Doing math with the pre-doc

To fully appreciate a Ph.D. program, one must do math.

In order to graduate, I have to take 9 classes as well as two years worth of a foreign language. 13 classes.
Taking two classes a semester (full time for graduate school), that means I have six and a half semesters worth of classes. Let's say 3 and a half years.

On top of that, I am supposed to take a semester doing a qualifying exam (because I came in with a degree in English and not in American Studies). Add another half year to read the twenty five works for the QE and you're at four years (actually, it took two years to get them to okay my stuff for the QE but I did other things while I was waiting).

You're not done. You've still got to take the comps. That's 75 works. Give it a year, and that's 5 years. A semester to write and get your dissertation proposal worked through and you're at 5 1/2 years. Now to writing...no matter how fast you write, someone has to get around to reading it... so a year and a half. Good. Seven years.

Myself, I came in with a foreign language (lose a year of classes) and we're back down to six. My comps? Finished them in a semester rather than a year (read a whole bunch during the summer). Five and a half! Yeah.

But of course, I've only been funded for five. That's right, next year, no money. No childcare. No health insurance. And boy oh boy, I'm going to have to pay tuition. Now, quick question. Who thinks that it was designed like this? Who thinks that perhaps the powers that be decided to make you fight it out the last year trying to figure out how to write a dissertation while taking care of two kids who, if they get sick, can't go to the doctor. What kind of evil monster would design the program like that.

Well, never fear. They didn't design it on purpose. They just didn't think about it at all, and have not managed to fix the system after numerous years of complaints. They don't have the time to care about your petty life problems. Now, big question: which would be worse, their having designed a system that pulls you through the ringer on purpose, or their having designed it because they couldn't care enough about the students to make a system that actually works.

My graduate advisors suggestion: take a semester off (back up to six years now) and apply for fellowships to pay for year 6.

A thought about a circular conversation I had

The American intellectual begins arguments from an extreme state of paradox, and it is for this reason that America does not respect intellectualism nor does it foster it. The first thing that happens in an intellectual argument in America is that the two intellectuals take sides because, despite all reasoning to the contrary, we believe that there is always a pro and a con in the debate. Arguments of definition or nuance simply aren't worthwhile. Often this results in two sides arguing vehemently against each other, though both believe exactly the same thing. My friend Jason calls this a coffee shop debate.

This is not the paradox. The paradox for the American intellectual relies on the first move in the debate which is to claim that the expert sitting opposite knows only a hair's breadth more about the subject then the average slightly above average intelligent man or woman on the street. That their expertise is little more than a bit of a head start. In this way, one may sit down with a doctor of philosophy, having never read Sartre, and begin immediately to discuss the worth of Being and Nothingness. They've read the book, you haven't, but what does that really mean? This rather gross overconfidence is, I think, fallout from the understanding that we can educate people through television, that nifty notion that was popular for about a year in the 50s. Thus, while we no longer believe that watching a whole bunch of television is going to make anybody smarter, we figure that our "general knowledge" derived from rather public sources (and not from a moment of serious study on the subject) is nearly expertise. We may even think it expertise, only not validated by some meaningless bit of paper called a diploma.

So, the argument begins by telling the other side that you know nearly as much about their subject matter as they do, and well...you disagree. Step two is to offer why the thing you know about is far more applicable to the question at hand, all the while assuming that the other side has no skill in this secondary area of knowledge, even though you've already assumed that every one of reasonable intelligence pretty much knows most everything already. They're a professor of philosophy, you've seen I Heart Huckabees--whose to say who knows existentialist thought more?

Thus the American intellectual operates prima faeci from the assumption that intellectuals know much about everything and that the intellectual with whom they are speaking knows nothing about the area from which the counterargument is derived.

I posit a solution. Unless we have reason to believe our claims bolstered by expertise, maybe we should assume that what we are saying is without real weight, that perhaps we should not always be so concerned that we be taken seriously, especially when there is nothing serious about what we know in an area. It's good to know things, but if some small kernel of knowledge is somehow absent from our massive domains of knowledge, maybe that's a good time to listen rather than to argue from a point of ignorance.

Because ultimately, if everyone's an expert, and everyone disagrees then there can be no way to utilize expert knowledge so as to achieve results.

Last day, hooray!

So, last Saturdy was my last day at the worst place I ever taught. I will no longer be signing up to teach their classes. I did not get fired. In fact, they do not know that last Saturday was my last day. It doesn't really matter though; as far as I can figure, the person who was my boss left (stories vary as to causes and culpability) leaving a vaccuum so deep that it took my two emails to establish my next level up, and this person has had little to nothing to do with the program since its inception. It's like when a nuclear strike knocks out the entire chain of command and you have to answer questions like, "well what if the secretary of agriculture is dead too?"

