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Monday, April 30, 2007


The Captain's Guide to Graduate School, Chapter 2

So, you have somehow made it past the admissions process, your application wasn't lost and the dusty bowls of the department managed to get some work done.

YEAH?

Now that you are in, you have (hopefully) had the chance to scope out the several schools you were accepted to, right? Ok, you took the first one that offered. Remember, we're on Captain time now.
You make plans to move to the area that surrounds the school. The student ghetto? Only if you're an undergrad with a party complex, which really ain't that bad. The graduate housing dorms? Only if you like smelling the toxic mix of chinese grease and Indian curry 24-fucking/7. Your entire waredrobe and being will smell like you just hopped of the boat from Bombay. Other places? Sure, that might work. It's a bitch to find housing that doesn't suck. Don't count on your department though, they could care less about helping you. Let's assume you find decent housing in a section of town that does not resemble later installments of the "Robocop" films. Let's assume for the best.
Next you must worm your way into the department. You are handed with the name of your "Graduate Advisor" who, quite frankly, would rather watch grass grow and paint dry that talk to your excited, slightly apprehensive ass. Sometimes, in the luck of the draw, you get the newest member of the faculty assigned to you. What a funny joke! All of your questions will be met with a screwed up face hinting of "not fucking knowing". Not that it's his fault; he just is to damn new to not care.
Meanwhile all of your questions get passed around like a hot potato, nobody knows the right answer, or they give you contridictory ones. This is were you man up and read the catalog, something the faculty have, most likely, never done themselves. You will become the bane of all the department once you offer snarky, though correct, answers to your own questions. This, my friends, is the first step in winning.
Politics within most academic departments are truely cut throat. As the old saying goes, as the stakes get fewer, the politics get more dangerous. Faculty will play you off against other faculty, like a hockey game in a Canadian suburb. The department head will take the slighest insult and turn it against you, calling you a "cancer". A cancer on a cancer?! How in the hell do you do that? My advice is to stay far away, take your base of power and move it far away from the department. This is the only thing that will keep you sane. To survive the academic process you must first run away from the academic process. Re-group and scope out faculty who are advantaegous to you, ones who will help without playing the game. Offer yourself as a "game-free" assistant. Don't expect anything in return, you have a base elsewhere. Just be a "good guy" without strings. This works. Trust me.
Next up: Getting through classes, writing dissertations and getting the hell out of Dodge.