GSA #5: Things You Can Do Because You're a Grad Student

Actually, I'm talking about the things I did as a grad student that I hesitate to do now that I'm...not. This doesn't mean that I actually can't do these things now, or that I should have been doing them while I was a grad student, either...

• Reading stuff from the series A Very Short Introduction. I read the Literary Theory one for the first quarter of the theory sequence and thought, "How cool! I wanna learn about cosmology!" But now that I'm not a grad student, can I still read, say, Marx: A Very Short Introduction or Foucault: A Very Short Introduction? I suppose I can say I'm learning how to explain this stuff in clear terms to my students...
• Wearing flip-flops. A fellow TA once said to me, "You always dress like a businessperson!" (as if that were a bad thing). Turns out I also love wearing flip-flops. But am I allowed to wear this stuff around campus, at least on days when I'm not teaching? Or is that too...SoCal...?
• Bumming housing off of friends. Why not, I say. If I have friends living in whatever city I'm visiting (e.g., for a conference), why not ask to stay with them? Isn't that what friendship means?? But as a young professor once said, at some point you kind of have to start paying to stay at a real hotel.
• Eating while walking. This sounds stupid, but food always tastes better when consumed while walking. I'm drawing a line at eating while walking around the department, but am I allowed to eat, say, a Family Mart onigiri while taking a nice stroll around campus? Or is that taboo, too?
• Napping in my office. Well, as a grad student, I wasn't exactly napping, I was just falling asleep from simple lack of sleep. But if I at least close the door and turn off the lights, am I still allowed to do that? (Oh wait...I just saw a news story about napping at the workplace in Japan...and The Internship (2013) definitely said Google has nap pods...)

The fact that the weather is cooling down means I no longer have to arrive at my office just to take off my majorly sweaty shirt and sit there in a sports bra. But does being a non-student also mean I have to show up at work perfectly made up and wearing clickety heels, too? And where can I go to enjoy some quality music performance on the cheap, like I used to with ArtPower's grad student comp tickets??