Advanced Symptoms of Advanced Degrees

POINT OF VIEW
Advanced Symptoms of Advanced Degrees



By LAWRENCE DOUGLAS and ALEXANDER GEORGE

It is hardly news that graduate students are often not the happiest of campers. Only recently, however, have scientists, psychologists, and discourse pathologists come to appreciate and diagnose the full range of maladies afflicting the graduate-student population. Now the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Graduate Students (DSMGS-1), the first book ever dedicated specifically to disorders of those pursuing advanced degrees, promises relief to this long-suffering population. An excerpt follows:

Global Irony Syndrome (GIS)
Indications: GIS is an affective disorder most commonly characterized by the following symptoms: an erosion of belief in Enlightenment values; snideness toward the concepts of truth, objectivity, and universal ethical codes; cynicism about the two-party system and the wealth-leveling effects of global capitalism; an ironic stance toward all physical laws and reality itself. The onset of GIS is often signaled in the sufferer by the replacement of easygoing laughter with sarcastic smirks, and by the refusal to debate any issue except through indirection, punning, and sneering banter.

Prevalence: GIS has been largely concentrated in humanities departments, with occasional outbreaks in the "softer" social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, government, and politics.

Treatment: Intensive viewing of It's a Wonderful Life has proved salutary. Failing that, a semester's leave spent in a hard-labor camp of a despotic regime is effective in more than 75 percent of reported cases.

Hyper-Theory Disorder (HTD)
Indications: HTD is a cognitive disorder distinguished by an increasingly abstract frame of mind. Sufferers gradually lose the ability to speak in a manner unmediated by poststructuralist theory. In extreme cases, sufferers come to view all aspects of popular culture (e.g., SpongeBob reruns, Oprah, the National Football League) through the filter of Heideggerian metaphysics or Lacanian psychoanalysis. HTD is often misdiagnosed as Tunnel Visionitis (TV), a similar, though etiologically distinct, malady marked by a gradually escalating inability to communicate with anyone -- including friends, family, spouses, and domestic pets -- who does not share all of one's theoretical presuppositions.

Prevalence: HTD is endemic to literature departments. TV, by contrast, is rampant throughout all disciplines, often hitting the natural sciences hardest.

Treatment: Complete abstinence from all French and German texts remains a controversial treatment for HTD. Until further therapeutic remedies have been discovered, a travel advisory for Continental Europe has been issued to all humanities students.

Sycophancy-Authority Malady (SAM)
Indications: SAM is considered a speech pathology increasingly common among advanced graduate students. It is marked by a tendency to speak in flattering, fawning, ingratiating, and even idolatrous terms to persons in positions of authority such as full professors, conference organizers, and powerful department secretaries. Oddly, sufferers of SAM, when conversing privately, tend to speak of these authorities in only the most derisive, disdainful, and even violent terms. (This syndrome is not to be confused with Manic Mentor Mimesis; see below.)

Prevalence: Cases of SAM have been reported in most graduate centers, though serious outbreaks tend to be concentrated in the lobbies, conference rooms, and bars of hotels hosting annual meetings of professional associations at which job interviewing is taking place.

Treatment: Tenure-track appointments were once considered effective in curing SAM, but recent studies challenge that conclusion. Those studies also suggest that tenure itself provides less relief than previously assumed. Researchers now believe that retirement constitutes the only fully effective treatment for this complex and poorly understood malady.

Manic Mentor Mimesis (MMM)
Indications: The disease, difficult to diagnose in its earliest stages, first manifests itself in the sufferer's subtle mimicry of an adviser's hand gestures. Gradually, the mimetic tendencies deepen and spread to include head movements and distinctive eye rolls of the adviser, as well as slouches, gaits, and even, if opportunity presents itself, dancing styles. As MMM becomes more systemic, tones of voice, sighs, vocal tics, and even idiosyncratic expectorations come to be included within the ambit of imitation. In its final and most humiliating stages, sufferers find themselves mimicking the dress of their advisers and adopting their hair styles. Typically, Acute Adornment Ataxia then sets in as the sufferer finds movement restricted by all the laser pens, cellphones, soda cans, backpacks, and assorted pedagogical props used by the adviser.

Prevalence: MMM is especially prevalent in departments, such as philosophy and mathematics, with high concentrations of eccentric faculty members.

Treatment: Extreme ridicule from peers outside academe, such as siblings and attractive baristas, has been known to abate the condition.

Terminal Graduate Paralysis (TGP)
Indications: This chronic, debilitating, and sometimes fatal condition represents the most serious and widespread of the many behavioral disorders facing the graduate-student population. Symptoms often appear in the fourth year of graduate study, though this can vary from discipline to discipline.

