One Nice Thing About Graduate School

One nice thing about graduate school was that that there were a bunch of people who were either obligated by contract or who had a strong professional/departmental interest in reading my papers. Nowadays I must rely on the kindness of friends and acquaintances, almost all of whom have various contractual or professional/departmental obligations to a lot of people other than me. The results are unsurprising and not awesome. Usually if I send a paper to a bunch of friends one or two might get around to it in a month or so. Possibly this is in part because almost all of these people live a thousand miles away from me, and so never see me in the hall, and are consequently never made to feel guilty by the sight of me. I've also tried sending papers to well-known people from the paper's bibliography, but I've never had any luck.

No point. Just griping. Carry on.

--Mr. Zero