A student’s MySpace page:
August 27, 2007 – Monday
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The Caric Standard Current mood:  accomplished
I have a professor named Ric Caric. He’s easily the most influential person in my entire life. This is the guy who changed my entire ideological framework by tearing my preconceived notions to shreds. From day one he has challenged and tested me ideologically. It started with African American Political theory. bell hooks, Spike Lee, Dr. King, a wide variety. He actually made me realize how racist I was. It shook me to the core of my being, and that’s when my transformation began. I was no longer the same person. Instead I was resocializing to be someone else. The person I am still becoming. As time I goes by I continue to grow away from my family and old friends. My ideology and theirs are separated by a great chasm, and before I thought that was a bad thing. It brought me pain and isolation (things I still feel), but I am learning. I was in his office today talking to him about a paper on suicide I’m doing and I mentioned to him a few a of the things that my old friends have said about me. They tell me I’m pompous and conceited. To which Dr. Caric replied “I always took that as a sign of progress, that I was continuing to improve.” I smiled at that, knowing that slowly but surely I’m pulling myself up to the Caric standard. Maybe someday I’ll be at his level. Having a mentor is an amazing thing. |
A little further down, one encounters this:
August 19, 2007 – Sunday
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Thoughts at 3 am Current mood:  drainedCategory: Writing and Poetry Warm Diet Coke makes me want to die. Stifling my opinion makes me want to puke. Being alone makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Writing makes me feel everything. George Bush is the devil. Hillary Clinton will be the next President. I’ll find a girlfriend when I stop looking so damn hard. I hope my friend Roland hangs around. I can’t wait to see Tina and Phil get married. I can’t wait to see the new Batman movie. Some people should stop being so goddamned self involved, myself included. Radio controlled helicopters are fun. God doesn’t exist. He never did. Skype is the shit when it works. Mavis Poe has a pretty dog. Staci Lute has pretty eyes. Alli has a wonderful sense of humor. I don’t have much of anything. Adair has my attention. Ginger and Dwayne have my chair. Miguel has religion. You all have pieces of my heart. Someday I’ll want them back. |
Maybe the girlfriend thing will work itself out if you stop being pompous and conceited about the type of dumb ass shit your “mentor” teaches.
Learn to think for yourself
I masturbate a lot. (Ric told me that it was a sign of progress as well.)
please tell me this isn’t a fake and we’re not doing at “Michelle gone wild!1!” redux.
So Caric takes a kid who appears to be suffering from low self esteem and slowly twists the white devil knife until this kid buys into the crushing realization that his very skin color makes him a racist supporter of the teh white supremacy.
Now I’m depressed at the horrible lack of critical thinking and sad for this kid.
Pompous, conceited, isolated and infused with gaseous white guilt. Dude’s not a student, he’s a clone.
That’s it. My kids won’t be going to college.
Perhaps I’m over-reacting, but this has shaken me to the core of my being. Diet coke makes me feel fuzzy. And, you all have pieces of my heart.
Hey, I see Timmy boy has found Chuck. A match made in heaven.
And this kids parents are stumping up, what? $20k a year to have him join Carics cult. Shit, he could have joined the Moonies for free.
Should we start a paypal donations account and get him de-programmed?
So much for education. I guess it’s much easer to be a “professor” when all you have to do is indoctrinate your students.
Critical Thinking? That’s for racists! And those knuckledragging neocons!
Morehead State – Transforming students into people their families hate one person at a time. Helping them to realize their inner potential for pomposity, arrogance and irrelevance one course at a time.
I hate my mother.
I hate my father.
I have no self esteem.
I’m on Zoloft.
At times I’m on Thorazine.
I dye my hair and paint my fingernails black.
I am very vulnerable.
I am in love with Dr. Ric.
This post leaves me with a profound sadness. All this time, I didn’t realize how big of a sexist, racist, homophobe that I am. As penance, I must alienate my family and friends, and will have myself flogged at the altar of feelings.
