Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School
Page 9
Most Recent Accomplishment: Organized the reunion.
Level of Evident Overexcitement in Emails: Extreme.
Is Asshole Because: Charged everyone in the class forty-five dollars for some reason.
Reason Not to Envy: Your check will bounce!
THE COUPLE
Major Accomplishments: Found true love, leased one-bedroom apartment.
Type of Dependency: Co-.
Vomit-Inducing Terms of Endearment Overheard at Reunion: Honey, Dear, Dearest, Beautiful, My Love, Hot Stuff, Pookie, Darling, Babe, Baby, Sweetie, Schweetie, Smooshums, Schmooschums, Schmooshie-Wooshie-Ooshie-Booshie.
Reason Not to Envy: Are almost certainly sick of each other.
THE HOMETOWNER
Was Born In: A small town
Will Die In: The same small town.
Can Be Seen At: Local supermarket, high school football games, aunt’s house.
Reason Not to Envy: Can be seen at local supermarket, high school football games, aunt’s house.
THE HIT MAN
Refers to Employer as: Doesn’t refer to employer.
Leaves: The gun.
Takes: The cannoli.
Reason Not to Envy: Unlikely to survive to twentieth reunion.
THE ONE WHO COULDN’T KEEP HER DAMN LEGS TOGETHER
Name: Almost invariably Suzy or Debbie.
Is Subject of: Gossip, scorn, drawing etched on restroom stall.
Does Not Need: Society’s approval, prophylactics.
Reason Not to Envy: Whispered comments about her will supplant whispered comments about you.
THE MYSTERIOUS GUY WITH THE BEARD
Smells Like: Sheep, dishwater, mystery.
Possibly Has: Acoustic guitar, aluminum-frame backpack, improvised explosive device.
Demeanor: Eerily peaceful.
Reason Not to Envy: Uh, does anyone remember this guy? Was he in our graduating class? How did he get in here?
THE OTHER GRAD STUDENT
Reminds You: You’re not special.
Beware: May engage you in a battle of misery. (“My advisor beats me with a rubber truncheon.”)
Sad Truth: You will probably spend a majority of the reunion talking to this person.
Reason Not to Envy: Isn’t it obvious?
Thesis Pieces
You’ve finally completed your (… mumble mumble …)th year of grad school, and as a reward for all your hard work, you get to do some more hard work! That’s right: It’s time to write your dissertation.
But there’s no need to jump right into the scary “content” part. Let’s start with something a bit easier—the acknowledgments section, a time to thank the little people who made academia somewhat more tolerable.
Think of it like Oscar night, but without the music, the stars, the glamour, the happiness, the git bags, the montages, the attractive people, or any sense of achievement.
I would like to thank …
my thesis committee: for their vague and infrequent guidance;
my thesis advisor;
my thesis advisor’s mother: Aw yeah;
the diligent folks at Wikipedia: You sure made research easy!;
my parents, for constantly doubting my decision: YES, I KNOW MY BROTHER BOUGHT A HOUSE;
my significant other, for sincerely believing I had only “three months left” during the entirety of my final two and a half years;
my department, for its outright lie about how long this shit would take;
Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd., maker of ramen noodles; and
of course, everyone who believed in me. So, no one.
What’s Up, .doc?
Ah. Quality dissertation-writing time. You’ve settled in with your laptop, brewed a mug of coffee the size of a Jacuzzi, and started burning the midnight oil (because you can’t afford electricity). Double-click on “Dissertation.doc” (or .docx, if you’re fancy).
But wait—something’s wrong! The error messages start flooding in:
File not found.
Data error reading drive C.
Sorry, but our princess is in another castle.
Your heart sinks. Your breath comes quickly. You poop a little.
And your dissertation is no more.
Every grad student has stories of that one guy who never saved a copy of his thesis, lost it in a computer crash, and then spent three weeks on the phone with customer service representatives in Bangalore trying to get it back. Some grad students have even been known to devote more hours to the post-deletion retrieval process than to the actual research that produced the document in the first place.
Don’t put it off any longer. Take these important steps to back up your dissertation so you don’t get your ASCII kicked.
(Oh, and you know who those customer service representatives in Bangalore are, right? They’re grad students who accidentally deleted their dissertations.)
Save your dissertation on your hard drive. Save the entire file as a single, uneditable JPEG. This will prevent tampering. Set the resolution as high as possible—your file should be massive, unwieldy, and take at least forty-five minutes to save on what’s left of your hard drive. If necessary, reformat your hard drive, and then save the file.
Name the file something memorable, such as “My File” or “autoexec.bat.” Change the file extension two or three times.
Password-protect your document. Since every password can be guessed easily, choose one by shutting your eyes, pounding randomly on the keyboard, and hitting Enter. Your file will be so secure even you won’t be able to guess the password.
