Grad School vs Vet School

As a veterinary student, it was a given that time was not only a valuable commodity, but it would be spent on SLEEP, the sooner the better. And maybe studying, and perhaps two hours a week could be diverted into the most basic of life maintenance, such as eating dinner with family members, significant other, or the one non-vet-school friend who still found your stories about animal anatomical oddities entertaining (it's important to hold onto friends like that). 

Then there is grad school. Grad school does not cling quite so tenaciously to your life as vet school.

Vet school latches on the second day of orientation and for the next four years reminds you constantly that you are going to be a Doctor, with Responsibilities, to say nothing of Board Exams. Also you have two patients to write discharge instructions for and rounds starts in an hour and you haven't looked up ketoacidosis in small ruminants yet.

Also you need to do treatments, like, now.

Grad school, on the other hand, stretches luxuriously in the morning, looks at the clock, and says, "Eh, I don't have any classes or work on Wednesday, I'll sleep in a little and be better rested to work on my essays." (Obviously people who have jobs to juggle with classes are going to be in more of a vet school category of time management.)

Nor does grad school place the same emphasis on facts...facts are secondary to the bigger picture of synthesizing ideas, making connections, and revising your resume to a finely honed reflection of your finest career attributes.

The veterinary student side of me freaks out about this.
The grad student side goes, "I will think about things...hm, what should I make for dinner?" Once in a while the grad student side also goes, "Holy cow, I have a lot of homework to catch up on." However, there are always a few more hours in the day, we're mostly just skimming articles anyway, and it's important to take time...to synthesize.

And then you get to that point in the semester where all the essays come due, the one class that involves knowing facts has an exam and it occurs to you that with all the synthesis and all the leisurely discussions, you still don't know what your job would actually entail. And then grad school is just like vet school but with even less certainty of what you do when you graduate, except that you aren't done for the day when you leave the school because there's always more essays to write and readings to synthesize.

And it's a lot harder to write discharge instructions in AMA style.