The Grad School Diaries: Episode 4 - What Coffee is to us Grad Students

I remember a fashion magazine years ago who featured JLo and she was asked how she deals with stress. She said she envies those who have an outlet, those who drink, those who smoke, because she doesn't have any of those so there's just no other option than to just brace herself for it.

For the first time, I can relate to JLo.

Last summer, I've given up on Coffee. Maybe it was just bad Cafe Latte from Cafe Antonio in Los Baños where I frequented with my friend, but it happens every time I go there. I had palpitations, numbness and I go extremely thirsty. Maybe it's stroke, maybe it's not. Shit, I really hope not.

And I used to smoke. Yes. Oh, don't give me that I'm-so-shocked-you-smoke-when-I've-known-you-since-you-were-a-little-girl look. I lived alone in the city for a decade and have gotten used to calling my own shots. It used to give me a sense of relief to take a break and think whenever I am stressed. There's something about the inhaling and exhaling when you're smoking and it gives a certain something something that makes you think while you smoke. But the problem is, I've given up smoking as well. No, it's not because of the constant nagging of my mom to quit, it's just that one day I just decided that I don't want to smoke anymore, (Maybe that's the reason of my month-long withdrawal symptoms) even if practically the people that I regularly hang out with most of the time smokes.

Coffee is the usual invitation to get together and catch up among friends, in my case with friends from graduate school, it comes with updates on our personal lives, tips on advisers, constructing theories, ranting about work and getting inspiration and realization from others.

One of our graduate school professors keeps on encouraging our batch to get together at least once a week for coffee or drinks because the best ideas and eye openers usually comes from conversations with other people and not from the four corners of the University Library.

But bottom line is, I've given up coffee. Nope, Starbucks don't entice me anymore. I remember I did not finish my last Starbucks attempt, afraid of getting palpitations in Glorietta. So to be safe I stayed away from it, up until probably last month.

Photo from the net

I have no outlet when I'm stressed other than to blog, but then again I've matured and grown to not wash my dirty laundry online, I have my trusted friends for that. Plus, at some point, you  realize that you have to just face it than write about it (which I have been doing for something, something years).

My friend in graduate school had to edit herself when she asks me out for brainstorming: "Coffee tayo, in your case, Iced Tea?"

But lately it seems quite inevitable for me to have at least a sip. A colleague of mine gave me Nescafe Brown and Creamy, and in my desperate attempt to warm up my stomach, I indulged, and the next thing I knew I am already bringing my own 3-in-1's and my very first Starbucks purple tumbler that I bought way back in 2005, back when upon purchase, it still comes with a free coffee drink.

Coffee usually makes us graduate students up all night working on our thesis chapters, trying to be grammatically correct to lessen the cost of editing in the future review.

So yes, I guess I am back together with coffee. I am back together with coffee and I still haven't started my revised thesis manuscript and my deadline is tomorrow.

I am up but I still don't know what to write.