POINT OF VIEW
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
