Mary’s Monday Metazoan: An arthropod proud of his joints » « Tom Wolfe’s magic combo move

That went dark fast

Do not under any circumstances read The Lego Grad Student. It’s like a comic photo-essay based on a Russian novel: bleak, cynical, despairing.

Grad school really isn’t quite that bad.

Mary’s Monday Metazoan: An arthropod proud of his joints » « Tom Wolfe’s magic combo move

Comments

  1. carlie says

    I keep reading one, laughing hilariously, then reading the next and it’s even better than the last one.

    It’s particularly entertaining reading them top down in reverse order, because the punchline is good but then the setup adds that much more to it.

  2. Saganite, a haunter of demons says

    Should I be worried that I derive so much pleasure from this plastic man’s suffering?

  4. says

    Yeah, I lied.

    There are a few bright spots, though, when things come together and work. But mostly it’s 4 or 5 years of a sense of impending doom.

  5. Rob Grigjanis says

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

  6. lemurcatta says

    This is very depressing as someone who is about to enter a masters program in ecology and evolution

  7. jrkrideau says

    @ lemurcatta
    Grad school really isn’t quite that bad.

    I had a great time.

    It depends on the department and the main advisor. I had a great time. My department tended to cosset its grad students and my advisor was great.

    Other departments at the same Uni sounded like Dotheboys Hall in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.

    Best of luck.

  8. taraskan says

    Yeah, sorry. Accurate as fuck.

    The only thing it’s missed so far is the advisor plotting with other faculty to cut your funding two years earlier than expected, and shrink existing class size by 20% in order to increase admittance by 25%, so admin will be able to inflate numbers for collegiate aggregator publications, and give the advisor more money to research what they were already able to research.

    Also the grad student has to hide amphetamines on a moored boat only to find out the advisor just rented it for the summer.

    Then it will be 100% accurate.

  9. taraskan says

    Ooh, also, the grad student has to find out he’s teaching a class in an ‘allied’ but otherwise completely unrelated field, whose responsibilities were shoehorned into his own department because the unrelated field is too small for its own.

    Then the grad student has to find this out again three more times in two years.

  10. kesci says

    I don’t think the plastic grad student was facing such doom and gloom. If he were, he wouldn’t have that smile on his face.