unmentionables

Some stuff is only selectively mentioned by graduate students.

Grad school's tough because grad students are expected to be tough, on top of things, sharp, and productive. I can't count how many times I have heard the grad school experience described as "soul crushing," "life sucking," "masochistic," and "insane," with these disclosures containing more or less authenticity and vitriol depending on the context in which they are uttered.

Jorge Cham's PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) comic strip series poignantly captures scenes from the "life (or the lack thereof) in academia." The fact that I'm crafting a post made up of thematically relevant comics -- and justifying this use of time to myself as a "warm up" for the 6-8 hours of research writing that lie ahead of me tonight -- is emblematic of just the kind of situations Cham's PhD comics cast in ironic humor.

It's tough to be rhetorically savvy and still address the hard material reality of grad school, which may be made more difficult by virtue of the cultural narratives surrounding academia. Even in departments of liberal humanities, where social hierarchies are dissected and challenged, gatekeeping is at work and a hazing process takes place. Taylor and Holberg's "'Tales of Neglect and Sadism': Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition" and Macrorie's "The Graduate Experience in English: Ten Case-Histories" are part of a pretty expansive body of work that attempts to honestly examine how the working conditions of academia impacts the lives of people who choose this path. Incidentally, I spent a lot of time writing about this stuff last year for Louise W Phelps and Steve Parks in my seminars, and I'm focusing one of my minor exams with @rmhoward in this area. So yay! I'm doing work.

It's taken a little while to gear up for working, thanks in no small part to an extensive romp through the archives of PhD. Its nice to know, though, that I'm not the only one:

Thanks Jorge Cham! Now back to pounding out some more of my contribution to the advancement of human knowledge.


Works Cited                                                                                         

from Jorge Cham:
"Vicious Cycle." PhD Comics 5/12/2007.
"Impact Factor." PhD Comics 11/12/2007. 
"Peak Productivity." PhD Comics 8/31/2009.