Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School
A friend of mine who has both an MD and a PhD says the MD was a thousand times easier. Even residency was easier. A colleague of his likens getting an MD to swimming 100 miles in a pool: the water’s the right temperature; people are cheering on the swimmers; it’s clear how far each one has swum and how much further they have to go; the light is bright; nutrition and hydration are abundant and easily available. At the end, everyone cheers, and you get a big prize. Getting a PhD is like swimming the same 100 miles in a dirty pond in the middle of the woods: no one is there, and you have to find the pond yourself. At the end, you’re just wet.
While Adam Ruben inclusively addresses all post-undergraduates who have returned to academia, including medical students and those getting master’s degrees, a finite goal, we all know who the REAL grad students are: PhD students. They don’t know when they’re getting out (maybe never) or what they’re going to do once they get there. They’ve committed for the long haul.
Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School is a hilarious look at the downs and downs of being a terminal student. About 6 people in the world have any idea what you’re researching, and only 2 of them care. The stipend is so small that the highlight of the week is the Wednesday seminar with free doughnuts–or any other regular event with free food. You can’t date undergrads–and they wouldn’t want you anyway. And the worst part? It goes on, and on, and on with no end in sight. Ruben points out that sooner or later grad students have to get themselves out of that dirty pond in the middle of the woods; no one, not even an advisor, will tell them when the swim is over.
This little book has the most useful advice a graduate student is going to get: how to add 15-20 pages to a dissertation without adding content; how to deal with the frustratingly inept undergrads one must try to teach; how to test a coffee mug to be sure it will withstand years of grad-student-dom: “Slam it on the ground repeatedly and yell, ‘I can’t take it anymore!’”
I once went to a great party thrown by a philosophy grad student at Princeton. One of the guests was so impressed she told him, “Your party is so diverse! You had grad students from every department!” For them, there’s advice on how to interact with non-grad students (hint: don’t mention your research).
There’s a great mad lib just for grad students, an edifying pyramid diagram about where they fit in the university hierarchy (the bottom), a spinner to help you decide who to blame because your research isn’t going well, a campus map from a grad student’s perspective, and more witty illustrations and diagrams. There’s also a Foreword, a preface, a prologue, and an introduction, because this book was written by a former grad student. He’s also a stand-up comic. There are no references, which makes me question his qualifications.
Ruben received his PhD from Hopkins after seven years servitude and now works in the area for a biotech company creating a malaria vaccine. He also married an undergrad (not one of his students). He says grad school was worth it: “When people ask why I call grad school “stupid” but am ultimately glad to have gone through it, I say that one can still find plenty of complaints about something that was, overall, worthwhile. Just ask anyone raising kids.”
Ruben is interviewed at postacademic.org, Part I and Part II. The book trailer, which is as funny as the book, is here. The author reads the book on a podcast here.
