Doctorate qualifying exams. Imagine that grad school is like a fraternity; qualifiers is our version of a hazing. It comes from a somewhat bygone era when intellectual inquiry was the main reason people went to get graduate degrees. And maybe there was indeed such a time that existed when people didn’t mind taking 6 months off their regularly scheduled lives to complete a 12 page research proposal that they fully intend to never carry out. Or maybe professors just want us to go through the exact same hysteria-inducing pain that they went through half a century ago (ok, maybe just 3 decades).

Either way, I have 12 pages of science stuff to write over the next 3 weeks. I could try working from my apartment and inevitably get nothing done, I could go to the school library (which I adore and love to death), but all of those will probably get old after a few couped up days. So I figure that while I’ll go to the library in the evenings/nights, this might be a good opportunity to scout out all those lovely coffee & tea houses in the city that I would never go to otherwise once I’m full time in the lab.

Luckily, Googling “Manhattan coffee shops working” gives me a nice collection of potential stops in my “pretending to be a freelance writer” New York coffee/tea house tour.

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/415510
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/327066
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/358866
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/209156
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/214346
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/329396

And my current (but constantly rotating) list of places to hit are:

gramstand
214 Avenue A
Btwn 13/14

think coffee
248 mercer street
(between 3rd and 4th streets) (w of broadway)

Soy Luck Club
115 Greenwich Ave
@ jane/w 12th

Sympathy for the Kettle
109 Saint Marks Pl
1st/ave a

Push Cafe on 3rd Ave between 22/23 Sts

used book cafe
126 Crosby Street, NYC 10012
(212-334-3324)
@ bleecker?

Mojo Coffee
128 Charles St
(between Greenwich St & Washington St)

Brasil Coffee House 161 Lexington
Avenue & 30/31

Broken Cup Cafe
342 E 22nd St
(between 1st Ave & 2nd Ave)

Doma Cafe & Gallery
17 Perry St
(between 4th St & Waverly Pl)
I’m at gramstand right now, which will be the grits of another post entirely. But lets just say, at this current moment, its very nice; they’re playing Neutral Milk Hotel. And serving loose-leaf tea. And that tea-tender (?) is a real cutie. Now to get actual work done!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Coffee, New York, Tea.