In any case, my job did not immediately end. I still had to grade final papers. Some of which were okay, but a few of which had margins that were...hillarious. One person had a 3" margin at the bottom of her page, and a 2" margin at the top. One moron sent me her stuff electronically so that I could reformat it to the proper font size/margin size. Her paper turned out to be more than a page short. Mind you, this was the five page term paper for the class. Can you imagine the level of incompetence that you have to have to short change the only paper you have to write.

I tell you, theories about universal constants are becoming more and more appealing to me. Statements like, "there's only so much love in the world," etc.. In a very practical way, once you've decided that everyone deserves an education, you have to accept that what you, at least partially saying, is that illiterate moron con artists should get college degrees just like everyone else. There's only so much education in this country. That last job was evidence of what happens when you spread it a bit too thin.

Woes of incarcaration

The other day my child said this exact phrase, "the pig let me out of my cage!" I'm hoping that's from a story book and that my child is not preparing himself for a life of crime...plus, I'd like to think that if my child were to refer to the police in a derogatory manner, he'd say, "dirty screw," like a '20s gangster.

A tough day for sympathy

Don't get me wrong, I love unions, but at a certain point, the union isn't helping the worker--they're fucking them.

So, Chrysler will go out of business and all these card carrying morons will be out on the streets. Great. Maybe, you all should play ball. Just a thought. Better than raman noodles.

But let's face it, the real reason that I could give a crap about the UAW is because my car costs too much...and that really is all she wrote. My car shouldn't cost so much. Why does it cost so much? Because of the UAW and the way that the union has driven up prices so that they protect their own and not me. Oh, so now they want ME to bail them out. How about this: no. No, thank you. I mean, I don't really know how else to say this. You guys got health care, maybe you should have stopped there.

2008 will go down in history as the year that stupid people tried to make everyone else pay. I'm betting these morons are also buying houses with sub-prime rate.

turned in for college credit

Here's a sentence from a paper that was turned in for my English class. Enjoy!

"In the beginning, the kids do not accepts her intentions at all, because when she ask them what do they know about the "real" money, they think that she treating like a retards."

A brief respite--Bush genius

Okay, the Bush family are the smartest people in the world. No lie.

During Sr.s stay in the White House, he decided that the money people were paying for the stuff his family produced as their business (oil) was just plain too low. So, he raised the prices.

Okay, so the prices are up up up, and then his son gets into office and what does he do? He raises the prices as well.

Now, when there is no possibility for another Bush presidency and when the prices are so damned high that people are actually burning cooking oil in their cars, Jr. decides to lower the prices to save his family business. While he has control, he raises the prices, when he loses control, he lowers the prices so as to stay in business despite the fact that its destroying the planet.

The guys like a James Bond supervillain.

pointless worthless useless majors! part 5

A note on worthlessness: I think that I should point out that a major does not simply fall into this category because I don't like it. I would like to suggest that, if it affords you a large salary upon graduation, it is worthwhile for some to get a degree in staring at the wall. Given this extreme example, I would not pick on staring at the wall as a useless major. It carries monetary value. It is not worthless.

Likewise, I do not pick on majors that do not have a job analog. There is no job in the world to which the English major is aiming unless it is English professor, and I think that, too, is contestable. No. But it doesn't necessarily make the major worthless. If a major teaches skills that are usable in a real world setting then I am prepared to call it worthwhile, especially if that particular skill set has proven itself valuable in the workforce. So, for instance, those skills in analysis and writing that are the hallmark of the English major gave proven themselves time and time again as invaluable in the world out there, including the corporate world, and as such the degree has use.

So, the worthless majors are the ones that are unlikely to get you a job and don't teach you anything that will help you get jobs not directly related to the degree with which you graduated. Likewise, they offer you no growth as a person making you the kind of personal success that translates into professional success. If the major doesn't make you feel like an expert in a field, it just doesn't have that kind of worth. So, I'm measuring worth on three different criteria: worth financially, worth in giving you skills that are valuable across a wide variety of jobs, and worth in giving a feeling of accomplishment that allows for confidence and success. If a major gives ANY of these things, I do not consider it worthless.

That being said...

Forensic Pathology!

Perhaps you don't know but the university is a business, and like any good business with the ability to grow in new directions on a moment's notice, it responds well to the market. In other words, when it sees an army walking towards the university wanting a degree in computer science, it doesn't get on the bullhorn and say, "hey listen, if you all have Comp Sci degrees, you'll flood the market." No, the university hires more professors--preferably adjuncts who the university can lay off just as soon as the boom drops.

I'm not knocking the computer science degree by the way, just illustrating a point. One can still get a job in comp sci, after all. The mastery of computerized logic is still worth something in terms of conquering a mountain of material. I'm just saying that when a job becomes trendy, the university will make a department for it and engineer a major as fast as possible.

