The Material
One major difference between graduate and undergraduate level study is the density of the material being covered. Your first year of grad school will be extremely intense and intimidating. You'll read books that are difficult to understand, and you'll read journal articles that are seemingly impenetrable. I personally entered my department with a background in Historical Linguistics, but soon came to realize that the faculty there were doing things very differently. Mine is a theory driven department full of people who talk fast, argue faster, and support their hypotheses with cutting edge quantitative analysis. I was geared up for an Indo-European studies department, maybe for a Classics department, not this. The process of gradschool brings the phrase fed with a fire hose to a new level. So be prepared to learn things you never knew before, despite your 4.0 GPA and your awesome senior thesis. Be prepared to google a slew of new terminology, some of which may not have caught on in the rest of the scientific community (not even in your field). Be prepared to read the same paper twice, no, three times if needed.
The Time
As an undergrad, I was a wiz. I worked about 2-4 hours a day, reading textbooks or doing homework. No biggie. But grad school is work... Seriously, you go to a job for 8-12 hours, 5 or 6 days a week in the real world. Be prepared to work like that. If you work about 6 hours and have one class on average, that's normal. This is what we do. Get used to it. And at the end of each semester, be prepared to have those 8 hour days turn into 14-16 hour days. You'll need the extra time to write up term papers and cram for exams.
Teaching
If you're lucky (as I was... or am) you'll have a great teaching supervisor (probably separate from your primary adviser), who helps you get the wheels moving at the head of the classroom. You'll take a semester or a year to prep. You'll learn the ropes, practice teaching from a chapter of some textbook in front of other grad students. And then, after all that, you'll have your first teaching experience. The first minute and a half of teaching is the most difficult. It's kind of like being born. It's a metamorphosis. You were the person in one of the desks before you, but now you're the person at the front of the classroom, and you don't feel you're supposed to be there. Your skin is hot, dizziness sets in, and you're rambling on about yourself as a means of introduction but you have no clue what you're saying. But then it ends. You can transfer the pressure to the rest of the class, if it's small enough. Have them introduce themselves. Make some jokes. Wipe the sweat from your forehead. It'll give you time to recover.
After that it's smooth sailing, sort of. The first semester of teaching will be plagued with mistakes and unanswerable questions. It's one thing to read a textbook and pass an exam on the material. It's another thing to know the material so well that you can get up there and teach it to others. It has to be second nature to you. You have to be prepared to explain the fuzzy parts in a way that's understandable to everyone else. You have to learn to parry the tough questions when you think a complicated answer might scare off the students with less experience. You have to be tough, ready to do a little crowd control when that cute little couple in the back decides to talk through half the class. If you didn't have social skills before, you should get started on that.
Moreover, this will suck up the time you would like to be spending on your own research, or your own homework. You have to be able to do both. After the syllabus is finished, and you have enough materials to get you through an entire semester on that subject, it'll get easier. A few minor changes every semester to help you teach an ever improving class is important, but it won't take up too much time.This process (minus the first 1.5 minutes of your first day) repeats when you have to teach something new. But it's important to be a good teacher. Think about some of your own professors; how terrible they were at teaching; how much easier things would have been had they just explained X in a better way; how you had to get a separate textbook just to figure out the stuff Dr. So-and-So barely seems to know himself (or herself!). For some of you, this will be your favorite part of grad school. For others, it's hell. You're not big on humans (students), you're not big on confrontation (talkative and/or cheating students), and you definitely do not want to look like an idiot in front of a bunch of people. But this, for many of us anyway, is a part of life. And if you gotta do it, you might as well do it well, right?
The Other Stuff
I went to a conference as an undergrad. It was a nice little addition to my experience in academia, but not necessary. In grad school (and beyond), this type of thing is very necessary. You need to learn to be on a constant lookout for grants to fund your research/travel. You need to be on constant watch for employment opportunities. You need your CV up and ready to go, so update it regularly as you progress. Make some business cards to trade with other scholars at conferences. Practice talking about your research while at home alone, or with a close friend. Be able to tell someone about how awesome you are within the span of five minutes or so. Yup, yet another chunk of time you won't be spending doing research (sigh).
There are some other things as well, like networking with your fellow grad students, emailing other scholars, participating in departmental affairs, showing up to office hours... etc. I'll keep thinking it through and post more, if necessary.
Good luck!
-Dev
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