What’s even more distressing is that this poor kid sees this internalization of Caric’s Maoist indoctrination as cause for celebration at having “accomplished” this great feat. He’s half a step from Jonestown and he couldn’t be happier.
JD:
While that is a good start the proper way to insure true punishment for your racial and sexual guilt would have you flogged on the altar of feelings by an gay African American midget clown.
Authenticity, the other white meat.
The Caric Standard?!
The mind reels … I think the earth just started rotating in a different direction. What this kid needs is a lobotomy.
Caric already gave him one.
BJ – Shit covered demon dwarfs.
I found something I fear more than midgets, clowns, and public restrooms – people who subscribe to the Cult of Caric.
JD:
He will come to you in your dreams, trapped in a public restroom, coveried in bat guano, with a red rubber nose, big, floppy shoes and blackface.
You will run screaming!!! As would I. :-)
I think the only way to really cure a white man from his inherent racism and homophobia is for him to have sex with a black dude. And, since mini-Caric doesn’t have a girlfriend, there would appear to be no conflict of interest.
Cheer up, emo kid.
And, clowns.
And … Kyoto.
He’ll make a hell of an ACLU lawyer one of these days. Maybe he’ll get a warm and fuzzy feeling when he successfully frees someone from Gitmo who, in turn, beheads him.
POLAR BEARS DROWNING!!!!!!!
18.
And by “have sex with a black dude” you mean provide the ass, right?
The details are unimportant, Sticky B. It was at Ace’s that I learned about “tossing the salad” – I suppose that might work as well.
To all that have yet to realize this, BJ is the spawn of Satan, the devil incarnate. The depths of his depravity cannot be charted. He makes the Grinch That Stole Christmas, Barney, and the Heat Miser look like pillars of goodness.
When the pearly gates are slammed in my face, I fully expect BJ to be the first person to greet me in the land of perpetual heat.
Thanks for that, Carin. I’m looking at my chicken caesar salad with a vague sense of nausea.
Soup it is…
Not that there is anything wrong with that …
Except that tossing the salad stuff. That is as wrong as wrong can be.
Heh! Three guesses as to how I’ll be dressed…
Politics (academic and otherwise), do you really think you should link to and mock a person who’s obviously suicidal? (He’s not just writing a paper about it.) Also mentions being manic and depressive. Yes, yes, I know, you publish on the web, you take your chances … but you can really make this post work without the link, and maybe with a Google-proof, can’t you?
Wow, what a fuck up. Anyhow, the confusion is obvious in that at one point he calls Bush the Devil and then in another he says there is no God. Dude, needs to understand that you can’t have one without the other. But, again, he’s “feeling” and that’s all that matters.
But more to the very shaky heart of the matter. The kid needs to get laid. And badly.
That should’ve read “politics (academic and otherwise) aside.” It’s, um, very, very late.
No man – not black, white, purple, yellow, red, or polka dotted – will be tossing my salad, having their salad tossed by moi, ditto being a fucker or a fuckee of JD. I guess I am a homophobe.
I don’t think it’s real. Or if it is, that it’s sarcastic. I mean… my friends tell me I’m pompous and conceited and it’s a sign of improvement? Unless the rest of the myspace is genuinely pompous and conceited I just don’t believe it.
Sure, Scott, I can nuke the link. Didn’t realize that he was stating he was manic and depressive.
What does Google-proofing involve?
Wandering around crying like a bitch isn’t going to get you laid, son.
Um, all kidding aside, Scott does have a point.
This kid sounds like he needs help and I have nothing but concern and sadness for his condition. He sounds lost and the fact that he’s “found” Caric doesn’t make him any less lost. In fact it appears to have worsened his isolation.
A some amount of compassion for him is not out of order.
I don’t want to humiliate the kid (though he’s 26). Perhaps Dr Ric ought to be notified that some sort of intervention might be advisable?
