Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School

by Adam Ruben

  STUDENT2> dude u wanna leave

  Shall we procure them on the morrow?

  STUDENT1> yeh dis class sux (_(_)

  No. Let us go right now, for this class sucks butt.

  Paper View

  Writing is the tool most academics use to obscure their research from one another. As a grad student, you’ll be asked to write research papers, a task you’re probably already nerdy enough to enjoy. In fact, odds are you’re pretty good at it.

  Undergraduates are not.

  If one thousand monkeys at one thousand typewriters typed at random for one thousand years, an undergraduate would plagiarize what they wrote. (A key difference between the monkeys and the undergrads, of course, is that the monkeys would fling poop less often than the undergrads would.)

  Here, then, is the difference between your papers and theirs:

  Contents of the Papers You Write

  Contents of the Papers You Grade

  Plagiarize This Book

  Plagiarism, as you’ll quickly learn if you have to grade student papers, is the theft of ideas, structure, phrasing, and your trust.

  Every few years, the national news buzzes with a story about a professor on the verge of unemployment because someone discovered that three sentences from his or her paper closely match those in another professor’s paper. Hearings are held, arguments rage, and the origin of each word is debated ad nauseam. In the end, a hardworking academic may resign from a multi-decade career, haunted by the gravity of a lone indiscretion.

  Undergrads, on the other hand, plagiarize as often as they pee.

  Undergrads believe that anything written is everyone’s property to take and claim as their own—especially if it can be found on the Internet, because then they can copy and paste without even having to type it out. Undergrads plagiarize everything, from literary analyses to lab reports to personal essays (which you can identify if the essay begins, say, “When I grew up in nineteenth-century Poland …”). Under-grads even plagiarize life’s daily witty remarks. Ever heard an undergrad say something relatively clever? I guarantee he or she stole the joke from The Simpsons or a Ben Stiller movie.

  It’s time to test your skills at detecting plagiarism. Can you identify the plagiarized portions of this student essay?

  My Essay

  By John Q. Undergrad

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

  ANSWER: None of the essay is plagiarized, because the student complained, and the student’s parents threatened to sue the university, and the Dean of Negligence wants to encourage “a culture of collaborative learning,” so now the student is getting an A and demanding royalties from the estate of Charles Dickens.

  Gladly Shall Ye Lerne, and Gladly Chete

  Professors foist the most hated tasks onto their teaching assistants, and no task is more hated than proctoring an exam. For three hours, you stroll around a lecture hall telling squirming undergrads the same thing over and over again: “I can’t answer that. Sorry. I can’t answer that.”

  And you watch for cheaters. The nice thing about stupid people cheating is that they’re so bad at it—but even so, you’re a little reluctant to accuse anyone. Sure, your burning sense of justice implores you to nab any student who so much as glances away from his or her paper. But blame a student wrongly, and watch out.

  Crying. Indignation. Phone calls from angry parents (who always seem to be lawyers). The dreaded Ethics Committee, whose one agenda seems to be placating the angry lawyer parents. Deans and ombudspeople dressed in black robes strapping you to a table and stabbing you with number 2 pencils, while you snivel, “The student looked askance, I tell you! She looked askance!”

  Next time, be certain. Look for the telltale signs that a student is cheating:

  My Negligence Ate My Homework

  In grad school, you strive to tease out the truth from scant evidence or murky data, especially when your advisor wants to publish something. You read the most obscure, hyperspecific academic articles on the planet to the point where you develop actual burning ire over scholars you’ve never met. (“Can you believe that the interpretation of Patel et al. contradicts that of Chen et al.? Those sons of bitches!”)

  Yours is the life of the mind, an existence in which your happiness relies upon your ability to grasp some pretty complicated shit. But can you—or anyone—follow the meandering logic of an undergraduate’s excuse for not turning in an assignment? (See next page.)

  The Testing Game

  Even though they’ll later claim that they failed because they “don’t test well,” undergrads are at their most vulnerable during an exam, making this a perfect time to fuck with them. As the test’s administrators, you and the other TAs are the only relaxed people in a room full of nervous people. That’s a recipe for Grad Student Fun.

  With your fellow TAs, try the suggestions listed here, and give yourself the appropriate number of points based on students’ reactions. At the end of the exam, whoever has the most points is the winner. We’ll call the game—wait for it—Proctor and Gamble.

  Score Card

  1. Stand directly behind one student and stare at him or her, frowning, for at least fifteen minutes.

  _____ Student shifts positions uncomfortably (1 point)

  _____ Student turns around and makes pleading eye contact with you (2 points)

  _____ Student stands and screams, “All right! All right! I’m cheating!.” (5 points)

  2. Lean down next to a student, point to his or her exam, and, loudly enough for everyone to hear, say, “These two are correct, but this one is wrong.” Then wink.

