Going from Undergrad to Grad
Alex111
to get into a competitive grad school than if you went to a less
competitive undergrad? I mean if everyone in your class has awesome
credentials, won't it be difficult to compete against them? But if you
were to go to a less competitive one... wouldn't the opposite be true?
What's your opinion?
--
Direct access to this group with http://web2news.com
http://web2news.com/?soc.college.admissions
Rick Fenn
> If you go to a competitive undergrad school, would it be more difficult
> to get into a competitive grad school than if you went to a less
> competitive undergrad? I mean if everyone in your class has awesome
> credentials, won't it be difficult to compete against them? But if you
> were to go to a less competitive one... wouldn't the opposite be true?
>
> What's your opinion?
I think you have a lot to learn.
-Rick
You Might Want to Check Out:
http://www.magpage.com/~arthures/
http://www.rmartin.com/SRC_FAQ.html
http://www.cpst.org/BBissues.pdf
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/joe/articles/2002/2002-09-cawley.pdf
http://students.washington.edu/~cdophys/CAREER/
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20021230.shtml
http://amath.colorado.edu/kudos/20021114.html
http://www.phd.org
http://www.Graduate-Student.com
http://www.ankerpub.com/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june03/tenure_1-8.html
http://www.ets.org/news/grecs.html
http://www.gre.org/011003ann.html
http://www.zazona.com
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i20/20a01201.htm
"The Ph.D. Factory: Training and Employment of Science and Engineering
Doctorates in the United States."
by Charles A. Goldman and William F. Massy
"A Ph.D. Is Not Enough : A Guide To Survival In Science"
by Peter J. Feibelman
"Landing an Academic Job: The Process and the Pitfalls"
by Jonathan A. Dantzig
"Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences"
by Steve Keen
"Rejected: How Leading Economists Ponder the Publication Process"
by George B. Shepherd
"More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's
Economics"
by Philip Mirowski
"The Young Economist's Guide to Professional Etiquette", Journal of Economic
Perspectives, 6(1), Winter 1992, pp. 169-179
by Daniel S. Hamermesh
"Facts and Myths about Refereeing", Journal of Economic Perspectives,
8(1), Winter 1994, pp. 153-163
by Daniel S. Hamermesh
"Refereed and Nonrefereed Economic Journals: A Guide to Publishing
Opportunities."
by A. Carolyn Miller and Victoria J. Punsalan
"The Spread of Economics Ideas"
by David C. Colander and A.W. Coats
"The Impact of Bad Writing in Economics", Economic Inquiry, 30, October
1992
by David N. Laband and Christopher N. Taylor
"The Editors and Authors of Economic Journals: A Case of Institutional
Oligopoly?", Economic Journal, February 1999
by Geoffrey M. Hodgson and Harry Rothman
http://students.washington.edu/~cdophys/CAREER/index1.html
Dear Future Scientists and Mathematicians Appended is a "Physics
Career Aptitude Test" that I administered to the University of
Washington physics students as part of their biweekly "Careers in
Physics" seminar series. The students asked that I post a copy of the
test to the net, so here it is. The questions become steadily more
serious as the test progresses, but the suggested scoring is always
tongue-in-cheek. I would enjoy receiving responses from student groups
on other campuses, especially student groups outside the USA. Best
wishes to all of you for future career success! Sincerely... John
Sidles
***********************************************************
1995 PHYSICS CAREER APTITUDE TEST
***********************************************************
Welcome to the 1995 Physics Career Aptitude Test! Many physics students feel
uncertain, even apprehensive, when contemplating their career
prospects. This self-administered test will help you assess your
career interests, organize specific goals, and implement a specific
plan for career success. Our contributing experts are: E. Dickinson,
H. Melville, L. Beethoven, H. Miller, E. O. Wilson, M. Minsky, P.
O'Brian, J. B. S. Haldane, Job, D. M. Longenberg, A. Einstein, G. B.
Shaw, J. D. Watson, M. Gell-Mann, Alan lightman, and J. Goodall.
INSTRUCTIONS (1) Prepare a scoresheet with career options organized
into three groups, one career per column, labeled as follows: CAREERS
ACHIEVED BY ACTS OF LOVE AND COMMITMENT Parenting Artist CAREERS
ACHIEVED BY PUBLIC ACCLAMATION: Genius Synthesist Inventor Healer
Entrepeneur MIDDLE CLASS CAREERS ACHIEVED BY CREDENTIALING Professor
Teacher MD MD/PhD Corporate Physicist Biomedical Researcher Science
Writer (See the accompanying email form) (2) Read each question in
turn, WITHOUT looking at the instructions for scoring the question.