Thanks. I’m just concerned he’ll search for his favorite professor and find this.
As for Google-proofing: I’m not sure what it takes to do it in WordPress, but I’m sure someone around here does. You can identify certain links in the robot.txt to remove particular pages from Google, but again, make sure to talk to someone else first, since you don’t want the whole site ignored.
SEK, that is what makes what Caric is doing even worse. Caric’s influence has isolated him from his family and old friends, etc.
To be honest, Caric might already know. The fact that he’s writing a paper about suicide says something. It sounds like someone may be trying to get him to look at his own problems from a different angle, realize he’s not alone, &c. But yes, I don’t think dropping Caric a line is out of the question.
Scott’s right, but it’s Caric that’s trifling with this kid. For a conservativey blog to take notice will not hurt his feelings. Ric can help, and this is something he needs to read really, but if it helps I kind of liked the poem.
Carin, that’s not necessarily true. His parents might be Scientologists who denied him access to psychiatric/psychopharmacological care, &c. It’s never a safe idea to make assumptions in cases like this. Again, I’m not saying don’t mock Caric, or don’t use this as evidence that Caric (and other professors) can have a profound influence on the lives of his students. Just that, in my experience, unstable students come from unstable backgrounds as often as they do from nourishing, so it’s better not to make assumptions.
Oh. That took too long to write. Carry on then.
SEK – it is not our job to make psychiatric evaluations, except to say this kid is coo coo for cocoa puffs. If he is suicidal, Caric ought to think twice about encouraging this kid to continue to alienate his family and friends.
I put my Diet Coke in the freezer for 20 minutes. Sometime I forget or get caught on the phone and this doesn’t turn out very well.
Here’s what I learned — no, observed — in college:
“White guilt” is white pride.
No matter how emo you get about yelling “White power!” you’re still yelling “White power!”
(What I “learned” was a bunch of occulted Jew-conspiracy shit, mostly. Ivy League, bitches!)
JD, I believe “coo coo for cocoa puffs” is counterindicated in the DSM-IV. But in this case, the kid says he’s manic-depressive, and, in my experience, this means treading lightly. Mock in private — although happyfeet has a point, he might be thrilled to find himself mocked on a site that mocks his favorite professor — but don’t make assumptions about Caric’s actions here. Like I said, it already sounds like he’s trying to push this kid to think about his situation. I mean, a paper about suicide in a class on African American Political Theory? (Not that I know what that is, exactly.)
Caric tried, I believe, to make all of US think about our situation as racist, sexist, homophobes as well.
Racist, sexist, homophobes is sort of the default for all of humanity isn’t it? If you don’t think so you’re in denial. Obviously. In the end you don’t get points for *not* being racist, sexist, homophobes (because you’re really just doing all those things in a crypto way)… you only get points for public acceptance of your racist, sexist, homophobia and subsequent self-flagellation over it.
JD –
Yes, it does make you a homophobe.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Some one will correct me if I’m wrong, but manic-depression is a chemical or physical “condition” and not merely the result of being born to a Scientologist, or having a mommy who didn’t love you enough. We had a manic-depressive in my family. Totally dependant upon his parents care for the rest of his life;he was diagnosed in his twenties.
Hmmmm.
One word summary: pathetic
Being a homophope is so gay.
I much prefer my students to be fat, drunk and stupid than this.
SEK, I think there was something about that in Pynchon’s “V”.
um … HOMPHOBO … err…PHOBE!
This is really starting to get complicated.
I feel for this kid, but there’s certainly some hope that he may grow out of it. Certainly at 26, I bought into this kind of crap.
As far as any bipolar stuff goes, I’d love to see Caric refer him to the university’s counseling center. I wish someone had done that for me when I was in school.
Not to say this guy isnt in need of help, but what about him is different from all the other alienated, goth, pretentious, art majors out there?