Early signs are typically mild and therefore easily overlooked or ignored. These often include a subtle shift in media-consumption habits, from National Public Radio to South Park, and from professional journals to extreme-makeover television. More serious symptoms include compulsive retitling of the dissertation; a pathological overinvestment of time in TA-ing; a tendency to misplace routinely or otherwise lose or obliterate thousands of hours of work as a result of alleged computer failures (clinicians investigating these mishaps frequently find suspiciously mutilated hard drives). Advanced symptoms include substantially impaired performance on all cognitive tasks; hyperanxiety and night sweats; bibliophobia; comma-shifting mania; and a marked adviser-avoidance response. At its most extreme, sufferers display a deer-in-the-headlights appearance; epistemological aphasia (the conviction that one no longer knows anything); morbid feelings of lack of self-worth often accompanied by paranoiac delusions of victimization; a deepening of syntactic torpidity (the loss of the ability to write clearly, simply, and, ultimately, at all); a resurgence of teenage acne; even renewed thumb-sucking and bed-wetting. Failure to File (F2F) represents a particularly heartbreaking, and dimly understood, form of TGP, in which the sufferer mysteriously disappears on the eve of filing the completed dissertation, or otherwise inexplicably decides to "tighten" the argument.

Prevalence: Cases of TGP have been reported in every state and in every graduate department. The Morningside Heights district of Manhattan has produced rates suggesting a veritable epidemic that is matched only by certain areas in Berkeley, Calif.

Treatment: In its advanced stages, TGP is considered untreatable. For early-stage sufferers, long walks in open farmland accompanied by a complete termination of parental financial support has proved effective. Application to law school has also been known to offer relief.

Lawrence Douglas is an associate professor of law, jurisprudence, and social thought, and Alexander George a professor of philosophy, at Amherst College. A book of their humorous essays,Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature, was recently published by Simon & Schuster.
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 51, Issue 26, Page B16

The News is In

I placed at the local site! My second choice, and my husband's first, so it's all good.

I was a little disappointed because the training isn't as 'perfect' at this site, based on what I'm interested in, but I can make up the difference in a postdoc at the mental hospital down the road next year. They are hard to get into as a predoc, but easy after graduation, and at that point I will be free to bring all my contacts up there to bear, so I'll likely get what I want, just in two years instead of one. I ranked this place high for AR and based on his intense relief this morning, I think going to the SVP sight in nowheresville would have been a real challenge, relationship wise.

This is a state site, so now I'm curious what the recent furloughs will mean to me.

Whew!! So glad that's over. Now off to see how others have done and to support my friends in clearninghouse today.

Anything Else?

Oh for Pete's sake... I'm going to have to flunk one of my students unless she relents and takes an incomplete. Sigh. She's done one of 7 assignments, has two more fair sized ones and a presentation to go, and while she insists she is going to do her best to crank through everything in the next three weeks, I sincerely doubt she can. Her history in the program is full of this same sort of behavior. She also insists that she WILL NOT do any coursework past the last day of class. Well that makes it kind of hard for me to work with her, you know? She's such a nice woman, too. Bother.

I did tell the librarian, who has STILL not put up a few of the readings for the last couple of classes, that I got dinged on my evals as a result of the electronic readings fiasco. She said she felt badly, and I confess I was thinking, "well you SHOULD, dammit!" Next term (assuming I teach - now my confirmation has been pushed out to next week) I am going to require a reader. I love our librarian to death; she can find absolutely anything if it exists, and she goes above and beyond to be available. Apparently she has a weak area or two as well though.

So I'm wondering, is there anywhere else my first class is going to be cursed? I think I turned things around with the students pretty well this week and they seemed happy with me. I had to completely rework their major assignment thanks to our online library being down, so they were pleased about that. I also agreed to meet half an hour earlier so we could all go home at 8:30, which is good for me too. The audio in the room didn't work so my fun videos to alleviate the boredom of the lectures crashed, but I think it was still fine.

I was tempted, but bit my tongue over the 'we have way too much reading' complaint. The most I've required was two chapters and one journal article, and usually less. This week, in just ONE of my four classes, I have to read 7 journal articles, averaging 25 pages each, and two heavy chapters. HA! Whine about my reading assignments indeed...

I Matched!

Wow... what an intense few moments it was from the time I started downloading my e-mail on the very slow connection here at school to the time I saw and managed to make sense of the confirmation that I matched.

WOO HOO!

But where? Five possibilities. It's going to be a loooooong weekend. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ah... the weekend again. A better one for me since midterms are behind me and my monster projects are 4 weeks out. Just one moderate one for this week.

Think we may go to the beach with a picnic later to celebrate our special day, assuming it warms up. Damn cold out there still and threatening rain. Oh well, wine and chocolate in front of the fire is another possibility!

Or maybe whine and chocolate would be more accurate.

Rough week and man did I need to get home and have my snuggles. I am the president of the student government at our tiny school and it seems that if I am otherwise occupied, there IS no student government! I feel like I'm herding cats. But we need this organization to 1) help with the accreditation process and 2) be eligible for a chapter PsiChi. Students just love to whine and threaten about leaving the program, but few are willing to chair a committee to work on the problems they say are so dire or actually speak to the faculty face to face in any fashion. Sigh...

