Or are you already in a Ph.D. program? At the stage where you’re slogging away, with no sign of the end, the gray hairs increasing exponentially and your adviser(s) breathing down your neck, whispering those three magic words to you (and not in a nice way)? You know: All…But…Dissertation.

Well, I have some news for you. News that will tip you over to the other side.

For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt. [link]

Encouraging, no? And just to rub it in – I’m done with my Ph.D. Plus, I have no debt. Well, no academic-related debt, at any rate. (If my bookie is reading this, I’ll have the money for you by next week, I swear).

Enjoy your day!

?It?s just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience…occasionally quite terrifying.?

?It became hard to imagine normal life. I dreamed several times of being free, but always woke up in that room.? [link]

It’s from BBC journalist Alan Johnston who was recently released by terrorists after being kidnapped in Gaza and held for nearly four months.

If you are one of those souls who’s “nearly done” (this could mean up to two years before your defense) with his doctoral research, then no other phrase sums it up better. You lose track of normalcy. Day in and day out, all you think about is your research, which has now slowed down to a crawl because you’re almost at the end. There’s mounting pressure, both internal and external to get out. And you actually begin to believe -quite strongly, I should add- that it’s never going to end. This last thing, I think, can only be understood if you go through something similar yourself.

Let me tell you – when it finally happens, it’s like you’ve been released from captivity and can now experience life as you should. Of course, you’re permanently screwed up in the head, but it’s great to be free!

But I digress. These rankings especially affect Business Schools and in particular, MBA programs. I get an MBA for “free” with my PhD (owing to a unique circumstance, for another post), so I’m not complaining, but I know so many people who are all into going to “grad school” and again, who spout all the rankings verbatim, that this article today in DealBook, the business blog of the NYT, caught my eye. It is a caution to all of those who pay too much attention to the Princeton Review rankings. They said,

Even allowing for the inexact science of ranking schools, Princeton Review’s lists are highly subjective. The company says that its findings stem from student surveys, many of which were filled online. Princeton Review is careful to note that its own opinion of the schools is absent, and that no one school is ranked best overall, unlike other surveys. [link]

Ranking schmanking, I say. Having worked closely with professors from top-tier schools as well as knowing people from top-tier schools down to middle-level ones, and having followed their career for some years I have learned two things:

Firstly, the quality of education is more-or-less the same across all of these institutions. You have the same level of politics, the same number of good teachers and good researchers (both of which, it seems, are mutually exclusive) and the same number of bad courses vs. good courses.

Secondly, even if you ignore the so-called quality of education, ultimately, it is what you choose to do with it that matters.

Yes, there are some advantages to coming from a high-ranked school. That is, some doors open easier for you in the industry. And if you are looking at a career in academia, then you’ve got somewhat of a handicap if you’re not from a top-tier school. But neither of these hindrances are permanent, nor are they debilitating. With a little extra effort, some chutzpah and some ingenuity, you can easily overcome these obstacles. In some cases, you can even turn things around to your advantage.

The bottomline? Focus on getting the best out of your education for yourself. Don’t worry about what others think about it. These superficial impressions are easily changed.

Ok, I’ll get off the soap-box now…

In addition to my dissonant ramblings (I am a grad student and teacher, after all), plenty of other events have occurred that involved teachers this year:

Obviously, the biggest and most public event was when this teacher and alleged paedophile owned up to killing Jon Benet Ramsey.

Then we had a spate teachers either having sex or sexually harassing their students. There was this guy in Williston, Fl. And this other guy in Van Meter, Ia. Also, this guy in Kingsport, Tenn. Then this other guy in Todd County, Ky. was accused. This guy in Ashville, Al. denies it. This guy in Waltham, Ma. convinced his students they were training as “masseuses” and ended up with a nice fashion accessory (an ankle alarm). This guy in Logan, Ut. has been doing it since the seventies, and they’re building a case against him now. This guy in Lakeland, Fl. was a band director. This guy in Nashville, however, takes the cake:

[He] faces 25 counts of felony sex crimes: three charges of rape; 13 counts of statutory rape; and nine counts of sexual battery by an authority figure.