Not necessarily anything, but the fact that he’s writing a paper on suicide is a huge red flag.
Dan, you mean the well-attended, month-long orgy in Südwestafrika? Because I’d take that class, in, well, not in a million years, thank you very much. (Also, did you know I wrote my Honors Thesis on V.? Click on the link and you’ll see my sympathy for those swayed by charismatic professors isn’t simply professional.)
buzz, I don’t have the link anymore — switched computers — but he talked of manic and depressive episodes, and on one of his friend’s blogs, talked about the effects of the medication he was on.
That’s kind of what Goth’s do. It makes them seem mysterious and deep. Doesn’t make much sense to me, but it really isn’t that unusual for those that are more sensitive and intelligent than the rest of us.
Ah, missed SEK comment. Yeah, if he is really manic and on medication that would change things.
Being a bad speller is so gay.
No, I didn’t know that, Scott.
“To speak in the vernacular of the peasantry, ‘Poor little kid. I hope she gets home alright.”
I’ve had some bad depression in the past and all I can really say about it is that it had nothing to do with being down on myself or sad about anything that happened. The depression came first. The things to be depressed *about* came second.
It’s as real as a broken leg.
Give me a break. Kids gets a paid for vacation for 4 years with NO, repeat NO requirements except to show up for class and hand in assignments – the rest of his time is theirs and up to them to drink beer and get laid.
If all this kid can muster out of this experience is self loathing – then its not compassion, but a good cock-slapping of common sense which is required here. All the phsychologizing bullshit is for naught and will bring naught.
It might sound harsh but when I read about kids going to college and coming out with student loans, credit card loans and gambling debts, I give no sympathy. You have to grow up sometime and get with reality. Recognizing that college is not that reality is first step and unfortunatley not the lesson being taught in these so-called academies of higher learning.
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9725#comment-239766
It is a concern what you might be paying (dearly) for your child to become exposed to in “higher” education these days.
addendum…
In the olden days, 3 or 4 decades ago, it was an unwritten law of professor-hood to keep personal views and predilections out of the mix of their teaching.
Whereas in these times, I heard an actual professor say it was his actual job to inculcate his own “correct” ideas into the minds of his captive audience.
(hence explaining the near indefatigable arrogance of a Ward Churchill…)
Most fauxcademics would never last a day in the real world, likewise neither would most real-worlders tolerate academia-politik for more than a day. It is what it is.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, we delievr our precious kids and loot to these types for 4 or more yrs and then have to watch the real world de-program them from their learned collegiate bullshit. Why not cut out the middleman and send the kid to live on his own working as a Walmart stocker or Quick Lube grease monkey? A more applicable education, imo.
Bring home the Iraq war veteran generation. Kids that had to deal with building a hospital while being shot at and toss the drug addled, MTv Real-World whiney, Lindsay Lohans, out on their collective arses.
BJ – Dante’s rings are looking forward to your arrival.
Heck of a fan club you’ve got there, Perfessor.
I heard an actual professor say it was his actual job to inculcate his own “correct†ideas into the minds of his captive audience
Most of the lefty profs and their acolytes believe that they’re on a mission to improve the world through “education,” which is code for “indoctrination.”
I learned two important things in college:
1. A formal education makes you neither wise nor virtuous.
2. An awful lot of academics truly believe that it does.
When I think back on the benefit of college, I was forced to read books and documents that I might have missed entirely if left to my own devices.
So my exposure (under duress ;-) was extended.
OTOH, some of that de-programming mentioned by Old Texas Turkey can take (what seems like) forever.
I met my wife in college. That’s about it. Oh, I am also pretty sure I shrunk my liver a little too. Or did it grow? I was a sport management major (I know bullshit major, but I was rudderless and it haunts me to this day) and the majority of my profs were loud, proud vagina warriors and sworn enemies of penises everywhere (except of course perfesser ummm’s). I learned more about title ix (and forgotten even more) than I ever, ever, wanted to know.