There is no need to write out your answer, but you should have a
definite answer in mind. (3) After deciding on your answer, assign
yourself a score for each career, as per the suggesting scoring
scheme, or alternatively your own preferred scoring scheme. When
you're done, add up the scores, ignore them, and decide which
career(s) are best for you, and get your life underway.
****************** Section 1: Career Choices ******************** Q:
Choose your favorite five careers from the following list. CAREERS
ACHIEVED BY ACTS OF LOVE AND COMMITMENT Parenting: You raise a family
of happy, healthy children to maturity, and they successfully take
their place in the community as productive citizens. Artist: You
assume a role in your community as a creator of artistic works, in any
medium, including craftsmanlike media such as woodworking or basket
weaving, as well as the classical arts of music, writing, painting,
sculpting, acting, etc. CAREERS ACHIEVED BY PUBLIC ACCLAMATION:
Genius: Your novel ideas revolutionize wide areas of science, you are
recognized as a Nobel Prize contender, and your name is mentioned in
the same breath as Curie, Pauling, Einstein, Dirac, Feynman, Gell-Man,
McClintock, and Goodall. Synthesist: Your genius lies in tying
together existing scientific threads into a whole tapestry of thought.
Your work is recognized as similar in quality to that of Wilson,
Fermi, Van Vleck, and Landau. Inventor: Like Edison, Faraday, Watt,
Babbage, Mullis, and Gould, you invent new technologies that
revolutionize wide areas of science. Healer: Like Pasteur, Lister,
Salk, and Sabin, you discover new ways to heal the sick. Entrepeneur:
Like Whitney, Watt, Bell, Ford, Job, and Gates, you create business
empires where none existed before. MIDDLE CLASS CAREERS ACHIEVED BY
CREDENTIALING Professor: You become a tenured faculty member at a
prestigious university. Your collected papers are a solid contribution
to the physics literature, and several of your students become
established physicists in their own right. You continue to teach and
do research until you become emeritus. Teacher: You teach physics at
the undergraduate, community college, high school, or grade school
level. Your chief reward is the interest and enthusiasm of your
students, whose lives benefit from your teaching. MD: Your primary
role in life is to heal the sick. Maybe you have a PhD too, but if so,
you don't use it much. Your chief reward is the trust your patients
repose in you, and the healing you bring to them. You make good money
and have high standing in the community too. MD/PhD: This doughty
degree combination enables you to combine a life of clinical practice
with an active research career. You are abundantly NIH-funded, and
combine your clinical and scientific skills in a vigorous and highly
interdisciplinary research program. You are a superstar of modern
biomedical research. Your wistfully reflect that if only you could
learn to do without sleep entirely, you would then have adequate time
for clinical work, research, teaching, and administration. Corporate
Physicist: You work at a big industrial lab, bringing high-tech
products to the marketplace. In recognition of your broad-ranging
technical skills, the company rewards you with an excellent salary,
bonuses, and stock options. Your main career challenge is resisting
blandishments to abandon R&D work and move into middle management.
Defense Physicist: You work on a "black" defense project that is
high-risk, tremendously expensive, and extremely long-term. It is so
highly classified that less than fifty people are qualified to assess
its technical merit. The "black" classification level protects you
from review by all except persons whose careers are vested in your
project. Everyone involved is happy. You read every new Tom Clancy
novel that comes out. Biomedical Researcher: As a non-MD PhD in a
university setting, you discover that biomedical research is
professionally fulfilling. However, the competition for research
funding in biomedicine turns out to be an unending rat race. You
consider leaving your university for the private sector, but you
gradually discover that even a rat race can be professionally
rewarding, if you are a winning rat! You enjoy playing in the Major
Leagues of modern research. Science Writer: You are the main link
between the scientific community and the citizens at large. Your
articles regularly appear in forums like "Science", "Nature", "Science
News", "Discover", "Omni", and "The New York Times." You enjoy
learning about a broad range of fields and explaining them clearly to
the public. If you are a freelancer, you vigorously indulge in the
chief perk of freelancing, which is working at home in your bathrobe
while editors plead with you by phone to send them copy. After
drinking some coffee, eating a doughnut, reading the New York Times,
sharpening some pencils, and playing a game of "Tetris", you finish
your article ten minutes before the deadline, and FAX it off to the
editor. Eventually a pitifully small check appears in the mail.
