The majority of the people living at the Cosmopolitan Club house are grad students. It used to be grad students only, but nowadays the balance has shifted to about half graduate–half undergraduate, which makes for interesting comparisons between the two groups.
Graduate students traditionally spend less time in the house, since they mostly live in their lab or office. They do take classes, but all time outside classes and class work goes into their research or teaching.
Undergraduates take their classes, but besides those, most of them spend quite some time hanging out at Cosmo, either watching TV, working on homework and assignments, or doing their own thing. Usually there are always plenty of undergrads “to go around.”
Grad students tend to have weird schedules, getting up insanely early to get to work or actually staying at work until late at night (or work all the way through the night) to finish whatever they need to finish. Some of them have such crazy schedules, that their roommates hardly ever see them. Every now and then (typically about two weeks into a new semester), I will see someone and think, “Do you live here?”
Being a grad student myself, I know about the schedules and how they can go crazy. Spending long days in the lab, finally getting work done and going home, wanting to blow of some steam, and finding out that I’ve been assigned kitchen duty for the night… “Ah well, it could be worse, I could still be at work…”
My own schedule is busy, but at least it has a lot of structure to it, so I usually know when I’m at home. I know of grad students (current and past Cosmo residents) who had schedules way more crazy than my own. But even they usually took some time every week to just hang out and do nothing for a while, hanging out with their roommates.
Having undergrads around keeps the house alive at all times, there is always someone around to talk to or do something with. I think most grads really appreciate having them around, as a release valve of every day stress and keeping them sane, making Cosmo a true “resting” home for grad students (and hopefully not a stress home for undergrads), since resting is usually, really, the only thing graduate students do when they’re at home.
Ingomar Middelbos is a graduate research assistant in Animal Sciences. He comes from what he says is, “the coolest country in the world,” Holland. He wakes up insanely early and makes the strongest coffee in the world.