So, has anyone seen the show CSI? Whether you know it or not, the show CSI has sent many a young person scrambling into departments that basically ought to have the CSI logo over their classroom doors. The university, likewise, scrambles so as to find instructors in CSI kind of stuff and it begins. Classes and classes devoted to the study, the ins-and-outs of analyzing crime scenes and corpses and...aren't there other majors for that? Never mind! It's CSI. "I'm majoring in CSI Miami." "Not me, I'm majoring in CSI Boise." It's as if they are attending a renaissance fair where people really believe that they ARE in the Renaissance...or that the guy over there really is in Star Fleet.

I'll admit, I have no idea what they study. They remind me of criminal justice majors who have refashioned themselves as intellectuals (without all that pesky deep thought). I asked one once what she thought about metal detectors in high schools and she told me she didn't care. "...but...but...aren't you...like criminal justice?" "No! I'm forensic pathology!" Great.

But what about criteria 1, you suggest? What about all the money these people will be raking in? My answer: what money? There's no money. CSI is a fiction. How many semen centrifuges are there in the country? How many machines are there that detect saliva on glass from fifty feet away. We have cameras everywhere watching us, a camera on every street light, who needs these kinds of machines to figure out who was where? And even if we had them, what do we need all of these people for?

Let me try it another way. Astronomy is a major, right? Okay, do you know how many astronomers does the world hire every year. Five? Six? I assume that more criminal pathologist are hired than astronomers, but probably not by much.

So, why doesn't the university say, "look, what you want is to go to grad school as a coroner, or you want a major in criminal justice?" And here is the funny part: the university doesn't do that because the people wouldn't immediately recognize these things as the degrees that lead to CSI-kind of work. They wouldn't sign up for these things. They need a major that's actually immediately recognizable as CSI or they don't know to sign up for it. How's that for smart?

Thank God I didn't teach at the university when Chips was popular. Can you imagine all the people majoring in Motorcycle?

pointless worthless useless majors! part 4

Liberal Arts!

You will notice that I have no respect for a major that is essential the dummied down version of another version--say, for instance, accounting and economics. The reason for this, I think, should be obvious, but if not, let me point it out from a practical point of view. If there are two people applying for the same job and one of them has studied the Real subject and the other has studied the remedial version, which would you hire? I mean, there's more, of course. Those who take the stupid version are basically admitting that they can't take the intelligent version and this basically says that they themselves are either lazy or stupid (or heaven help us, both). So that they're diploma is basically a sign that they aren't up to snuff and that they still think you should give them respect (which I don't).

That being said, is there any sin greater than a degree in liberal arts? Mind you, I'm not saying a degree in A liberal art, but a general degree--that is to say, they just couldn't hack it in history, English, etc., so they've instead taken the beginners course in a bunch of disciplines. Why? Well, the liberal arts degree is generally designed for people who want to teach grade school. Of course, you might ask, why not major in child development or child psychology? I agree. Either of these degrees would be much more useful in the teaching of young students. Instead, these people take math classes...so that they can teach math to 8 year olds...that's third grade...can you imagine getting college credit for mastering 3rd grade math? If you can, you might be a liberal arts major.

Speaking from experience, liberal arts majors are beyond incompetent. They walk into the easiest literary class all doe eyed and just sort of incapable of saying anything at all. Meanwhile, the business majors run laps around them...the BUSINESS MAJORS! Evidentally, unless its "The Puppy and The Happy Boy," the liberal arts people are f'ing lost. Here's an example. The other day for class, I had everyone read "Young Goodman Brown," "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died," "The Tyger," and "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." I then gave a quiz of four questions. Two on Hawthorne, one on Dickinson, and one on Blake. Alright, most everyone did well so it wasn't like this thing was too hard. The liberal arts student began by complaining aloud that she did not know any of the answers. This was my fault (evidentally). Afterwards, she came up to me to ask how she could make up the quiz, because, of course, it was up to me to give her something so that she wouldn't have failed the quiz despite her having, in fact, just failed the quiz.

Why? Why would she expect me to just keep giving her assignments until we finally struck on one that was easy enough for her to pass? Because she's a liberal arts major and basically expects her college to be a lot easier than everyone else. She wants to be graded with a handicap.

So, out there in the world, the liberal arts major is afforded no respect, but what's worse, there's this whole other group of people whom the regular world seems to want, unfairly, to lump together with these know-nothings. That's my major beef with the liberal arts people. It would be one thing if they were simply stupid, but they make others look stupid, as well, by association.

I think this last part is unfair, but I want to add it anyway. This doesn't necessarilly reflect on the Liberal Arts as a major, but it does reflect on its pracitioners. I haven't met a single person getting a degree in liberal arts that didn't suffer undeserved arrogance and the personality of a sand crab. It makes sense that the discipline would attract these people as it affords them a job despite their crappy outlooks, and children who will look up to them for being able to multiply by five. Still, there's a serious character flaw in every liberal arts person I've met.

On the other hand, most people I know who actually end up working with children seem to be very decent human beings. This leads me to believe that at some point, somebody prevents the asshole contingent in this discipline from going on into the profession. Whoever you are, God bless you, but seriously, could you start that process a little earlier?