Chains of Habit

I have a friend who graduated from our PhD program almost a year ago. He is still unemployed. He travels from thousand miles away to see his advisers every few months since he is still working on some papers with them. Yesterday, he was telling us he needs to go to another state for personal reasons. And then he said: "Oh, I need to tell my adviser that I won't be available for a while". One of my friends said: "Dude, you graduated a year ago. They are not paying you any money. And you still feel like you need permission from your adviser to be gone for a month". That's some crazy shit indeed.