Stuff SAIS people like
By John Thorne

#1      Free Food

SAIS people love Free Food.  But not in the normal, need-some-sustenance, poor-ish grad school student sort of way. The id takes total control of a SAIS person’s decision making with regards to Free Food.  Social norms are totally forgotten. And major weekly scheduling decisions are made with regards to Free Food’s authenticity, e.g.: South Asia talk vs. Conflict Management conference.  Professors’ office hours have even been skipped because of cookie hour on Tuesday. And the bravest (or rudest?) among SAIS people have been known to “grab and run.” Like untrained puppies, these folks run off with their Free Food without attending the event which provided the free calorie, completely devoid of remorse.

#2      Gentlemen’s B’s

SAIS people are smart and work really hard... most of the time. When passionate about a topic, SAIS people are known to spend inordinate amounts of time perfecting their memos and reading massive amounts of unnecessary materials to supplement their already extensive knowledge. But sometimes an economics “elective” or core class takes the back seat to classes in a SAIS person’s own concentration. In this situation, satisfaction is achieved by obtaining what could only be called a “Gentleman’s B” since SAIS people do not get C’s. Calling this “grade inflation” would be unfair—SAIS people are far too smart and don’t need grades cheapened by inflationary grading policies. But sometimes SAIS people don’t mind getting their B and calling it a day. It isn’t because they haven’t learned anything—far from it! But the SAIS student can’t always bring his or her literal A-game to every class—not when there is Free Food to be scrounged…

#3      Chicken Finger Day

You know it is Chicken Finger Day immediately upon your arrival at SAIS. Even the most guarded of Strat concentrators will have a spring in their step on this joyous occasion. The only time an IS-LM graph could be described as “happy” is when it is drawn by a Chicken Finger consuming SAIS person. The honey-mustard dipping sauce is an unnatural shade of yellow, but SAIS people don’t mind, because it is Chicken Finger Day! As the semester wears on, the joy from Chicken Finger Day increases as SAIS people mooch un-used SAIS cafeteria meal points from each other. Because remember, SAIS people love food even more when it is free!

#4      Free Trade
 
Ideologically, one finds that there is a healthy variety on most topics among SAIS people. But one realm where SAIS people have little disagreement is about Free Trade. A typical SAIS student contracts the Solow-Growth-Model Fever at a young age, around the first or second trimester. Free Trade is just as good of a thing as Free Food in the mind of a SAIS person. Most SAIS people will agree that the gains from trade need to be redistributed in some sort of equitable manner, but that is a minor point; trade rocks the socks off SAIS people. Note that this is true even for the SAIS people liberal persuasions: whenever a presidential candidate speaks out against NAFTA, it hurts a SAIS person’s soul, more than just a little bit.

#5      SAIS Trips

How does a SAIS person spend their winter and/or spring break? If they are clever, lucky, or Machiavellian enough, they spend it in a foreign country with SAIS footing most of the bill!  Whether monitoring elections, studying foreign wars, or just going to China for the sake of going to China, there are lots of SAIS trips, and SAIS people love them. Debauchery is encouraged on these trips, with the occasional professor doing tequila shots on St. Patrick’s Day. Sometimes, if you are lucky, there will be a talk about the trip when the SAIS people return- and these often have Free Food! SAIS people love to travel, and a SAIS sponsored trip can be a little piece of heaven.

#6      Scrabulous

Most SAIS people graduated college in an era before the rise of the beast that is now Facebook. Though it can be slightly embarrassing for “adults” to join Facebook, playing Scrabulous provides a convenient excuse! Most students haven’t played Scrabble in years, but the combination of high intellect and the urge to procrastinate will result in multiple intense Scrabulous games going at the same time. SAIS people will often share the amazing Scrabulous war-stories of how they defeated other SAIS people with clever words that landed a Q on a double letter square while getting a triple word score!  SAIS people love Scrabulous because it gives them an excuse when they get caught by friends messing around on Facebook.com in the library.