Then there's the ever present practicum, in which I'm doing ok, but realizing that couples work is NOT for me. This is the only thing in my education so far that has not come easily, so while I'm learning and slowly improving, it's not fun at all. The occasional highs are not enough to compensate for the frustration and because my supervisor is a long time mentor and a family systems person I feel as if I'm disappointing him.

Then there was the midterm course evaluation from my class. They said many lovely things about me, which was edifying. They also said the same two negative things, consistently. There was too much lecture at first, and they felt overloaded. Next they complained I was disorganized. Hmm.. well I can see how they'd think that based on the external things that have happened so far. The librarian posted some readings for each class, so when I went up and reviewed them they looked complete. A student had to complain twice before we both saw that there were omissions. My bad for not looking more closely. Then twice portions of the materials I requested for the class were not in my box when I got there. I teach a night class so everything is locked up and there is nobody there to help me with anything. We've had audio visual nightmares and stuff missing that I've had to work around, so yeah, I can see that probably made me look disorganized. I've stuck to my syllabus though, and despite the hardships we've covered the topics I said we'd cover and every assignment has been graded and returned promptly and discussed in class. I'll chat with them this coming week and make whatever changes I can to address their concerns so that hopefully the final evals will be better.

What sucked was the program chair's response. She told me she's not sure about having me teach the class again next term because the feedback was so negative. Yikes! Her concern was that this cohort will complain to the one behind them and I will get a seriously biased group next term, so she says in these cases she will pull a prof for one quarter so the biased group moves on through. I was pretty spun about that. This isn't the final eval and both of the negative comments were related to things beyond my control to at least a degree; course content and structural issues that the staff is supposed to handle. Nearly all my students liked my style, said I brought in interesting real world material and that the assignments were fun. So I'm feeling frustrated that my chair's reaction is that she won't invite me back!!! She said she'll make the decision this coming week as the next cohort registers. If she hears whispers that people don't want my section then she'll pull me. This sucks... I'm alternating bouts of 'roll up your sleeves and fix it' and 'I'm a failure and I'm going to quit this whole thing and be a Biologist again.'

So it's Valentine's day and I just can't pull myself out of this funk. It's cold and overcast and I have two enormous projects and one moderate one to get done on top of prepping for CAPIC in case I don't match this coming Friday. Ugh... I will be in school on Friday, so after hearing what might be some of the most difficult news of my entire program if I don't match, I'll have to go straight into class.

But that said I've gotten a ton of fun valentines today and my workload is more evenly distributed now. Friday the match apprehension will be over, for better or for worse, and I have only one quarter left until my coursework is done! I have a wonderful spouse, wonderful sister, wonderful niece and wonderful friends and pets to support me. Really, life is good and this is only a pothole. :)

Randomness

A few days ago on the PBS Farmers Almanac by Garrison Keillor, I heard that it was the birthday of the first woman to become an MD. He said that while she was finally accepted to a medical school after being turned down by many, there were some classes considered too 'delicate' for her to attend. Those on reproduction, for example. BAW HAW HAW!!! I can see her surrounded by a group of patronly, learned men and asking pointedly, "so which of you has menstruated? Gestated? Given birth? Lactated and nursed a baby? Had a yeast infection?" Sheesh.

Apparently though, women are not too delicate to be generally oppressed, raped, have their genitals mutilated or have acid thrown in their faces due to the emotional frailties of men. Yep, reading assignments on violence against women and feeling righteously stirred up. On the other hand, I am just as horrified by any sort of interpersonal violence including that perpetrated by women and by both sexes against nonhuman animals. There are so many ways in which we torture others, and we are so uniquely creative in that respect. Why must we be that way?

I'm finally getting really excited about my dissertation again, but I feel as if I am trying to work at a table piled with an endless assortment of crap. I want to just sweep all the clutter onto the floor and then chase it out to the dumpster. Why must everything in graduate school happen simultaneously?

I love the rain. I love the smells, the sound of it, the green, the hushed world and the unexpected bursts of sunlight through the clouds. I do NOT appreciate that my two parrots are going stir crazy and making it well nigh impossible to get any work done.

Spike!

Just got a note from my training director reminding me to send her both parts of the CAPIC application. Yuk! I completely forgot about this and am about as motivated to do it as I am to have a root canal.

If, perish the thought, I were not to match and get nothing in the APPIC clearinghouse I could either go through CAPIC, the California equivalent of APPIC, or wait a year and try APPIC again. There are some great internships through CAPIC and some are paid, though not many and not usually as much as APIC. They are much more obtainable though (especially since CA made a law this year saying clinical psych students MUST be in either APPIC or CAPIC accredited internships in order to license) and I do want to graduate on time. Sigh.

I shouldn't whine too much since really the only work I have to do is to add in the hours I've done since I compiled my APPIC data. But the letters of rec. Shoot... I can likely reuse the ones people wrote, but I have to contact them all again and get an ok, and I have to do it before the APPIC match when it may turn out to be totally necessary.

I DESPISE this whole process. It sucks big purple Twinkies.