As a graduate student, Adam Ruben slept in sewage-soaked bed sheets and faked a heavy foreign accent while being a lab TA for undergraduate students.

During his lecture to graduate students on Thursday, the writer, comedian, storyteller and molecular biologist shared his struggles constructing a thesis and anecdotes that made the audience thankful they didn’t live in Baltimore.

“This isn’t the real world, this is grad school,” Ruben said while describing his less than comfortable living arrangement in Baltimore.

Ruben, who received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins over the course of seven years, is the author of “Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to go to Grad School.”

Ruben’s lecture was the last event in the second annual Graduate and Professional Student Research Conference, preceded by an awards ceremony that recognized graduate students for their three-minute thesis presentations, poster presentations and oral presentations.

According to his website, Ruben “currently co-hosts the Science Channel’s “Outrageous Acts of Science,” in its third season, and Discovery International’s new show, “Superhuman Science.”

Prior to Ruben’s lecture, a brief awards ceremony took place to recognize graduate students who “deserve to be recognized for the incredible amount of work that they do,” said Cory Kleinheksel, one of the coordinators of the research conference.

Three students received a $700 fellowship award for their work, and 34 students received awards for leadership, research and teaching, with some students receiving more than one of the awards.

Five students received recognition for their poster presentations. Five students won the oral presentation category, and a people’s choice, first and second place award were given for the three-minute thesis presentation.

Ruben opened his lecture with satirical commentary on the large audience.

“This is the biggest group of grad students I’ve spoken to,” Ruben said. “And I was wondering why … but then I figured out it’s because everybody gets an award.”

From making fun of the thesis-writing process to calling out major flaws in memorization tricks, Ruben read three excerpts from his book explaining the low points of grad school and defending graduate students’ right to complain.

“Complaining is the national grad student sport,” Ruben said.  “Grad students complain, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy [it].”

Ruben closed the lecture by talking about the average time it took for grad students to graduate, which was more than five years for his department.  

Ruben and his six-year colleagues got frustrated with their extended stay in graduate school. The students expected the professors to “say when,” but the professors were waiting for the students to take initiative.

Ruben gave what he made clear was the only serious piece of advice in the entire book: “Take more control than you think you have. Because, oftentimes, you have more control than you think you have.”