Freelancing is a tough life. But hey! Checks with your name on them
arrive in the mail. Articles with your name on them appear in print.
You send out another round of query letters, and Nature's freelance
cycle begins anew. Scoring: On your score sheet, award 50 points to
your first choice, 40 to the second, 30 to the third, 20 to the
fourth, and 10 to the fifth.
*************** Section 2: Career Strategies ********************
Here is an account from a recent FASEB meeting: "[James D.] Watson was
introduced to university science and the quest for knowledge at the
University of
Chicago, which he credits for instilling within him three values: (1)
to focus on original sources instead of textbooks, (2) to understand
the importance of ideas and theory as opposed to the accumulation of
facts, (3) to concentrate on learning rather than on improving
memorization skills. In retrospect, Watson believes that the
acquisition of these mental habits made him acceptable first to Luria
and Delbruck, and later to Francis Crick." quoted from "DNA: the
double helix, and the biomedical revolution at 40 years." in "The
FASEB Journal:", vol. 8, #15, page 1222. Q: With reference to Watson's
advice, which of the following describes your own scientific reading
habits: (A) I read mainly textbooks. (B) I read mainly textbooks and
work the problems. (C) I read mainly original literature. (D) I read
mainly original literature and rederive the results myself. (E) I read
mainly preprints. (F) I read mainly preprints and rederive the
results. (G) I read little or nothing in the physics literature. (H) I
read little or nothing in the physics literature, and I do original
work. SCORING: (A) 2 points in all careers. (B) 10 points in all
careers (C) 10 points in all the "Acclaimed" careers. (D) 25 points in
all the "Acclaimed" careers. (E) 25 points in the "Professor" career
only. (F) 50 points in the "Professor" career only. (G) subtract 25
points in all careers. (H) 25 points in the "Genius" and "Entrepeneur"
careers.
*************** Section 3: Getting Smart ******************
Q: As a graduate student, you are daunted by the expertise of your
professors. After struggling with a question for hours, you ask a professor,
who gives you the
answer immediately. This happens again and again. You begin to feel
stupid, and wonder if a career in physics is really for you. Does this
mean that (A) professors are smarter than graduate students? Or does
it mean that (B) they have reflected on similar problems for many
thousands of hours, and hence have answers already at hand? Scoring:
Many scientists deliberately cultivate an aura of innate intelligence.
This is a competitive strategy whose objective is to intimidate, and
to garner prestige. But the plain truth is, no one acquires mastery of
a subject without many thousands of hours of hard work. So if you
picked (B), having already figured out that accomplished physicists
should be admired for their discipline and hard work, give yourself 20
points in all career categories.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Q:
Reflect on the following passage by Marvin Minsky: ... in the early
stages of acquiring any really new skill, a person must adopt at least
a partly antipleasure attitude" "Good, this is a chance to experience
awkwardness and to discover new kinds of mistakes." It is the same for
doing mathematics, climbing freezing mountain peaks, or playing pipe
organs with one's feet: some parts of the mind find it horrible, while
other parts enjoy forcing those first parts to work for them. We seem
to have no name for processes like these, though they must be among
our most important ways to grow. from Marvin Minsky's "Society of
Mind", section 16.2 Is one or both of the following true of you? (A)
It takes me hundreds of hours of effort to master any new skill. (B) I
have mastered at least one new skill in the last twelve months.
Scoring: If you are a persistent person, give yourself 20 points in
every career option. Give yourself 10 additional points, in every
favored career, for each significant new skill, relevent to that
career, that you have mastered in the last twelve months.
*************** Section 4: Long-term Planning ******************
Competition for jobs is tough these days! It has been a long time since
physics existed in a climate of static funding. On the other hand,
evolutionary biology
has been in this situation for decades. E. O. Wilson's recent
biography, "Naturalist", is a good source of career advice. Please
comment on the following passages: The Harvard faculty is a well-known
pressure cooker in the sciences, in most subjects most of the time.