  _____ Student receives angry glares from other students (1 point)

  _____ In a desperate attempt not to be hated, student explains aloud that you two don’t have a special relationship (2 points)

  _____ Student rewards you sexually (5 points)

  _____ Student rewards you sexually during the exam (10 points)

  3. Look up a student’s cell phone number in the student directory. Call him during the exam. When his phone rings, point at him and yell, “Get out of here!”

  _____ Student leaves the room (1 point)

  _____ Student leaves the room crying (2 points)

  _____ After student leaves the room crying, he answers the phone—at which point, you yell into the phone, “Get back in here!” (5 points)

  4. When a student turns in her exam, look quickly through the test and laugh out loud.

  _____ Student asks for permission to change her answers (1 point)

  _____ Student sobs tears of remorse (2 points)

  _____ No other student turns in an exam for at least thirty minutes (5 points)

  5. When about an hour of exam time remains, pick up a piece of chalk and write on the board, “10 MINUTES REMAINING.”

  _____ Student curses out loud (1 point)

  _____ Student raises his hand to tell you you’re wrong (2 points)

  _____ All students turn in their exams within ten minutes (5 points)

  6. If the exam has, say, only 25 questions, pick up a piece of chalk and write on the board, “THERE IS A TYPO. PLEASE DISREGARD QUESTION 59.”

  _____ Student frantically flips through exam pages to find question 59 (1 point)

  _____ Student turns exam over to look at the back (2 points)

  _____ Student raises her hand and says, “Um … there is no question 59,” to which you can reply, “Wow, you’re really good at disregarding” (5 points)


  7. The moment the first student takes a bite of a granola bar or sips from a bottle of water, say, “I’m sorry, but there’s no food allowed in this room.” After he puts the snack away, take out an entire roasted chicken and proceed to eat it, along with a warm loaf of bread and a wok of mixed vegetables you sauté right there on a camping stove.

  _____ Student tries to point out your hypocrisy (1 point)

  _____ Student takes his food out again, staring at you to see what you’ll do (2 points)

  _____ Student somehow procures cheesecake and offers it to you for dessert (5 points)

  8. Before distributing the real test, pass out a “joke” exam full of funny questions. Wait forty minutes while students read it, and then reveal that you gave them this fake test only to make them smile. Pass out the real exam, telling them they should get started because they’ve already lost forty minutes.

  _____ Student demands extra time on the real exam (1 point)

  _____ Student tries to enlist other students in protest (2 points)

  _____ Student, not paying attention, only completes the joke exam (5 points)

  9. Toward the end of the exam, with only a few students left in the room, say, “Sorry. I said ‘Pencils down’ five minutes ago. You’ve all failed.”

  _____ Student insists you never said, “Pencils down” (1 point)

  _____ Student gets all litigious and condemns you for never putting in writing the fact that you could say, “Pencils down” (2 points)

  _____ Student explodes (5 points)

  10. Label the first five rows “SPLASH ZONE” with no further explanation. Then, once students have sat in those rows, pee on them.

  _____ Just for doing this (100 points)

  On Beyond Failure!

  The first time you give a student an “F,” you agonize for hours. Am I ruining this young scholar’s future? Am I souring him or her on learning? Have I doomed the poor soul’s unborn children to poverty?

  The second time you give a student an “F,” you wish you could kick the grade into his or her fat, ignorant face.

  It only gets worse from there.

  When it does, you need a series of grades even lower than “F,” for those special students for whom failure is a touch too generous. Try these:

  HHH Student exhaled loudly during class to express dissatisfaction.

  I In addition to sucking academically, student was self-centered.

  L Student made my life a living L.

  MM To compensate for failing grade, student baked me brownies. They were delicious! Student still fails.

  N Let N be an integer such that O < N < F.

  O- Universal donor. Student universally donated answers to lots of other students.

  P Student spent more time taking bathroom breaks than sitting in class.

  Q Student earned only ten points all semester—so I might as well give a grade that’s also worth ten points (in Scrabble).

  R Student was a pirate!

  T Student was British!

  T- T minus ten seconds until student self-destructs academically.

  V Student earned a 5 percent and is also Roman.

  XXX To compensate for failing grade, student offered me sexual favors. They were delicious! Student still fails. (See also DD.)

  Y Student asked too many dumb questions.

  ZZZ Student slept through class.

  Stages of Grief, as Portrayed by an Undergrad Begging for Half a Point on an Exam

  As a rule, college students like binge drinking, holding class outside, and shirking personal responsibility. But nothing is more important to an undergrad—nothing—than half a point on an exam.