– How does one reconsole a pile of self destructive habits with “good”? My take……
– Either this kid is a flaming Emo poofter, or the good Prof. just got his ideological/antisocial clock cleaned for all to see. Beer bet time.
In my experience in graduate programs in English, the students are almost exclusively from the “Land of Broken Toys.” It’s this quality that leads to a hero worship of professors that lap it up like a hog in slop. In a department that’s mostly made up of walking nerve endings, this is probably the least healthy relationship there is.
I have two rules about students:
1.) Nobody writes a thesis or dissertation on Sylvia Plath.
2.) Never eat brownies made by a student for the department bake sale.
Poor f*cking kid. He’s been alienated from his family and friends for an ideology that will render him useless and force him to die a lonely, pathetic virgin. What a price.
Zelda – He will always have his right hand.
LEFT HAND-IST !!!!
Carin, OTT’s an example of the sort of home life this kid could’ve come from:
If all this kid can muster out of this experience is self loathing – then its not compassion, but a good cock-slapping of common sense which is required here. All the phsychologizing [sic] bullshit is for naught and will bring naught.
Because there’s no such thing as bipolar depression/mental illness doesn’t exist/it’s all in your head/you’re a pussy/stop complaining/&c.
OTT:
Most fauxcademics would never last a day in the real world, likewise neither would most real-worlders tolerate academia-politik for more than a day. It is what it is.
So what you’re saying is that 1) some people are better fit for one profession and 2) others are better fit for others? Like, “baseball players would never be able to spend a day in surgery, and no surgeon could lay wood on one of Pedro’s nasty change-ups”? I’ll buy that.
Bring home the Iraq war veteran generation. Kids that had to deal with building a hospital while being shot at and toss the drug addled, MTv Real-World whiney, Lindsay Lohans, out on their collective arses.
I’ve taught veterans of this war, and I’ll say two things: 1) they’re more prone to those non-existent psychological disorders than their compatriots who haven’t served (and the Defense Department agrees), and 2) their improved performance in the classroom is a product not only of military discipline, but age and experience. Older students are almost always better, simply by virtue of not being eighteen. (I know the student in question here is twenty-six, but you see my general point.)
Cowboy:
In my experience in graduate programs in English, the students are almost exclusively from the “Land of Broken Toys.â€Â
You mean that people who spent/spend their lives reading are likely to be less sociable than the rest of the population? That’s some mighty insight there. Of course the majority of people who enter academia would be considered “unusual” by the “average American.” The “average American” didn’t spend his/her childhood holed up in his/her room reading; wasn’t ostrasized in middle and high school for getting good grades and reading non-assigned books; &c. This is a corollary to my point above, i.e. that certain people are better suited to certain professions than are others. Shall I list all the careers I’d miserably fail at?
It’s this quality that leads to a hero worship of professors that lap it up like a hog in slop.
It’s statements like these that make me question whether you really were a graduate student — and if you were, it’s statements like these that make me think you weren’t a very successful one. Yes, some people are sycophants — the brown-nose to their advisor, to their committee, &c. But had these people gone into middle-management, they’d brown-nose to their boss, their boss’s boss, &c. A sycophant is a sycophant, no matter the context. That said, just like in this “real world” people are always nattering on about, the majority of graduate students aren’t sycophants. They believe they know the best way to do things, and they try to game their advisors and committee into allowing them to do what they want to do. The dissertation is a competition of will, a series of methodological and evidentiary compromises, engaged in so that both you and your advisor is satisfied with the finished project.
That’s it. My kids won’t be going to college.
Just have them take the social science nonsense online, Carin. If you have boys they should attend class and play lefty to meet hippy chicks though.
“Shall I list all the careers I’d miserably fail at?”
– Just a guess, but your retort above leads me to think “proof reading”, and anything that involves “reading comprehension” would be high on the list.
“…If you have boys they should attend class and play lefty to meet hippy chicks though.”
