I Don't Want To "Become" a Grad Student

Grad student friends, do not take this personally, but I've begun to realize that many current grad students I know have, while in grad school, undergone a transformation towards a somewhat cold, aloof, detached, haughty demeanor, losing some ability to connect with people on a simple, warm level. I think some would insist that it's because their intelligence has exceeded the ignorant throngs who are unable to withstand that level of intellectual expansion and analytical prowess, but while I see some reason in that, I don't think that's the whole story.

I think too many find ideas they'd not considered and, because they're so new and different from how they've always thought, put far too much faith in those limited philosophies which are novel to them but have long since been assimilated, debated, and tempered by the whole of society and academia. Part of the reason I think this is because my friends and acquaintances who have entered graduate school a little later in life haven't undergone this transformation into a cold, jaded cynic nearly as much as those who have gone straight into graduate school in their early-to-mid twenties, at more impressionable, less experienced, more emotionally and intellectually volatile times in their lives.

Of course, there's also a difference between going into grad school for engineering or business and studying the humanities or social sciences, the latter of which are far more loaded with a particularly antireligious or relativistic sentiment and philosophy which tends to send people who previously believed in rigidly dogmatic belief systems into an intellectual tailspin or complete overhaul of sorts rather than integrating aspects of those philosophies into the defensible parts of their existing "world view". Of course, it could be argued the older folks are more set in their ways and less capable of abandoning their old paradigms, so it's not that they're more stable and able to synthesize disparate philosophies but that they're more crusty and closed-minded. But I suspect it's more the former. But I recognize that may be self-flattery, since I'm in the "older" camp. :-)

Anyway, my friends are all, of course, wonderful people who aren't soulless and cold and who care about ethical and productive living even if they don't subscribe to certain religious traditions of morality. Fear not, friends, I'm not saying you're awful people, though some of you show very minor signs of this aloofness disease. :-) I'm not "afraid" I'd become some monster if I went to grad school, but I'm just saying if I do go to grad school, I want to be careful not to confirm unnecessary stigmatization on the part of other people. ...or maybe I am a little afraid because I've seen this trend in myself in the past.

Um...I'm done thinking about this. I just got bored with it. If any of you are reading this, I'm surprised you didn't get bored with it in the first paragraph. Way to endure. :-)