I wrote this just before I finished my PhD in English, back in 2004. I've never recorded it, so I'm glad to have a record of it here.

Grad School

Standard tuning, capoed 1st fret
Am7 C G Am (2x)
C7 C G D Am C G

I been in school so long it's ceased to be about right or wrong
And it's just about surviving till the end
They give you tests and rate you, man that shit can devastate you
If you feel too dumb to comprehend
If you want your PhD you got to get that third degree
From bastards who bend backwards just to show
What you don't know
You don't know

But I will admit that when you stick me in some situations
I'm another stuck-up know-it-all
Some days I educate and other days I decimate
I go right through em like a cannonball
I realize that I pontificate and sermonize
But if you had a single clue you'd know
That I don't know
I don't know

Well I had a fine romance when I met another smarty-pants
He was clever and he said he liked my mind
And then he left me for a kindergarten teacher
It's the kind of thing that kinda seems unkind
I wouldn't like to say that he was only half a man
Just cause he chose to break my heart and go
But I don't know
I don't know

But I never say "He broke my heart" in casual conversation
That would be a stupid thing to say
I say, "It was a rather painful breakup, but of course
I realize I'm better off this way."
And what's peculiar is that really might be truer than
My secret sacred self-indulgent woe
I don't know
I don't know

It's not so much how much you've read or what you've written down
It's how much faith you have in what you think
Ideas spin away like frisbees on a windy day
They lift aloft and suddenly they sink
It's more or less a moral lesson in confession
To write down in black and white your "yes" or "no" or
"I don't know.
I don't know."

And now I'm gettin close to gettin out—so adios
I'll never ask what grade I got again
No teachers' dirty looks, no books (except for dirty books)
No more advice from all them dead white men
No more authorities!—Except, of course, for Socrates, who said:
"The more I learn, the more I know
That I don't know
All I don't know." (less info)