– If for no other reason than to scope out the types of woman they won’t want to end up with under any cicumstances, and to gain a good grasp of the value of personal hygiene.
Just a guess, but your retort above leads me to think “proof readingâ€Â, and anything that involves “reading comprehension†would be high on the list.
What’s that law that says anyone who corrects someone’s spelling and/or grammar will misspell and/or futz up themselves? Does it apply to punctuation, too?
(Also, if you’d been staring at tiny little words for as long as I have the past five days, you’d have some subject-verb agreement errors too. Consider yourself lucky my clauses even contained words.)
– Sorry you had to spend your holiday staring at little words and resolving subject verb clashes.
– Me, on the other hand, (was that a good and proper oppositive?), spent my time staring at cleavage and swilling Dos Equis XX, while I continued to wrestle with this damn high efficiency power supply design.
– But then, thats just the way I roll…..
SEK – yup u got me pegged. the old man would pull out the leather belt if ever i was late waking up to milk the goats.
seriously though. You offered your analysis of the lad’s situation. I offered my opinion. both equally valid or invalid as we are speculating. But herein lies the rub. Your argument involves construing my personal background (of which you have no insight into) as an abused child as a way to demean my analysis and prescription of the situation. Because you know better, heck you even know me better than i do.
i would suggest where to stick your opinion, but that would cement proof in your mind as to why you are right. Poor turkey – beaten and abused and from Texas of all places – he needs help. He can’t help hisself.
watching you subconciously twirl yourself into the caricature that you are trying not to be is amusing.
SEK – i don;t subscribe to the notion that some things are for some people. i believe that anyone is capable of anything, IF they don;t over think it. perhaps that is the hallmark of being a liberal (in the classic definition of the word) not a progressive.
what i was getting at is academia has insulated itself from the real world through the use of semantic gymnastics and all sorts of anti-liberal policies (discussed ad-naseum here) such as free speech zones, etc to make sure that the narrative it supports and subscribes to remains (in some tortured sense) legitimate (in the eyes of its beholders of course). That is DISHONEST. Making those living comfortably in that mien, the same.
hence my opinion that academic charlatans would not survive the real world and real folks wouldn;t linger in such a Kafkaesque environment longer than to shake their heads in pity.
OTT, didn’t mean to apply that to your personal background. I just used your comment as a way to speculate about his possible background, one in which mental illness (even severe mental illness) is considered a character defect instead of a chemical imbalance. That’s what you seemed to be saying, if I understood you correctly.
Pablo, “non-existent psychological disorders” was me referring back to OTT’s claim that “a good cock-slapping” could set a manic-depressive right.
And I’m not arguing with you about the PTSD in veterans, simply pointing out that they have psychological problems that can’t be cured with “a good cock-slapping,” i.e. that professional intervention is required.
A good mushroom bruise cures lots of ills, or so they say. I shall just take their word for it. Have you ever noticed all of the insane things that “they” has said and/or done?
– JD – Actually, judging from the insane things “they” are prone to say, I’ve long believed that “they” don’t actually ever follow any of that so called “common wisdom” themselves, but take great glee in watching others use the bad advice, and thence forth crash and burn. But thats probably just offish paranoia on my part, not to mention the bad punctuation that lurks just near the tips of my fingers, and rears its uncaring ugly head whenever I type anything. Its a curse, something like a third nipple.
Comment by tanstaafl on 9/4 @ 12:10 pm #
When I think back on the benefit of college, I was forced to read books and documents that I might have missed entirely if left to my own devices.
Left up to my own devices……………..In college I was better read than most of my English professors.
I read a lot of novels (and other stuff) I might have otherwise missed.
Like, where would I be without Candide’s admonition…”Il faut cultiver votre jardin…?”
After college, I spent years devouring whole writers in succession, Huxley, Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov, v.s. Naipaul…
Anyway, way too many pefessers today do have that “vagina monologue” thing (referenced above) going on. You can’t learn anything useful from those girlz.
