As this semester draws to a close and thousands of students prepare to graduate next month, many of them will consider attending graduate school.

While some make the decision to attend graduate school to put off getting a real job, it is a decision that needs a lot of time and consideration.

Attending graduate school is one of those few things in life that no matter how difficult, you know it will be worth it in the end. Or so I hope.

Before coming to graduate school, I read somewhere that besides the intellectual capabilities, obtaining a master's or a Ph.D. required emotional maturity. I now understand why.

Students' experiences with graduate studies vary by the university, degree sought and department. Ph.D.'s are more demanding than master's degrees, for example. But for students working toward advanced degrees, the academics are not the hardest thing to deal with.

Graduate students are constantly under pressure -- from professors, from their students and from themselves.

They work long hours, constantly have to make critical decisions about their professional careers and suffer strains in their personal relationships because of their demanding schedules and their high stress levels.

Research findings confirm this over and over again.

A recent study by the University of California, Berkeley showed that 67 percent of graduate students reported that they have felt hopeless at times, 95 percent have felt overwhelmed and 54 percent have felt so depressed that it was difficult to function. Ten percent reported that they had seriously considered suicide.

A 1997 study of Big Ten universities found that graduate students have higher rates of suicide than undergraduates.

And an online publication on the University of California, Santa Barbara's Web site states that graduate students "...face a barrage of rigorous, formal assessments of their work and at the same time the graduate student is increasingly on his or her own as a learner and scholar. It is perhaps the strain of feeling between one stage of life and another, the transition from student to professional person that causes the most tension. Examinations, dissertations, tight job markets, and the tipping points of personal relationships, families and raising children may compete for the student's time and energy."

Given this bleak scenario, why then do people go to graduate school? I can only think of two reasons: Because they really love what they do, or because they want the advanced degree to get them more money and prestige.

A few months ago, I received a funny e-mail from a friend in Costa Rica. It claimed that work was the number one killer of men and women, because while each cigarette smoked takes away one minute of your life, work takes away eight hours a day. I realized that whoever wrote that e-mail actually had a point. Work is the activity we will spend the most time doing. So why not spend all that time doing something you actually like?

The University of Oregon's Web site offers some advice as to how to succeed in graduate school: You need to have tenacity, build a thick skin and keep going despite setbacks suffered along the way. Take initiative. Be flexible. Work on your interpersonal skills. Be good at politics, give credit when credit is due and apologize if you are at fault. And most important, keep a balanced perspective.

Many graduate students who suffer from depression do so because they think any setback along the way means they are worthless. From personal experience, I can offer another tip: Whenever you feel overwhelmed by graduate school work, check out the Web site www.phdcomics.com for a good laugh, or if that doesn't help you out, there is always the other alternative -- heading out for a drink with some friends. You will see that whatever you are going through, you're not the only one.

Some people go to graduate school because they want a degree that will enable them to get a job that, in reality, they really don't want. Others go because they can't find a job and they think graduate school is a way to kill time. I do not recommend graduate school for anyone who is attending for these reasons.

Graduate school is too demanding to go through if you're not doing it out of love. And if you don't have the emotional maturity to handle the pressure and demanding schedule, don't worry, you will get there eventually. You will learn to balance work with all other areas of your life. You will learn to deal with difficult professors and appreciate the nicer ones. You will learn how to stop procrastinating, how to multi-task, and how to teach others what you know. And you will develop thick skin.

In short, you will learn how to really be a professional and how to receive both criticism and praise.