Graduate Anecdotes – A Call
Anecdote: Unpublished items; a short narrative of an interesting, amusing or biographical incident.
I’m calling on you, dear reader, for graduate anecdotes: brief stories about graduate life, advisors, work and etc. Use the comment box to send me tales that are heartwarming, sad, instructional, exciting and etc. I’ll even take angry stories, but remember, most of these are only interesting in the immediate term and boring in the long run. One example will suffice: My first PhD advisor could not be bothered to spend more than five minutes a semester talking with me. This anecdote is 1) not interesting, and 2) trivial in comparison to the historian Peter Stearns’ story of his advisor at Harvard. Stearns’ advisor had to keep a list of names and dissertation topics because he couldn’t remember all of them. Thus the Harvard don would sneak a look at his list, taped surreptitiously to a pull out arm of his desk, in an effort to prove that he had remembered Stearns' name.
To get you started thinking of stories, I pass along one that the historian Laurence Levine tells of his advisor, Richard Hofstadter. Larry was in Hofstadter's office when another, more advanced advisee came in. The advisee had two fat binders with him and triumphantly dropped them on Hofstadter’s desk, proclaiming “I’m done with my dissertation!” To this Hofstadter raised one eyebrow at the two binders and asked, “which one do you want me to read?”
I’m calling on you, dear reader, for graduate anecdotes: brief stories about graduate life, advisors, work and etc. Use the comment box to send me tales that are heartwarming, sad, instructional, exciting and etc. I’ll even take angry stories, but remember, most of these are only interesting in the immediate term and boring in the long run. One example will suffice: My first PhD advisor could not be bothered to spend more than five minutes a semester talking with me. This anecdote is 1) not interesting, and 2) trivial in comparison to the historian Peter Stearns’ story of his advisor at Harvard. Stearns’ advisor had to keep a list of names and dissertation topics because he couldn’t remember all of them. Thus the Harvard don would sneak a look at his list, taped surreptitiously to a pull out arm of his desk, in an effort to prove that he had remembered Stearns' name.
To get you started thinking of stories, I pass along one that the historian Laurence Levine tells of his advisor, Richard Hofstadter. Larry was in Hofstadter's office when another, more advanced advisee came in. The advisee had two fat binders with him and triumphantly dropped them on Hofstadter’s desk, proclaiming “I’m done with my dissertation!” To this Hofstadter raised one eyebrow at the two binders and asked, “which one do you want me to read?”
posted by Definer at 5:07 AM
2 Comments:
The Advisor and I went over to the library together towards the beginning of the semester so that he could make me a proxy on his library card, and on the way I mentioned that I needed to get a carrel at the library. His advice was to get one on the fifth floor, where the exit to the stacks is located, because...it’s annoying to have to haul books up and down the stairs? I’m easily confused and may forget where I came in? The fifth floor is the only one that isn’t infested with bats? No, his reasoning was because there aren't sprinklers in the book stacks. He informed me quite earnestly that "books don't burn easily: people more so." The parental combined with the paranoid is too funny; I do love that man.
So where's yours?
j
I posted the following on my blog:
Getting a Ph.D. is kind of like getting jumped into a gang. It isn't the smartest or even the toughest who make it. It is those who can take the beating without giving up or swinging back.
An anonymous person, (quite possibly my advisor) commented:
[This] is almost right, except for time: it takes so. much. time. to do this.
one can build up excellent restraint stamina in preparation for a long 'healthy' career.
For the record, I love my advisor.
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