As for the “manic depressive poet guy” above, I remember, them, too. He’s (obviously) not original.
SEK:
In my experience in graduate programs in English, the students are almost exclusively from the “Land of Broken Toys.â€Â
You mean that people who spent/spend their lives reading are likely to be less sociable than the rest of the population? That’s some mighty insight there. Of course the majority of people who enter academia would be considered “unusual†by the “average American.†The “average American†didn’t spend his/her childhood holed up in his/her room reading; wasn’t ostrasized in middle and high school for getting good grades and reading non-assigned books; &c. This is a corollary to my point above, i.e. that certain people are better suited to certain professions than are others. Shall I list all the careers I’d miserably fail at?
First, SEK, you have equated reading too much with being a graduate student in literary studies. Those two are by no means the same. You know, I hope, as well as do I, that admittance to a graduate program doesn’t make you a good reader. In fact, there are many people that I know who have read far beyond me who have never been to college, let alone graduate school.
Further, by my reference to “the Land of Broken Toys,” I simply meant that my experience (though you wish to discount it) in graduate school and in teaching graduate students, has lead me to the conclusion that many graduate literature students are not all that equipped to deal with what lies outside the university.
And trust me, SEK, the majority of people who enter higher education would not be considered unusual by the average American. I think you sell both short. I don’t think my accountant is unusual. I don’t think my doctor is unusual. What exactly is your point? Yeah, as an English professor, most of my friends–who are NOT English professors–think my job is different, but my best friend is an electrical engineer (four years at Purdue), my brother-in-law is a cop (four years at Ball State University), so your point about us “book-larned” folks is kinda weak.
SEK:
It’s statements like these that make me question whether you really were a graduate student  and if you were, it’s statements like these that make me think you weren’t a very successful one. Yes, some people are sycophants  the brown-nose to their advisor, to their committee, &c. But had these people gone into middle-management, they’d brown-nose to their boss, their boss’s boss, &c. A sycophant is a sycophant, no matter the context. That said, just like in this “real world†people are always nattering on about, the majority of graduate students aren’t sycophants. They believe they know the best way to do things, and they try to game their advisors and committee into allowing them to do what they want to do. The dissertation is a competition of will, a series of methodological and evidentiary compromises, engaged in so that both you and your advisor is satisfied with the finished project.
…actually, I was a graduate student–for much longer than I care to admit. I was determined to finish both my Masters and my Ph.D., but it took me 3 years longer than my colleagues because I had to mow lawns and work other odd-jobs during the summer when the rest of them were taking classes. I have since then taught at two prestigous universities and am currently involved in upper administration. I’m not sure what your silly-ass definition of a “successful graduate student” is, but I’m pretty content.
Your other points:
1. Yes, some people are sycophants  the brown-nose to their advisor, to their committee, &c.
Again, you misunderstand my original post. I’m not necessarily saying that graduate students in English are sycophants, just that many of them have serious personality/emotional problems and as such are vulnerable to authority figures like their professors. Really, SEK, equating this with the juvenille concept of “brown-nosing” is insultingly overly-simplistic.
2. They believe they know the best way to do things, and they try to game their advisors and committee into allowing them to do what they want to do. The dissertation is a competition of will, a series of methodological and evidentiary compromises, engaged in so that both you and your advisor is satisfied with the finished project.
Wow.
Your cynicism is complete.
Do you, for an instance, believe that this is what the ultimate goal of a dissertation is/was? A game? A contest of wills?
Am I completely “old school” in suggesting that the dissertation ought to contribute to the body of knowledge on a given subject? That in some way scholarly effort should be directed toward understanding the truth?
SEK, you make graduate school sound like an elaborate chess match.
Obstreperous Infidel: But more to the very shaky heart of the matter. The kid needs to get laid. And badly.
This.