Monday, October 1, 2007

More complaining

I am feeling very sorry for myself lately and you should too, dear reader. Here, I will say why.

It is not fair that it is so hard to get a PhD. It is unfair.

What makes me think this is that the dissertation is so hard to write. It's like, always like this with this fucking degree, when you are taking exams you are like, "well, this is orders of magnitude harder than anything I've done in school before," then when you are in another friggin country reading in the archives you are like, "gee, what the hell was I thinking, this is beyond-belief difficult," but try actually writing a dissertation, baby!!! Now I am like, "hmm, I had it pretty easy going to the archive every day, all I had to do was copy what other people wrote."

It's lovely that nothing you do in the first 3 years of grad school prepares you at all for the dissertation part. That was great planning. Way to go, grad school.

Oh, wait but now I found these great tips, I am saved!

No, not really. Those tips suck. No one can save me.

4 comments:

Could-be-a-model said...

Those aren't tips. It's a big ad to hire a dissertation coach. Don't they get it? The diss coach is supposed to be your advisor. Only advisors, much like tour leaders on Taglit trips, lie to you incessantly about pretty much everything.

I am beginning to suspect that this whole thing (Academia, at large) is just a big gyp.

Vgirl said...

I think that this more accurately describes what grad school is like no matter what the year: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=124

I feel like we have to do things that are harder and harder. They have to make it suck even more as you go along to discourage people from entering the job market. (I suspect that that step, the job market, is even suckier than anything we ever do before we get the degree...)

Tom said...

VGirl, that comic was incredibly difficult to read. I think my eyesight actually got worse reading that.

Doing something with your life is always going to be lots harder than just sitting on your butt. So suck it up and get a move on. When you finish your diss you're going to be like, "wow! I am professional grade!"

And then GM Trucks will sue you and you'll be forced to work double-shifts at Wendy's to pay for your lawyers.

Good times!

your small american said...

I am heartened by the thought of some day being professional grade.