I've said it before, but...
I hate grad school. At this point, they couldn't pay me $50,000/year to stay and get my PhD.
I don't know if all programs are this way, but the one I'm in is insane. The professors expect the grad students to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop, and if you miss one, you're out of the program without a degree.
I spent all winter break here in Raleigh studying for my qualifier. I studied at least 8 hours/day every day except Christmas day. I knew every concept that we were going to be tested over, and I knew how to do every exam problem that had been asked for the last 10 years. Not that it matters, but I also made A's in all of my fall classes.
I retook the qualifier Monday. Going in, I was confident. All 10 of us who failed in August were. But to quote a friend that I studied with, "That exam was some bullshit". They asked us questions over things they'd never taught us. They asked us questions that required us to do a full page of messy algebra and/or calculus in 30 minutes. They asked us to prove obscure results that they maybe spent 10 minutes total class time doing. They asked questions where it took a good 5 to 10 minutes of reading carefully and thinking just to understand what the question was asking. In summary, the exam was way harder than the one we took in August, or any that had ever been given previously.
I haven't gotten my score back, but if I don't at least do well enough to pass and get my Master's degree, I'm going to raise hell. First, I'm going to make my advisor do every problem that I missed on the exam, because I'm willing to bet a lot of money that he can't do all of them either. Then I'm getting as many of my grad student friends as I can with me, and we're going to go straight to the department head to complain. Hopefully it won't come to that, but if it does, I'm not going down without a fight.
Patience and I are getting married on July 18 here in Raleigh. I'll send emails asking for people's addresses and such once we get the invitations.