Be careful not to let the computer overheat. You can slow the processor by submerging the CPU in an ice bath.
Copy the file onto a USB flash drive. According to manufacturers, file storage systems benefit from nearby magnets. Find the strongest magnet you can and hold it against the flash drive. If you have time, expose the drive to extreme heat and cold.
Transfer the file to a backup tape drive. A tape drive is a storage device that maintains your data on magnetic tape. Open the tape drive, remove the tape, and affix it to the top of a flashlight. It is now microfiche.
For added security, “burn” the file onto a blank CD. If you think this suggestion sounds like it involves fire, you’re right!
Using a standard copier, photocopy the CD. Be sure to copy both sides.
Feed the original CD into an office shredder and microwave the pieces that emerge. This is called “encrypting” the file.
Send the encrypted file to your own email address. There are many quick and efficient ways to send files, but the standard, preferred method is carrier pigeon—though any domesticated fowl will do.
Many websites offer free online storage of large files. Be suspicious of these. You know who gives things away for free? Sluts.
Just to be safe, print a copy of your dissertation on papyrus and wrap it around a glass vial of vinegar. Place it inside a stone storage vessel called a codex. The codex was invented by Dan Brown in 2003.
Finally, and most important, lock a second printed copy inside a safe deposit box at your local bank. Your dissertation should be secure there because banks are doing awesome right now.
It’s your choice. Follow these instructions and you’ll keep your dissertation from “disserting” you. Otherwise, you’d better practice saying, “Thank you for calling the Support Center. May I please have the number of your warranty?”
Stretch That Dissertation! Add Fifteen to Twenty Pages Instantly Without Adding Content
With serious works of academic scholarship, quality is always better than quantity—but you have to admit, quantity is pretty damn sweet. That vellum-bound tome just feels more satisfying in your hands the more it weighs. Better for bludgeoning, too … uh, should that need arise.
For decades, undergrads have dominated the field of paper-stretching and have pioneered such useful techniques as “adding an extra space between paragraphs” and “starting the first page halfway down the first pa
ge.”
Unfortunately, a majority of their tricks are easily detectable and outright dumb. “That’s just the way my computer prints!” they’ll whine. But triple spacing? Fourteen-point font? Really?
Morons. Transparent, sexy, drunk morons.
You need believable, sophisticated methods for taking up space. Check out this sample page from a presumably awesome dissertation, and use these tips to stretch your own! Remember, an empty sense of accomplishment is still a sense of accomplishment.
Edit? Forget It
Want to calculate how long you’ll spend writing your thesis? Good freaking luck. You can’t.
You see, your thesis is not solely under your control. Rather, a whole group of distinguished professors works to ensure that your carefully crafted tome never ends up in vellum binding without their grubby little proofreader’s marks. Between you, your advisor, and your thesis committee, there’s a lot of give-and-take in the dissertation-editing process—specifically, they give you shit, and you take it.
Or, to put it differently, your thesis is “the broth,” and every so often you’re forced to consult too many cooks. Or—ooh, how about this one: Your thesis is like a prison bitch—subject to frequent, unwelcome input from external bodies.
In order to escape grad school, you must obtain that rarest of commodities: the editorial consensus of a bickering, ego-dominated committee.
To give you a sense of the revision process, pretend you’ve written a one-sentence thesis:*
The boy went to the store.
Great! You’re done, right? Wrong. First you hand your thesis to your advisor for feedback. “That’s it?” your advisor asks. “You need much more detail.” So you rewrite your thesis, adding detail:
The small boy went to the candy store, where he bought chocolate-covered blueberries.
“Hmm,” your advisor says, reading your new thesis. “The problem is that you have all that detail in there. You really should remove extraneous detail.”
What? Didn’t your advisor just tell you to put the detail in? Yes, but today’s a new day. Today your advisor does not like detail. Remove most of what you’ve just written:
The boy went to the candy store.
Now you’ve learned the first lesson: Never ask for your advisor’s opinion twice.
So you’ve got your thesis, and it matches your advisor’s opinion du jour. Time to show it to your first committee member. Uh-oh! Your first committee member calls you a failure as a scholar because you didn’t reference his research. Time for a rewrite:
The boy went to the candy store, as he did in Douchebag et al.
Your first committee member having been placated, you show the thesis to your second committee member. “Douche-bag?” cries your second committee member, glaring at you incredulously. “You’re citing Professor Douchebag? He’s completely irrelevant! If you don’t remove your reference to Douchebag, I’ll never approve your thesis.”
Okay. Douchebag disappears. Behold:
The boy went to the candy store, as has been seen previously.