To be fair, not all of them were males: This 25 year-old female teacher admitted to having sex with her 14 year-old male student. And this 39 year-old teacher had consensual sex with a 17 year-old, who was not her student, but a friend’s son. We also had this lady in Easton, Md. and this one in East Robertson, Tenn. It’s not restricted to the red states either: Shamefully, we have a desi 41 year-old woman in Manhattan.

Finally, we have this teacher on Staten Island who is accusing the principal of harassing her.

Wow. Happy Teacher’s Day, indeed. It’s no wonder kids start shooting their high school teachers here in the US.

Well, I guess if you start looking under the rocks, you shouldn’t be surprised by what you find. With this kind of stuff going on in high schools here in the US, I think I’m going to have to go to my favorite teacher: This guy.

Class dismissed.

[Me] Summer doldrums, make time so slow-oh!
[Adviser] That’s an excuse? We’ll never let you go!
[Me] I’m working hard, in the library.
[Adviser] You call that working? Get down on your knees!
[Me] A-a-ging, i-in grad school, getting a uh-uh P-h-D!

[The Juniors]
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, you’ve always been here!
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, you’ll be here next year!

[Adviser] Why are you here, wasting my time?!
[Me] I have an idea, is that a crime?
[Adviser] Your idea sucks! You thought I’d agree?
[Me] But it works! It solves your quandary!
[Advisor] The idea’s yours, but the credit is mine. That’s getting a uh-uh P-h-D!

[The Juniors]
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, we’re filled with fear!
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, or we’ll shed a tear!

[Me] Summer doldrums, you can watch your hair grow-oh!
[Adviser] Come on, boy! You’re going too slow!
[Me] I might speed up, if you “advised” me!
[Adviser] You’re on your own! That’s grad school, buddy!
[Me] More gray hairs! More wrinkles! I’m getting a uh-uh P-h-D!

[The Juniors]
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, you’re getting kicked in your rear!
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, why don’t you ha-ave a beer (or twelve)!

[Adviser] Work more for me! Work more for free!
[Me] If I want out , there’s no more choices for me!
[Adviser] What?! You don’t enjoy this slave labor?
[Me] Of course I do, please kick me more, sir!
[Advisor] Oh I will! And you’re welcome, my dear! You’re getting a uh-uh P-h-D!

[The Juniors]
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, we pity your rear!
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more, will you ever, get out of here?!

[Me] What do you think? Will I ever graduate?
[Adviser] Of course you will, but you’ll be a litte la-ate!
[Me] That’s good to know. Does that mean you have date?
[Adviser] Of course we do, you’ll leave in 2028!
[Me] That’s what it like! That’s what it is! Getting a uh-uh P-h-D!

[The Juniors]
Don’t tell us more, don’t tell us more!

One of my students just dropped the class. A girl majoring in Dance, she somehow found herself in my class. Even though it’s a class for non-majors, the math is pretty hard for someone who cannot think quantitatively (think: most American non-math-major undergraduates). So I had my first casualty of the summer. She left, actually, because another opportunity came up for her, and she claimed that she found the class interesting. But I’m wondering whether she just said that to avoid offending me. At any rate, that’s that.

So now I’m teaching a tight class of six. Since I usually give an A grade to around 10% of my students, that means 60% of one student is going to get an A. Painful…for the student, I mean…

I know I said I would blog regularly about my teaching, but somehow with this class, there’s not much to say. Most of them are pretty well-behaved and disciplined. They answer the questions I ask them in class religiously. Well, they make honest attempts to do so, at any rate – which is all I can ask for. And they’re diligent. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to raise my usual percentage of A’s to 66.67%. In case you’re wondering, that’s two-thirds, which means four out of the six students in my class might get an A

So, that means there are two students who are still on the iffy side of things. One is an English major. And the other, well, she’s in class by herself (pun intended). She’s completely out of place there. She sleeps in class, rarely pays attention and is most likely going to fail – or come very close to failing. A Communications major, she told me she isn’t leaving the class because she will not get her money back if she does. So I guess she’s stuck and will be relying on my charity towards the end of the semester when she will both, literally and metaphorically, wake up.

