If you're swimming in the ocean, it doesn't matter how deep the water is. All you can do is swim.
–Steven Wright

A job for a troublesome son.

The father of a problematic son goes to his friend in the government and asks for help.
Father: "My son doesn't study, doesn't work, has no degrees, qualifications or skills whatsoever. I would like to find him a job so that he can leave the house and start doing something, perhaps learn a trade."
Friend: "Well, I've got some positions here in the government that he could fill. He could get 200K per year and be an adviser to the minister."
Father: "God, no! That is too much. He will get spoiled and will not learn how to value money."
Friend: "Could pay him 100K to be my assistant."
Father: "Still too much. Can we find something for 40K?"
Friend: "Well, that is harder. We've got only a few of those positions. He would have to be a professor, instructor or researcher, and he would need a PhD degree for that."

Sad, but true. Some stats on the market for young scientists in America are available here.

The Corporate Professor

http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2012_Spring_intro.php

A Doctor, a Lawyer and a Mathematician about Mistresses.

"There are three men in a bar, a doctor, a lawyer, and a mathematician ... and they are discussing whether it's better to have a wife or a ... mistress. The doctor says, "It's much better to have a wife because you work all day, you come home at the end of the day, you want to have a steady, settled family life." And the lawyer says, "No, no, no, no, no. It's much better to have a mistress because maybe for the first 5, 10, 20, 30 years you'd like to have a steady family life, but if you change your mind, it gets incredibly complicated, so it's much, much better to have a mistress." And they're going back and forth, they can't agree, so they turn to the mathematician. "What do you think?" And the mathematician says, "It's better to have a wife and a mistress. And the reason is, your wife will be afraid to ask if you are spending time with your mistress and your mistress will know that of course you have to spend some time with your wife. Which means you can spend your time doing mathematics!"

Source: Joel Cohen, http://bigthink.com/ideas/19346

Who needs all of this education, anyway?

This is the big joke played upon you:

"Higher education is even more susceptible to the law of diminishing returns than most fields. Every extra year of higher education costs you more in terms of foregone income in return for less in terms of added value"

I know. It's not funny. For you! But...

"PhD programmes are life-enhancers for professors: they give them acolytes to massage their egos and relieve them of undergraduate teaching while also doing much of their research for them. But they teach you less than you could have learned on the job and a PhD may leave you unemployable. There are far better things to do with your 20s than acquiring yet more letters after your name."

Full text at: http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/3829

Scientific Process - Perceived vs Actual

So true...

MAY 4, 2011 BY PAUL VALLETT

Good advice

Advisers are there to remind you that a PhD is not easy.
"But all you need to do is to believe in yourself, make a plan, and go through with it."
See:
http://youtu.be/8rDgE9d3GXE

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

By Matt Might

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Clash of the (Academic) Titans (2010)

Spyros, department janitor speaks to undergrad students about the faculty - or, as he calls them, the gods.

Spyros: One day, somebody's got to make a stand. One day, somebody's got to say enough...

Cassiopeia, undergraduate student in the student government says:

Cassiopeia: The gods need *us*! They need our prayers! What do *we* need the gods for?

Hearing of the stirring riot, Zeus, the director of the research center conjures his faculty:

Zeus: They need to be reminded of the order of things...

And the faculty started requesting students to make slides, perform dead-end useless tedious experiments, and write grant proposals that would only bear the name of the faculty.

Perseus, research assistant phd student (a.k.a. demi-god) says to the gods:

Perseus: I'm not one of you! I'd rather die than stand alongside you!

And Perseus organizes the students, and starts a graduate student union to fight for student rights. Meanwhile, unexpected news come: Perseus' paper was accepted to the top journal of his field.

Zeus, responds:

Zeus: You may not wish to be a god, but after what you've done hundreds will worship you. Look after them. Treat them better than we could. And if you insist on continuing this mundane human existence, I'll not have you do it alone. You're the son of Zeus, after all!

Calibos, before quitting grad school, responds to Zeus' invite to Perseus to continue associated with the research center:

[last words]
Calibos: Perseus... don't become like them.
[falls down a chasm]

Will Perseus graduate and take his place in Olympus, or will he live as a mortal amongst the humans? Will he write the grant proposal?