Peer pressure among the tenured professors is superintended by
vigilant deans and presidents determined to keep quality high.... the
explicit goal of all concerned is to select the best in the world in
every discipline represented, or at least a workaholic journeyman
toiling at the forefront. from E. O. Wilson's "Naturalist" The
impermanence of the Harvard position did not faze me. I was young,
only twenty-six... Partway into the first year, however, my nerve
began to fail. Like all assistant professors at the great university,
I felt disposable. And obviously, I *was* disposable. With Renee's
assistance, I made plans to find a new position long before the end of
my five-year term put me on the street. ... At the age of twenty-nine,
I had fifty-five technical articles published or in press. from E. O.
Wilson's "Naturalist" Q: Do you explicitly and self-consciously plan
and work to be the best in the world in your chosen discipline, or at
least a "workaholic journeyman"? Scoring: Award 50 points in every
discipline for which your answer is "yes". Bonus Questions: Do you
know or work with anyone whose answer to this question is "yes"? Do
you consider this person to be likable or admirable? Are they a role
model for you? Award 20 points to every discipline for which you have
a role model whose methods you have consciously and conscientiously
adopted.
Prior to succeeding as a playwright at the age of 36, Bernard Shaw had a
long and notably unsuccessful career as a novelist. At the age of
twenty Shaw abandoned an unfulfilling job as a realtor's clerk, moved
in with his mother, and for the next sixteen years, from 1876 to 1892,
he steadfastly resisted all offers of mundane employment. Show wrote:
"I was an able-bodied and able-minded young man in the strength of my
youth; and my family, then heavily embarrassed, needed my help
urgently. That I should have chosen to be a burden to them instead
was, according to all the conventions of peasant lad fiction,
monstrous. Well, without a blush I embraced the monstrosity. I did not
throw myself into the struggle for life: I threw my mother into it. I
was not a staff to my father's old age: I hung onto his coat tails....
People wondered at my heartlessness: one young and romantic young lady
had the courage to remonstrate openly and indignantly with me, "for
the which," as Pepys said of the shipwright's wife who refused his
advances, "Idid respect her." Callus as Comus to moral babble, I
steadily wrote my five pages a day and made a man out of myself (at my
mother's expense) instead of a slave." Quoted from the introduction to
Shaw's "An Unsocial Socialist" (W.W. Norton & Co., 1972) Q: Would you
burden your own mother to succeed in your career, and in general put
your career before most family and friends.? SCORING: If "yes" give
each preferred career 25 points. If "no", bear in mind that some of
your colleagues will be people whose answer is "yes".
******************** Section 5: Ambition *************************
Here are three more passages from Wilson's autobiography: To my dismay I
slipped into a depression for the first time in my life. I began to worry
again about
the broader canvases of ecology and evolution, and the need to get on
with the agenda of my young evolutionists' conceptual revolution. I
hated the corresponding diminution of my naturalist's ardor. I was
anxious about my own inadequacy in mathematics... I set out to remedy
the deficiency by teaching myself calculus, probability, and
statistics from textbooks... Progress was slow; I was not gifted; I
worried even more. Here I was, thirty-two years old, time and the main
chance seemed about to slip away. Would I miss out on the real action
coming? from E. O. Wilson's "Naturalist" Once again I was aroused by
the amphetamine of ambition. Go ahead, I told myself, pull out all the
stops. Organize all of sociobiology on the principles of population
biology. I knew I was sentencing myself to a great deal more hard
work. "The Insect Societies" had just consumed eighteen months. When I
added to my responsibilities at Harvard and ongoing research programs
in ant biology, the writing had pushed my work load up to eighty hour
weeks. Now I invested two more years, 1972 to 1974, in the equally
punishing and still more massive new book, "Sociobiology, The New
Synthesis." Knowing where my capabilities lay, I chose the second of
two routes to success in science: breakthroughs for the extremely
bright, synthesis for the driven. In fact the years I spent writing
the two syntheses were among the happiest of my life... from E. O.
Wilson's "Naturalist" Science was not everything for Holldobler. A
gifted painter and photographer, he enjoyed the arts as I never could,
locked as I was into my unyielding workaholic's momentum. In darker
moments I envied him that. Though considerably the younger man, he
made me a better scientist. from E. O. Wilson's "Naturalist" Q: Did
Wilson pay too high a price for success? SCORING: If you think Wilson
paid too high a price, subtract 20 points from all careers, because
you will be competing with people who do pay the price.
