One to Four

Defended your thesis or passed your quals
Finished your paper and Sega calls
And you just want to blow work off today

Thoughts of committee grillin' have faded
Your work ethic has been downgraded
With nothin' to do but ever so much to play

Working one to four
What a way to make a livin'
You just read e-mail 
'fore you crumble and you give in
Then you paint your nails
Or perhaps you play some Riven
It's your grad school slump
And if you're lazy it's forgiven!

One to four
But you don't work every minute
Barely use your mind
And you'll readily admit it
You once worked real hard
It was endless days of geek hell
But the next four months
Your job is.. playing freecell!

Organize a team for baseball season
You've got time and don't need a reason
Or learn to play guitar if that's your thing

Don't speak German or Aramaic?
Now's your chance if you'll just take it
Or the tides gonna turn and you'll be re-search-ing

Working one to four
What a way to make a livin'
You just read e-mail 
'fore you crumble and you give in
You go out and sail
Or you stay and get some Civ in
It's your grad school slump
And if you're lazy it's forgiven!

One to four
Yeah, your life is where you want it
Slept 'til noon today
Wore your jammies in to flaunt it
Skipped that research game
Didn't heed advisor's de-cree
You won't spend your life
Putting papers in his CV

Working one to four
What a way to make a livin'
You just read e-mail 
'fore you crumble and you give in
It's a brief travail
But the nth years call you driven
It's your grad school slump
And if you're lazy it's forgiven!

Footnote

1. "nth years" are graduate students who have been in grad school for so long that they'd rather just reduce their time to an arbitrary large constant. I've been in graduate school for n + 1 years.