36. rather than talking to people, you keep handing them transparencies with messages on them. [psu]
35. Zephyr vocabulary reduced to bare minimum, i.e. "FREAK" and "WRONG" [jch]
34. you have nightmares about overhead projectors. [psu]
33. Your advisor starts pretending to recognise you in the hallways [jch]
32. Usual commonsense phrases like "I don't know" and "I have no idea" replaced with "That is outside the scope of this work" and "That's a difficult research problem" [kosak]
31. your advisor no longer falls asleep at status meetings, and starts asking you about stuff in your thesis. [psu]
30. You have a double cappuccino in one hand, a large coffee in the other, and you still feel somehow empty [jch]
29. You check the student handbook to see if the 10% kickback rule really exists [kosak]
28. you live on takeout food from the giant eagle deli [psu]
27. You stop referring to the entire department as lowlife dipshit limpdick sheep-fucking assholes on opinion bboard. [gusciora]
26. Frequent trips to gun stores to make sure your arsenal is ready [jch]
25. You can't remember a lunch that wasn't Srees [jch]
24. You start practising the phrase "You like fries with that?" [jch]
23. you've bought stock in coca-cola and starbucks, specifically because you know how you will prepare yourself in the days prior to defense. [karl]
22. you notice you're spending too much time, checking yourself in the mirror to be sure your shoulder holster doesn't show. "note to self: stop worrying about it -- they'll be in the same condition." [karl]
21. You know exactly when all of the known "troublesome" departmental members will be out of town on the same day [jch]
20. your MOTAS sends you email again, to remind you of your address. [karl]
19. Longest conversation of the day is with the cleaning guy who comes round at 2am [jch]
18. you try to act "friendly", though you've forgotten precisely what the term means, to members of your committee. [karl]
17. you wonder whether reformatting in HTML can provide a glimmer of hope. [karl]
16. you suffer a momentary confusion when preparing slides, separating those "interesting" images downloaded from the net from the "real" images you need at defense time. [karl]
15. Any activity other than writing (like, say, self-trepanation) suddenly becomes compellingly attractive. [jch]
14. You talk to your outside committee member for the first time [jch]
13. you look into the sky and wonder, "what is that bright yellow thing up there?" [karl]
12. You just ordered body armor via the web, because the phone takes too long [jch]
11. You took the time to evaluate 3 different sources of body armor before ordering, to make sure you had the one with the highest penetration resistance record. [karl]
10. You know exactly what body armor your committee will wear, and you've purchased appropriate ammunition [jch]
9. Suddenly all the first year women are dying to sleep with you. [gusciora]
8. You start wondering if "worse is better" also applies to dissertations [jch]
7. you asked for olin's concurrence before committing yourself to your chosen brands of both body armor and appropriately-hot handloads. [karl]
6. You're only masturbating twice per day. [gusciora]
5. you've prepared to spike your committee members' personal coffee supply 2 hours before defense gate-time, to keep them distracted. [karl]
4. You begin practising your Evil Eye: small children and dogs now run in terror, but you feel it needs more work to take on a tenured professor [jch]
3. to the dismay of your officemates, you've disposed of your deodorant a week in advance, in the hopes that a sufficiently musty(?)-smelling WeH 5409 will minimize the time spent in defense. [karl]
2. you start speaking perl and TeX in your sleep [psu]
1. You no longer look at people as "friends", but rather as "practice talk audience members" [stichnot]