*************** Section 6: Scientific Culture ********************
Often graduate students harbor resentment toward "the system." Please
comment on the
following passage by Henry Miller. As I look back, I wonder -- did
these respectable elders of ours really believe that we swallowed all
that shit they crammed down our throats? Did they really think we were
so stupid, so naive, so unobservant? Even in short pants I could read
their minds. I didn't have to grow up to be a psychologist to realize
that they were handing us nothing but bullshit, and that they, being
stronger and in power, bullied us into accepting their lies. Some were
obvious liars, such obvious hypocrites! One had to blush for them. And
then the pious ones - who only punished you for your own good! What
shit that was! from Henry Miller's "Book of Friends" Q: Are Miller's
remarks applicable to the presently accepted mores of the physics
community? SCORING: If your answer is "yes", award 40 points to
"Artist" and "Science Writer", and 20 points to all other careers, on
the grounds that judicious iconoclasm can energize a scientific
career. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Critically evaluate A. Einstein's remarks: It is not enough to teach
man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but
not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the
student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values.
He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally
good. Otherwise he--with his specialized knowledge--more closely
resembles a well trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He
must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions,
and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to
individual fellow-men and to the community. These precious things are
conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those
who teach, not--or at least not in the main--through textbooks. It is
this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I
have in mind when I recommend the "humanities" as important, not just
dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.
Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on
the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all
cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included. It is also
vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be
developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly
jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied
subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to
superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is
perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. from Albert
Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" Q: Are you a cultured person in
Einstein's sense? What about your professors? Are you satisfied with
your humanities training in this regard? SCORING: Award 30 points in
all careers if you are a cultured person, as opposed to a narrow
specialist.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Can a physicist be cultured in the nineteenth century sense, while
remaining politically correct in the twentieth century sense?
Critically evaluate these remarks by Einstein: A hundred times every
day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the
labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in
order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still
receiving. I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often
oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor
of my fellow-men. from Albert Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions Q: Was
Einstein a member of an elitist, exploitive class? The really valuable
thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political
state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it
alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such
remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. from Albert Einstein's
"Ideas and Opinions" Q: Was Einstein justified in disdaining "the
herd" as "dull in thought and dull in feeling ? I cannot conceive of a
God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind
that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to
conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble
souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. from Albert
Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" Q: Was Einstein justified in
disdaining organized, dogmatic religion? Let us now consider the times
in which we live. How does society fare, how the individual? The
population of the civilized countries is extremely dense as compared
with former times; Europe today contains about three times as many
people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading
personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people
are known to the masses as individuals, through their creative
achievements. Organization has to some extent taken the place of
leading personalities, particularly in the technical sphere, but also
to a very perceptible extent in the scientific. The lack of
outstanding figures is particularly striking in the domain of art.
Painting and music have definitely degenerated and largely lost their
popular appeal. In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the
independence of spirit and the sense of justice of the citizen have to
a great extent declined. from Albert Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions"
(1934) Q: Have matters improved since 1934? If so, how and why? If
not, why not? SCORING: In each of your five favorite careers, award
yourself 25 points if you feel you are making a needed contribution to
the human condition. *************
Section 7: Physics and Transcendance ****************** Many young
physicists find that physics leads them to a deeper appreciation of
the human condition. The questions in this section assess your
progress in this respect. Q: Interpret the following two poems by
Emily Dickinson in the light of your knowledge of physics. Poem 1: The
Brain is Wider than the Sky The Brain - is wider than the Sky For -
put them side by side The one the other will contain With ease - and
You - beside The Brain is deeper than the sea For - hold them - Blue
to Blue The one the other will absorb As Sponges - Buckets - do The
Brain is just the weight of God For - Heft them - Pound for Pound And
they will differ - if they do As Syllable from Sound E. Dickinson Poem
2: (from) A Light Exists in Spring ... A color stands abroad On
solitary hills That science cannot overtake But human nature feels E.
