This morning, driving to the fitness club, I thought up a truly 
Zne Hajko.
frumatenvapor'
kaj mia spirado kaj
la sterkaro
(Early morning steam; both my breath and; the manure pile)
It might be even more zne to say "your breath".
Dorothea (who has a perennial bad attitude about graduate school) says
Well, well, eyes on the prize. I’m not going to school to be liked, or to be validated. I’m going to get a certificate for my wall, so people will actually hire me to do what I already know how to do. Not an adventure. Just one more heavy plodding lurch forward.
Students make two great blunders when approaching education. The first is to say, "I am an empty vessel: fill me up with your wisdom". The second is to say, "I already know the answers, dammit, just let me demonstrate what I know." School is an opportunity to transform oneself. School is an opportunity to come to understand oneself: to explore one's own ideas deeply and to contrast them with people who have already done so. Approaching it with the goal of anything less shortchanges yourself. (Or maybe I should have said, "You have made one of the classic blunders, the most well known of which ...").
Later, I've read Dorothea's response which makes me feel like I've been a bit short -- even harsh. I can sympathize with having had rough experiences with graduate advisors. In my experience, finding the right graduate advisor is everything.
I must say, though, that I frequently see students making either of the two blunders that I describe above and I can empathize with both. I didn't understand that the point of going to school was to learn new stuff until I began graduate school. I thought school was about demonstrating what you already knew. Many undergraduate courses for me were "free time" because after my freshman year, I learned I could demonstrate competence on the exams with little or no effort. I learned a lot of stuff in college, but a lot less that I would have if I hadn't had such a smug attitude.