Rhone
04-03-2005, 07:10 PM
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
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