I enjoy PhD comics even if I have yet to experience the "joys" of grad school first hand. And I can look forward to the days where my pay will a fraction of its former self. :)
I guess for me, I'm very thankful with my stipend. Sure, compared to a BS degree position at a corporation, it's peanuts, but I rarely have to scrape for food. Usually I just need to keep my finances in check and make sure not to have lots of teas or hot ciders at Cool Beans each week. Our department gets an A+ for improving our stipend and tuition discounts (as in covering ALL of our tuition each semester starting this year) for the nearly 3 years I've been here thus far.
And you'd think it'd be the other way around? Considering JHU is a much more "mainstream" university than let's say, the Univ. of South Carolina, you'd think people would be throwing money at your school so that graduate student would be able to live SOMEWHAT decently.
Of course, another big factor -- cost of living. Since you're on the border of the Northeast high-jacking of living costs, it probably doesn't help you stretch the bit of money you do get. The only school I applied to when I was applying to graduate school that was cheaper than here was the University of Arizona, where some of the graduate students there were renting out 2-3 bedroom apartments for $350 a month! Of course, the stipend (at the time time I applied) was also $18,000 and you had to pay about $4000 a year in tuition costs... so things did balance out there. But I'm probably preaching to the choir about this point.
I'm glad I'm done with those days. But I went through them too. I had to budget very tight. People would tell me that I shouldn't complain because I was still a student. However our contract required us to not have a job outside of our assistantship duties. So we pretty much had to make it on the little they gave us. (NOt that we would have had time to have a job outside our teaching, research and coursework since that took up most of our time). I'm really glad those days are over. I was fortunate though that I had had a full time job before I went back to grad school. So I was figuring if my savings could last me 5 years I'd be okay. The finite time of graduate school helped me through.
My contract says the same about no outside jobs. I really hate that now. I'd be fine if I could just work part time at McDonalds night shifts a few nights a week or something.
The reality is that a contract like that is very hard to enforce. There were several of my fellow graduate students who broke the rules. Some of them were married and had families to support. Others just wanted the extra income. Many students would adjuct teach at local schools as well as their assistantship. I personally am the type of person who tries to excel at everything I do, so I try not to put too much on my plate at once. I wouldn't want an additional job. Teaching, research, course work and Bible quizzing took up all my time.
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I guess for me, I'm very thankful with my stipend. Sure, compared to a BS degree position at a corporation, it's peanuts, but I rarely have to scrape for food. Usually I just need to keep my finances in check and make sure not to have lots of teas or hot ciders at Cool Beans each week. Our department gets an A+ for improving our stipend and tuition discounts (as in covering ALL of our tuition each semester starting this year) for the nearly 3 years I've been here thus far.
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Of course, another big factor -- cost of living. Since you're on the border of the Northeast high-jacking of living costs, it probably doesn't help you stretch the bit of money you do get. The only school I applied to when I was applying to graduate school that was cheaper than here was the University of Arizona, where some of the graduate students there were renting out 2-3 bedroom apartments for $350 a month! Of course, the stipend (at the time time I applied) was also $18,000 and you had to pay about $4000 a year in tuition costs... so things did balance out there. But I'm probably preaching to the choir about this point.
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