Me, myself and Anu

Feb 18th 2010

1. Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy less meetings.
2. There were no *working* hours, I worked for as long as I wanted on some days and not so much on other days.
3. I mostly did not keep track of vacation days.
4. Dress-code- what is that? most days I was happy to come in after taking a shower.
5. We got to use words like "ginormous", "ground-breaking", "innovative", "path-finding" etc. to describe our research unlike just "Get it done or you get fired!".
6. We were the cool nerds who knew how to have fun.
7. We could actually talk about our work to others and discuss it with our colleagues without having "confidential" stamped all over and getting sued and also not have our ideas stolen :)
8. What pay was offered in our offer letter was what we got paid, and no one took away 1/2 of it in taxes, who cares that it was peanuts..at least you got what you were promised.
9. Work-life balance was there because work was life, had to get that doctorate remember?
10. We got to travel to cool places for conferences, and present our novel work and win awards, ok just one also counts :P
11. We got student discounts everywhere- on airlines, amusement park tickets, restaurants, you name it and we got it!
12. You had time for your interests and your passions.
13. Life revolved around conference deadlines and paper presentations which was not too bad coming to think of it.
14. People knew you (even because you were notorious counts) and you were not a nameless face lost in this whole sea of engineers
15. Most important of all, we had a kinship with our research projects and kind of owned it and defended it left, right and center only to have it torn apart and start over all again :)