Oblique enough? Maybe. But guess what: now your third committee member is unhappy. “In my field,” she tells you, “we focus on the journey itself.”
“Yes,” you reply, “but my dissertation isn’t about your field. It’s about my field.”
Nice try. But your third committee member cannot fathom a world in which all research doesn’t relate to her field. Thus:
The boy walked up Main Street and made a right on Third Avenue to get to the candy store, as has been seen previously.
Your fourth committee member is the fun one. Unfortunately, fun doesn’t mean “fun.” It means, “Ooh! I’ve got a fun idea for something you can add to your thesis!” Such ideas are rarely fun and cost you assloads of extra time.
“Rewrite it as lyrical Irish narrative free verse!” squeals the committee member, clearly having so much fun with your thesis. Okay:
The boy walked up Main Street and made a right on Third Avenue, diddle-hi, diddle-ho, to get to the candy store, as has been seen previously, hie-dee-dee, hie-dee-doo.
Time for the last step in the process: Show the finished product, once more, to your advisor.
Your advisor reads your thesis. You wait in judgment. Did you properly balance your advisor’s and committee members’ whims? Did you strike the rare and difficult balance between each of their narcissistic attempts to recast your thesis in their own style? Is your thesis acceptable?
Your advisor emerges from his office after three months and hands you your thesis with a single written comment: “No.”
Aha. A new game! The process has evolved from “Do what say” to “Guess what I’m thinking.” So you rewrite:
The boy … um … walked … or maybe he didn’t … and the store … blueberries … hie-dee-doo.
“Excellent!” says your advisor. “I completely approve! However, in the two years it’s taken you to edit your thesis, the field has changed. Everyone already knows that the boy went to the store. You need a new topic.”
The girl jumped rope.
“But,” you plead meekly, “my life—”
“Just let me know when you’re finished,” interrupts your advisor, “and I’ll be glad to angrily provide comments. Oh, and make sure you’ve put in lots of detail.”
Nothing to Approve
Behold the dreaded Thesis Form, the single sheet of paper that spells out your fate. While your thesis committee takes half an hour to review and discuss your multi-year struggle, the committee head has this form, a pen, and more power than you’re comfortable with.
Admit it. Your sphincter contracts a bit when you see this form, doesn’t it?
Student Name: ________ Date Thesis Submitted: ________
Yes No
Student completed required course work.
Student performed adequate independent research.
Zest for life hammered out of student.
Student’s health deteriorated the requisite amount.
Dissertation is thick, obscure, and innocuous.
Manuscript details meet arbitrary standards I established this morning and told only my dog.
Student left $500 in small, unmarked bills in my department mailbox.
Student left $500 in large, marked bills in my rival’s department mailbox.
Academic job market shitty.
Stars aligned.
Student realized he/she is being kept here only as a source of cheap labor.
It is less work for me to approve this thesis than to disapprove it.
Student promised me a night of passion and a lifetime of discretion.
Therefore, on this _______ day of _______, we officially (approve / disapprove) this student’s graduation (unanimously / with much unnecessary bickering). We offer our sincere (congratulations / condolences). Student must now get very drunk to (celebrate / mourn).
Signatures of committee members who approve student’s graduation:
Signatures of committee members who disapprove student’s graduation, despite student having obeyed their instructions exactly:
Doodle distractedly in this space:
Certificate of Depreciation
Congratulations! You’ve graduated! (Well, let’s pretend.)
You’ve just sat through a commencement ceremony in the blistering sun (the perfect time to wear a heavy black velvet robe), listened to a college wind ensemble’s forty-minute rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance,” and texted your parents to let them know where you were sitting. Now, for all your years of effort, you’ve earned (a) a piece of paper and (b) the ability to truthfully refer to that piece of paper on your résumé.
Then, as months pass, you realize that if your diploma is good for something, that something sure as hell isn’t getting a job.
What good is an advanced degree, then? What can you do with your diploma?
Prop up the short leg of your coffee table, provided it’s only one-one thousandth of an inch short.
Wrap a small present—once.
Show it to everyone at the singles bar (if you truly, truly hate getting laid).
Crumple it into a ball and have your classmates do the same. Diploma fight!
Cut out the letters, paste them on a blank sheet of paper, and anonymously send your former thesis advisor … uh … let’s say, feedback.
Earn three more degrees and have a handy set of disposable placemats.
Frame the evidence of your erudition and hang it … upside-down! O delicious irony!
Shred it to make bedding for a very special hamster.
If your degree is a PhD, cross out “PhD” and write “Master’s,” so that you can actually get a practical job.
Photocopy it, and mail it to that high-school teacher who said you’d never amount to anything. It’s your way of saying, “See? You were wrong. I did amount to something. I’m a person who can afford a postage stamp.”