  Even a full point is less important. Even fifty points. Watch undergrads ask halfheartedly for fifty points, knowing it’s a long shot—but then watch them beg for half a point, convinced that their tenacity might really tip the balance. It’s like watching heroin addicts beg for … well, heroin.

  You can watch an undergrad progress through the five stages of grief:

  1. DENIAL: “I didn’t get the question wrong. Physics is wrong.”

  2. ANGER: “If you don’t regrade my exam, my father will have you fired!”

  3. BARGAINING: “How about if you let me drop this exam grade, and you just make attendance worth one hundred percent?”

  4. DEPRESSION: “What’s the point of an exam anyway?”

  4½. PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE DEPRESSION: “Fine. If you don’t want me to succeed, I won’t.”

  5. ACCEPTANCE: “Okay. I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”

  We’ve all experienced grief. Perhaps you’ve lost a loved one, or had a paper rejected from a peer-reviewed journal, or arrived at a seminar just as the last doughnut vanished. But, please, the undergrad seems to be saying, have a little perspective: My half-point loss is worse than any sorrow that could befall you.

  If such a tragedy afflicts any of your students, you might want to photocopy the following card, sign it, place it in an envelope, and slide it under their dorm room doors—just to let them know they’re in your thoughts during this time of great misfortune.

  Alternatively, you might want to tell them to shove their complaints up their asses. Your call, really.

  6

  Six Degrees of Exasperation

  LAW SCHOOL, BUSINESS SCHOOL, MEDICAL SCHOOL, AND MORE

  EVERY postgraduate program is its own kind of nonsensical hell.

  Law school teaches us that the person who exploits the right loopholes wins. Business school embraces the wisdom of training future businesspeople to make mistakes identical to those of past businesspeople. And medical school is based on the premise that we should entrust the job of cutting our bodies to those with the least sleep.

  Law school, business school, and medical school: prosecution, prosperity, and prostates. Three different types of training for three very different jobs earning three similar and ridiculously high salaries.

  And all three make Jewish or Asian mothers very, very proud.

  Lawyer, Lawyer, Pants … in the Foyer? (Why Are Your Pants in the Foyer?)

  Imagine you’re firing a missile at, say, the moon. (Don’t ask why. Maybe you hate the moon. Stupid moon! I’ll kick your waning, gibbous ass!)

  If you change the angle of the missile’s trajectory just a couple of inches, you won’t notice the difference—but millions of miles away, the discrepancy will be amplified, and you’ll miss the moon entirely. Then you’ll have to suffer its pale glow the rest of your life, always wondering why you weren’t just a little more careful with your aim.

  Law school is like firing a missile at the moon. During your first year, you’ll take about eight to ten classes that are nearly identical to those at law schools across the country. If you do well in these classes, you’ll have a good chance during second-year fall recruitment of landing a sweet second-year summer job at a big firm. Once you’ve gotten your foot in the door of this firm, they’ll probably ask you back during your third year, and you can parlay this experience into a cushy job for the rest of your life.

  So you see, the grades you earn in a few classes during your first year of law school can decide what kind of car you’ll buy someday for your kids. Shouldn’t you be studying right now?

  Many students begin law school because they can picture themselves shouting “Objection!” in a courtroom or reading a brief late at night and discovering the one piece of evidence that will exonerate an innocent hottie. But in reality, every lawyer’s goal is to avoid being a lawyer. There are three main types of lawyers, two of which form layers of security around the third:

  That’s the life of a big-firm lawyer, raking in huge piles of money in exchange for keeping your cases out of court. (Alternatively, you could eschew the huge piles of money and strive toward a job as a lawyer for the government. This is a good idea if you’re a weenie.)

  Taking Care of Business School

  Business school is a place to study “cases,” to concentrate full time on interviewing for
a better job at the consulting company for which you hated working last summer, to hook up with other nerdy business students treating the experience as a chance to redo college, and to network.

  Let’s start with cases. A case is basically a word problem from hell, one that sucks you in with its simplicity by saying something like “The CEO was sitting at his desk, staring out the window at a blue jay in a branch of a sycamore tree” and that builds, over the course of ten pages, to a complex model of declining profit margins. Then, in class, you answer questions about the case: “What are the relevant issues?” “What course of action would you advise if you found yourself in an elevator with the CEO for thirty seconds?” In addition to wondering why the CEO would take advice from someone who shared an elevator with him for thirty seconds, you sit hoping for a question that’s more your speed: “What kind of bird did the CEO stare at?”

  Then there’s networking, the all-purpose excuse used to rationalize anything and everything. Test your networking skills here! At the end of the day—which is a phrase you’ll use every twenty minutes or so in business school—how would you justify each of the following actions?