The Graduate Student Masacree (start humming Alice's Restauraunt now) --------------------------------------- This song is called "Graduate School Education" It's about Graduate School And an Education But an Education is not what I received in Graduate School, It's just the name of the song Which is why I call the song Graduate School Education Chorus: You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree Turn right around we'll stab you in the back Steal your work 'n' knock you off the tenure track So that you can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree Now it all started 7 Thanksgivings ago, it was about 7 years ago, on Thanksgiving When I decided to apply to graduate school at The Pit But many of the professors at The Pit have tenure, which means that they live in plush offices in lofty ivory towers teaching a class or two a day and treating their secretaries like dogs And getting to live in their ivory towers like that means that at one time they used to have lots of good ideas for research, but every time they carry an idea to fruition they have to find another idea to work on, and seeing as how they have tenure and plenty of time on their hands they have decided to forget about all but one of their ideas and to milk that one idea for grant money for a long time There are some professors who don't have tenure, though, and I decided it would be a Friendly Gesture for me to participate in helping one of them to bring some of those ideas to fruition So I loaded up my brain with UNIX manuals and Numerical Methods and other implements of destruction and prepared to work with Professor Evan Walter on one of his projects Well, I had just managed to get into the interesting part of the project when I discovered that there was a big sign across Professor Walter saying "No tenure for you, Bub" I was not very comfortable with taking the risk of leaving the Pit to go work with him, and with tears in my eyes I decided to look around for another Professor who had an idea for a thesis project I didn't find one But after a while I decided to try the tenured faculty, and one of the officers of the tenured faculty had a ghost of an idea that might eventually lead to a thesis project I figured that a ghost of an idea was better than no idea, and rather than antogonize him by forcing him to come up with something substantial I decided to jump right in And that's what I did, decided to make a thesis project that couldn't be beat and didn't stop working for 18 months until I got called in to the office of Professor Ollie He said "Kid . . . I can't make any sense out of the results of your research, and I was wondering if you could tell me any information about it" I said "Yes, sir, Professor Ollie, sir, I cannot tell a lie. I have found brand new truth that nobody else ever thought of." After about 45 minutes of talking with Ollie in his office we finally arrived at the Truth of the Matter, and Professor Ollie told me that we would have to schedule a Thesis Committee meeting So I loaded up my brain with simulation results and physical principles and other implements of destruction and prepared to say my piece at the Thesis Committee meeting Now friends, there was only one of Two Things that the Thesis Committee could have done, and one was to congratulate me for being so creative and inventive in working out a thesis project all by myself, but that wasn't very likely and I didn't expect it, and the other was that they could tell me that what I had done was not good enough and that I needed to do a lot more work, which was what I expected But when I got to the Thesis Committee meeting I discovered that there was a Third Possibility that I hadn't even counted upon, and I was immediately told that I was an inadequate student Made to start over I said "Ollie, I don't think I can finish a project if you keep making me start over" He said "Shut up Kid Get out of the room while we decide what to do to you." So that's what I did, got out of the room and waited there until they had quote decided what to do to me unquote I want to tell you a little bit about Slumbridge, Place-of-Sewers where this all happened, here You see in a normal town there will be a few tenured professors, one or two law schools and a few dozen lawyers But when you go to Slumbridge, Place-of-Sewers they've got hundreds of tenured professors, about ten law schools and thousands of ambulance chasers, being that this is the biggest Cesspool of the top 50 industrialized nations, and everybody wants to suck the blood of somebody else And they will use up all kinds of legal verbiage that they have hanging around the library; they will set up straw-man arguments, evidenciary issues, binding by-laws ipso facto sub-paragraph b They will gather together 67 hundred page reviews of relevant precedent setting decisions, with sections clearly outlining the responsibilities of each party and a page at the top of each one explaining how in each case the fault lies entirely with the party that does not have enough money to hire legal counsel They will give you Municipal Court Cases, State Court Cases, Federal Court Cases; they will quote you Supreme Court Decisions, Superior Court Decisions and that's not to mention the Appellate Rulings Because he gets into all of that legal kind of bureaucratic stuff, Ollie wrote me an impersonal letter saying: "Your going to start over, I want your self-esteem and your funding" I said "Ollie, I can understand your wanting my self-esteem so as you can feel important by making me suffer, but why do you want my funding?" He said "We don't want you Hanging Around" I said "Ollie, did you really think I wanted to hang around here any longer than I already have?" Ollie said he was making sure, and friends Ollie was, because he also made me change my office space so that I wouldn't have a chance to move in and sleep near my work Then Ollie sent a copy of the letter to the Graduate Officer explaining all of the things that I had done wrong, so that I couldn't go to the Graduate Officer, explain how little Ollie had done to help me complete my thesis, expose Ollie for the negligent advisor that he was, and make him look bad Yes, friends Ollie was making sure, and it was three or four weeks later that I went to speak to Maggie, and Maggie, with a few nasty words about Ollie and All on the side, said that the department would do everything that it could to ensure that I would graduate in a timely fashion So I went back to the lab and when I got there I worked out another thesis project that couldn't be beat, and didn't stop working for 16 months, when I had another Thesis Committee meeting I walked in and set up my projector Ollie walked in with 27 eight-by-ten color transparencies with circles and arrows and a paragraph on each one explaining how his failure to supervise me was my fault and he sat down All Lost walked in, and with him came the other members of the committee Professors Kukla and Fran, and they sat down Kukla and Fran listened to what I had to say, and said it sounded like an interesting project Ollie looked at Kukla and Fran Then down at the 27 eight-by-ten color transparencies with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on each one Then thought about their comments Then looked down at the 27 eight-by-ten color transparencies and began to cry, because he could see that it was a typical case of professorial misunderstanding, and Kukla and Fran didn't understand that he wanted them to stab me in the back, and he wasn't going to get them to agree to make me leave The Pit without my degree And I was told that my project would be acceptable, and I was sentenced to trying to make Professor All Lost read drafts