A new and Dangerous Psychological Disease

We have concluded that we are going thru a very serious psychological disease.
It is called 2nd year syndrome.
In this disease you get really depressed for the following reasons:

• Your project is not working and your PI was expecting results 3 weeks ago.
• Because your project is not working you don't want to go to lab and be forced to think about ho you have failed and since you haven't been in lab you get paranoid and you believe that everyone is looking down at you for not working and for not producing results.
• You are completely exhausted because you are taking classes, trying to make a research project work, trying to find a new project, and you had a test recently.
• Also you can not believe for the life of you that next semester you are supposed to do your Qualifying exam. When you haven't even figured out your main project yet.
  

The symtoms include:

• Suicidal thoughts.
• Spontaneous hysterical crying.
• Feelings of extreme isolation/exclusion.
• Catatonic.
• Worthlessness.
• Loss of concentration.
• Walking around like you are a zombie.
• Headaches, grinding your teeth all day and night.
• Major procrastination.
• Exhaustion.
• Major hair loss (both in females and males).
• Spontaneous fits of arguing, competition, or crying with your classmates or significant others.

We are still searching for more signs of this terrible disease. Symtoms may vary depending on the graduate student.

Prevention:
DO NOT go to Graduate school
Keep your kids out of graduate school
Do not engage in Graduate like behaviours
Protect your self. Do not go to school at all.

Immunity:
You would have to be a genius with Photographic memory and an insomniac all at the same time.

Therapy:
The only known therapy is support. People have to tell you over and over and over that everything is going to be okay. But then if the graduate student believes these are just empty sentences it is not worth even saying anything. Concaine or Marijuana may actually be helpful here. I mean we need concaine to work day and night and we need Marijuana to help with the posttraumatic stress.

Cure:
There is no cure for this. In fact we believe this is a chronic disease that will stay with you even after you receive the nobel prize. There are latency periods in which the student may think that they are cured but NO the symtoms will return. Latency periods vary of course.

This is only a preventative disease. If you are in the sciences please stay being a technician or get a job doing something else. Trying to get a Ph.D is not a good idea. You will never get paid what you should be paid. You will always be treated like a smelly dirty dog. You will only get true recognition when you are close to your death if ever. And the general population does not understand or care about what you are doing. If you try to explain it to them they give you that disgusted look...