<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>The weekend is when I get the chance to do course work uninterrupted by classes. But because of hurricane Isabel, we have to make up days over the weekend. Normally, at least I can catch up on some sleep on the weekend - and then come into the grad office and work the rest of the day.
<i>I dont doubt your stress level, but i've defenitely realized how much more free time i had while in school.</i>
That's because you were an undergrad - just like I was last year. And yeah, I had much more free time as an undergrad. Trust me, graduate schools is much more intense. As an undergrad, I had the time to lift three times a week. I haven't lifted in almost three weeks now.
<i>Plus, my roommate last year during our 4th years at JMU dated a W&M grad student and if she had time to drive over to JMU twice a week and get drunk with us and still get her degree then i dont want to hear about it.</i>
She wasn't a CS grad student. She also probably wasn't funded.
What did you do Wednesday night? Sleep, maybe? See, I didn't. I worked the entire night. I don't mean, "I worked a lot Wednesday night," I mean I worked the <i>entire</i> night. My simulations final project went from 0 to 29 pages in 16 hours. I came to campus 9 am Wednesday morning, and I didn't leave campus until 3:30 pm on Thursday. That's 31 consecutive hours on campus, wide awake. When I went home, I took a three hour nap, then came right back to campus to grade labs and prepare for Saturday's lab.
You get one day a week off? That sounds nice. In the past five or six weeks, I've had one day off. It was the day after Thanksgiving. Did you spend Thanksgiving day with your family? I didn't. I spent it in the CS grad office working on a systems programming assignment. I took Friday off because they came into town. They were in town until Sunday. However, I still worked on Saturday and Sunday.
Don't get into a pissing contest with a grad student over how much you work, because you're going to lose.</div>