of my thesis for many months before I could complete the it But that's not what I came to tell you about I came to talk about finding a job At The Pit they've got this building called Career Services It's a place where you walk in and get inspected, dejected, infected, injected, neglected and rejected I went down to fill out an employment application one day; got plenty of good teaching done during the semester before so that some schools might take a look at my application; Because I wanted to look like an All-American college teacher, I wanted to feel like . . . I wanted to BE an All-American grade A college teacher And I walked in, sat down, and I was bounced around, brought down, hung up on and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things And I got really frustrated because there weren't any openings for people who just want to be good teachers, or for people who like to spend time with their families So finally I went to go see Maggie, in her office in room 10-595 I got there and I said, "I just want to Teach. I mean Teach. I mean, I want to see my students learning difficult material, and improving their lives. I don't want to play politics anymore, I just want to Teach. I mean Teach . . . Teach . . ." And I started jumping up and down yelling "Teach . . . Teach . . ." And she started jumping up and down with me, and we were both jumping up and down yelling "Teach . . . Teach . . ." Until a professor walked by and took me by the arm saying "If you want to be a REAL scientist you have to do a postdoc" I didn't feel too good about THAT But I proceeded on with the application process getting more inspections, dejections, neglections, selections, infections and all kind of mean, nasty, ugly things And I was there for 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, I was there for a long time getting all kinds of dejections, neglections, and I was . . . I was just having a tough time there And they was inspecting and rejecting every SINGLE part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched So I finally got down to an interview, I finally made it to the last obstacle there, and I walked up and the man said "Kid, I only got one question: have you ever been published?" So I proceeded to tell him the story of Professor Ollie and the project that didn't go anywhere with five-part harmony and he stopped me right there and he said "Kid, have you ever won a grant?" So I told him the story of Professor All Lost and how he had a difficult time even making it onto campus, much less applying for grants, with full orchestration and five-part harmony and other phenomenae and he stopped me right there and he said: "Kid, I want you to go over there and look for an adjunct position. NOW, Kid" So I went over and started looking for adjunct positions; adjunct positions are what they make you do when you may not be A-moral enough to join the tenured faculty of an institution after committing your special project And there are all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly people looking for adjunct positions; Lab Technicians . . . Technical Instructors . . . LAB Instructors . . . LAB Instructors right there in the line next to me And it was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible, practical science kinds of guys And the meanest nastiest one, the meanest Lab Instructor of them all was making his way over to me, and he was mean and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things and he sat down next to me and he said "What'd you get, Kid?" I said "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay summer tuition and come up with my own project" And he said "What kind of a degree do you have, Kid?" And I said "A PhD" And they all moved away from me there on the bench, and gave me the hairy eyeball, until I said "But no publications" and then they all came back, shook my hand and we had a fine time sitting around the unemployment line talking about lab equipment and pompous professors And we were talking about science experiments and doing other groovy things until a potential employer came over and said: "Kids, this application's got 47 questions, 37 boxes we want to know everything about your research, and every other kind of thing you've got to say, want to know your supervisor's name and every other kind of thing you got to say up to and about the project, want to know . . ." For 45 minutes, and nobody understood why they asked for our address thirteen different times, but we had fun filling out the papers and playing with the pencils in the unemployment line there, and I filled out the Grad School Massacree just like it was, in five-part harmony, and everything was fine until I turned the paper over And there, on the other side, in the MIDDLE of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words: "Kid . . . have you prepared yourself for the responsibilities of the academic world?" I went over to my potential employer and said "You've got a lot of damn gall to ask me if I am prepared to go into the academic world. I mean, I MEAN, I mean that I am standing here in this line, I mean I'm standing here in the unemployment line, because you want to know if I can communicate well enough to teach stuff to bored, dis-interested teenagers after failing to grovel and backstab to get money for REsearch" He said "Kid, we don't like your kind. I'm going to give your resume to the other institutions" And friends, somewhere in the files of most major institutions, enshrined in some little folder, is a letter telling them not to hire me And the only reason I'm singing you this song is that you may know someone in a similar situation, or YOU may be in a similar situation, and IF your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do That's walk in to the guidance counselor wherever you are and sing: You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree And walk out You know if one person does it, just one person Then they'll think he's really sick and they'll start making jokes that compare graduate students to disgruntled postal workers And if two people do it, in harmony Then they'll think they're both members of a militia and they'll call in the ATF, the FBI, the IRS, the FTD and all kinds of other acronyms to defend themselves And if three people do it, can you imagine three people walking in, singing a bar of Grad School Education and walking out? If three people do it they may think it's a problem with public relations And if 50 people a day, I say 50 people a day, were to walk in and sing a bar of Grad School Education, why they may think it's a movement And that's what it is: the Grad Student Anti-Massacree Movement and all you've got to do to join, is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar here With feeling You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree Turn right around we'll stab you in the back Steal your work 'n' knock you off the tenure track So that you can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree That was horrible If you want to improve education and stuff you've got to sing LOUD I've been singing this song for 25 minutes, and I can sing it for another 25 I'm not proud, or otherwise employed So we'll sing it again the next time it comes around on the guitar here, this time with 5-part harmony and feeling We're just waiting for it to come around on the guitar, is what we're doing All right now You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree (except a slide-rule) You can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree Turn right around we'll stab you in the back Steal your work 'n' knock you off the tenure track So that you can't get anything you'd want, with a PhD degree