Source: IMDB's memorable quotes

Work hour limit for grad students

Graduate Research Assistants, PhD Students, Grad Students: International students who are graduate assistants are permitted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to be employed for only twenty hours per week during a school term in the United States. The 20-hour limitation policy covers all duties required of a graduate assistant. I'm serious,
Google it!

hahahah This is the best joke I've posted here so far. I think they meant be paid for only twenty hours of the 60-hour work week.

Illegal Work

The Italian government ran a campaign that said: "Illegal work: it is not worth it. Low pay, disrespect and insecurity."
My first reaction was: wow... they made doctorates illegal in Italy. Then, thinking more about it, I realized it was about immigrants taking sub-employment jobs. Then I got jealous. What?! They have all we have and don't even need to sign a contract?! "Bastardos!"

“There is little success where there is little laughter.”
Andrew Carnegie

The Plantation Analogy

"In the whole world, the official science has become an intricate administrative organism
...
On the one side of it – a landlord, a plantation/latifundium owner or something alike, who prefers to be addressed as “professor” or “scientific group leader”. On the other side – a number of volunteering plantation slaves (drudges/plodders/toilers), who are officially dubbed “doctoral students” or “postdocs”. These slaves are absolute volunteers, because nobody forces them at gunpoint to slog for the landlord. The latter ones consider and treat the former ones just as “chess pieces”, each of which has to obey a certain finite number of primitive game rules. Depending on the personality of the landlord, the analogy between the “scientific laboratory” and plantation slavery may be more or less sharp, but the basic features are practically the same in all the countries from USA – through Western Europe and Russia – till the Far East.
...
They definitely know that they are slaves and they are reminded about this fact every day several times a day, for the attitude of the respective landlords and their helpers towards the slaves is unequivocal.
...
The only master and profiteer in the whole plantation is the respective landlord – his/her direct profit is the social success exclusively for him/her – he/she will never share it with anybody. There is practically no scientific research in the plantations, no clear-cut programme, no knowledge mining, no sensible, useful results..."
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/9293-globalization-and-scientific-research-trying-catch-black-cats-dark-rooms.html

PhD degrees are Pyrrhic Victories.

We are sorry to inform you...

http://imechanica.org/node/3353
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1106736.1106763

MJ, abused grad

Heal The Lab
Michael Jackson

There's A Place In
Your Heart
And I Know That It Is Love
And This Place Could
Be Much
Brighter Than Tomorrow
And If You Really Try
You'll Find There's No Need
To Cry
In This Place You'll Feel
There's No Hurt Or Sorrow

There Are Ways
To Get There
If You Care Enough
For The Research
Make A Little Space
Make A Better Place...

Heal The Lab
Make It A Better Place
For You And For Me
And The Entire Student Race
There Are Ideas Dying
If You Care Enough
For The Research
Make A Better Place
For You And For Me

If You Want To Know Why
There's A Boss That
Can only lie
He Is Strong
He Only Cares For
His own living
If We Try
We Shall See
In This Bliss
We Cannot Feel
Fear Or Dread
We Stop Existing And
Start Researching

Then It Feels That Always
Research's Enough For
Us Growing
So Make A Better Lab
Make A Better World...

Advisors...

...a plethora of advice and a paucity of assistance.

"Edison says, 'Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.' He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady application of effort with a little bit more work, 'intelligently applied is what does it. That's the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn't get you anywhere. I've often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did, didn't have so much to show for it. The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly."
From: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.pdf

Oh... so thaaaaat's what advisors were supposed to do? Help to guide the application of effort? Sincerely, just avoiding to misguide would be already a good thing.

Aerials
System of a Down
"Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river
And one again after the fall
Swimming through the void
We hear the word
We lose ourselves
But we find it all
(...)
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play
But you never want to lose
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
(...)
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes eternal prize"

Bring it on

Rocky Balboa talks about his grad school experience...

Eye Of The Tiger
Survivor
"So many times, it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive
(...)
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive"

Acknowledgments to my friend TT, who says "no more whining, time to fight!".