This is a girl who’s a stereotypical American “blonde” with an all-pervasive sophomoric mentality. She’s the kind that you see on MTV’s Real World complaining about why XYZ didn’t lend them their shampoo when they desperately needed it for that important date. If you’ve even seen five minutes of the show, you know what I’m talking about. Take away the motivation of one those kids, and you’re left with my student. I mean, this is a kid who replies with a proud “I have no idea” when asked something I just talked about a few seconds ago. She constantly acts surprised and/or shocked at every announcement I make – but only on the third time I make it. I think she is the demographic they are aiming for when they try to market bottled water. She is the quintessential “dumb American”.

Well, perhaps I’m being a little harsh but that’s how she appears to me when she’s in my class. It would be interesting to see how she is in real life, or should I say the Real World ?

This is interesting because it adds support to the theory that mathematical developments in Kerala were exported to the West through this trade route. I’m referring to my two earlier posts [here and here] about how much of mathematics is purported to have been developed in India, and of course, how little credit is actually given. In that post, I mentioned that there is some evidence to show that calculus (amongst other mathematical concepts) was transmitted to Europe after being developed in Kerala. This was well before Liebniz and Newton were said to have developed it. In fact, the world’s first calculus text was developed in India, when Jyeshtadeva compiled the findings of the Kerala school in a text sometime in the 16th century. Given that this is the case, one might even speculate as to whether its a coincidence that calculus began making great strides at around this time in Europe. Well, maybe you can write that off as a crazy conspiracy theory, but I think its definitely worth taking a deeper look at exactly how much of calculus was developed in Kerala.

Math Teachers: This should be, at the very least, mentioned in any calculus class – college or high school. Most of the usual talk is about how there was a running feud between Newton and Liebniz, and so forth. Certainly, credit should go to them if they indeed developed these concepts on their own, but Kerala’s contributions should definitely be mentioned.

Desis: Instead of wasting your time on changing so-called “controversial” texts in school text books both, in India and the US (California) over so-called religious and colonial (non)issues, I think this is a more worthy endeavour to undertake. Wouldn’t you agree?

To credit these kids though, I have to say that they were pretty well-behaved last night. There are only seven of them in the class. Several of them seemed older and more in tune with how things work in the real world. Also, its a summer class, which means its usually more relaxed. And since its a class for non-majors, no one is there by force. And "by force" I mean because of university-imposed major requirements. So I can only assume that they are there out of personal interest.

However, all is not well here in these hallowed halls of academic scholarship. Someone screwed up my text-book order and ordered the wrong textbook to the University book store. The classroom is not PowerPoint enabled and it does not even have air-conditioning. Which kind of reflects badly on the University. A certain level of professionalism is expected, I think, when you're teaching in the US. But, on the bright side, I'm working to change all that. So, all of you who are waiting with bated breath to read my next blog-post on my teaching, and I know you are out there, all one of you (including me), I'll keep you posted. Or, blog-posted, to be more precise.

Addendum: In case you're wondering about the significance of the title of this post, well, it's chosen to reflect the kind of anguish Brad Pitt's character went through in the movie Se7en when he found out what he found out at the end of the movie (no spoilers here). Alternatively, the suspense you felt while watching the movie mirrors the suspense that you will feel in waiting for my next teaching post. It's got nothing to do with the fact that I have seven students in my class, though. Nothing whatsoever.

The other, less conventional way, is to change your name to a woman's, start a band (and have it referred to by Frank Zappa as the "most inept band on the LA circuit"), tout your love for Ferraris and switchblades on-stage, frequently "decapitate" your daughter's head (dressed as Britney Spears), and on the whole, scream a lot, be very angry and make a lot of noise. If you do that for 30-35 years, you'll also get a doctorate.

Yup, that's right, folks. Alice Cooper has received an honorary doctorate from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Apparently, when he's not doing all of the above, he's a family man and get this: baseball coach…

He's already completed 234 credits, 100 more than he needs to graduate. And he's majored in education, communications, theater, health and women's studies.

As if that wasn't bad enough – he withdrew his application for graduation this year! Why?

"I realized that if I went one more year, I could study abroad," Lechner said. "That's one thing I haven't done."

Christ, man! If you're that masochistic, you really *should* be in grad school!

The article is on CNN. Read it here.