgrounds.
- Kids say the darndest things. Example: One recruit, who's originally from Ghana, on the ride to the hotel from the airport exclaimed, "Tucson looks just like Ghana!"
- Chance to socialize with lots of people from the department that you may not see that often.
- The chance to drive 15 passenger vans. I'm not sure why, but I LOVE driving big vehicles. I'm also amused by the look of astonishment on a few of the bigger guys' faces when a 5'2" woman hops out of a giant van.
- Blue House Catering. I realize this is an extension of free food, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the food from these people, and many grad students look forward to this one meal all year long.
- Meeting more nerds. It's super fun to meet cool people who are just as geeky as my friends and I. Seriously. Last month, I was at a dinner table with a handful of recruits who were laughing hysterically at the brilliance of whoever first invented symbols for numbers. Like 1 for one item. Or 4 for four items.

Downs

- Recruiting weekend is exhausting. As a driver for recruiting weekend, there are a lot of late nights and early mornings.
- If you're driving a university vehicle, you can't drink until after you're done driving for the day. So if you drive an evening social activity? Forget it. No booze for you.
- You lose a few days when you could be getting stuff done. Slightly problematic when you have plans to go out of town for part of spring break, and Easter, and give a talk at a national conference at the end of May...
- Whiny prospectives. You'd think that college students that are essentially receiving a free long weekend trip with everything paid for would be excited and appreciative. A lot of them are, but an appalling handful of them aren't.
- Creepy prospectives. Both this year and last year we've had one prosective in particular that was creepy as all get out. Like no concept of personal space and aggressively hitting on every woman in sight creepy.
- @$$hole perspectives. In addition to the whiny or creepy perspectives, there's also the occasional kid who's dissatisfied with everything, thinks he's the $h!t (sorry, so far it's always been a he), and that our department is worthless. a. That's not the case. We're a ranked and respected department. And not that it compares us to other schools, but just this week we won an award for best department on campus. b. Then why did you apply here in the first place if you think you're so much better than us?!
- Slacker grad students. My classmate and I are in charge of coordinating all the students drivers. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the slacker grad student who signs up to drive stuff before he has his HOV permit, and then bails on the one other thing he signed up for because he "doesn't feel like it," and the jerk grad student who makes sexist comments to the female drivers...

Anyways, recruiting weekend is going well so far. Almost halfway through it...