Dickinson SCORING: If you understand the Dickinson's intent in the
line "As Syllable from Sound", give "Artist/Writer" a solid 100
points! If you have read any book of poetry in the last year, give
yourself 10 points in the two "Love and Commitment" categories, and
yet another 10 points if you have written a poem and read it to other
people. ----------------------------------------------------------------
Superstring theory promises to unveil yet another layer in our
understanding of the universe. Critically comment on the following
prose passage by Melville, from "Moby Dick" Hardly have we mortals by
long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but
valuable sperm; And then, with weary patience, cleansed ourself from
its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the
soul; Hardly is this done, when -- THERE SHE BLOWS ! The ghost is
spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through
young life's old routine again. H. Melville in "Moby Dick" Chapter 98
"Stowing Down and Clearing Up" Q: How much spiritual benefit has the
human raced derived from QED, QCD, and general relativity? Will
superstring theory succeed as yet another Great White Whale theory
(GWWT)? SCORING: If you strongly believe that QED, QCD, and general
relativity are among the noblest creations of the human imagination,
then give yourself 25 points in each of your career choices, and an
extra 25 points in the Genius category! If you're sick and tired of
them, subtract 10 points from each career choice, because you have
lost faith in the foundations of physics.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Physics has always been linked with the search for philosophical
transcendence. Yet Melville's "Moby Dick" warns against Ahab's
too-fanatical quest. Which of the following authors, Wittgenstein,
O'Brian, or Lightman, offers the most cogent answer to Melville? Here
is Wittgenstein's comment: "Why do you demand [philosophical]
explanations? If they are given you, you will once more be facing a
terminus. They cannot get you any farther than you are at present."
from Wittgenstein's "Zettel", proposition 315 (note: proposition 314
answers this question) In the following passage, Jack Aubrey is
captain of the British ship H.M.S. Suprise, and Stephen Maturin is his
ship's surgeon and eighteenth-century naturalist: Up and up they went,
passing the lookout perched on the yardarm, who assumed an attitude of
intense vigilance. Still higher; and Jack swarmed about the mast, up
into the cross-trees, and heaved Stephen's now-submissive body into
place, passed a line around him, and called upon him to open his eyes.
"Why, this is superb," Stephen cried, convulsively hugging the mast.
They were posed high above the surface of the sea "... How vast the
sea has become! How luminous!" Jack laughed to see his evident
pleasure, his bright and attentive wondering eye, and said, "Look
for'ard". The frigate had no headsails set, the wind being aft, and
the taut line of the forstays plunged slanting down in a clean,
satisfying geometry; below them the ship's head with its curving
rails, and then the long questing bowsprit reaching far out into the
infinity of ocean: with a steady, measured, living rhythm her bows
plunged into the dark blue water, splitting it, shouldering it aside
in dazzling foam... [Jack was looking] up at the royal pole, rising
bare into the unclouded sky, and he was weighting the advantages of a
fidded mast with one part of his mind, when another part told him he
was being uncivil - that Stephen had asked him a question, and was
waiting for an answer. Jack reconstructed the words as well as he
could - 'had he ever considered the ship thus seen as a figure of the
present - the untouched sea before it as the future - the bow-wave as
the moment of perception, of immediate existence?', and he replied "I
cannot truly say I have. But it is a damned good figure; and all the
more to my liking, as the sea is as bright and toward today as ever
your heart could wish. I hope it pleases you, old Stephen..." from
Patrick O'Brian's "H.M.S. Suprise" Endorsement: O'Brian's novels
provide excellent and inexpensive therapy for the stresses of graduate
school. They are essential reading for students interested in the 18th
century roots of 20th century science. Fortunately for us, O'Brian has
written plenty of them! "The best historical novels ever written"
-Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review. The physicist Alan Lightman
offers yet another perspective on spiritual and transcendent issues in
a physics career. Here Bennet Lang is an impressionable grad student,
and Davis Jacoby is his advisor: Good, said Davis, what are your
boundary conditions at infinity? Bennet looked perplexed. He knew
about boundary conditions from undergraduate physics, but he wasn't
aware that this problem needed any. The problem isn't well posed, said
Davis, unless you specify the fields at infinity. You've got to
specify the problem in enough detail that it clearly has a definite
solution. That's a well posed problem. That's what you want.... Davis
paused, as if remembering something. Some questions, he said, can
never be well posed, like: Is there a God? or, Would we be happier if
we lived longer?... Bennet decided that he had never met anyone as
wise as Davis Jacoby. He would learn all he could from the master.
First off, he made an oath to himself that never again would he
fritter away one minute on a poorly posed problem. From Alan
Lightman's "Good Benito" Q: If Lightman's physicist protagonist Bennet
Lang had sailed in the nineteenth century, would he have learned more
sailing on the "Pequod" with Ahab, or on the "Surprise" with Jack
Aubrey? Award yourself 25 points in all favored careers if you are
sufficiently well-read to give any sort of sensible answer to this
question. Q: Do Melville, Wittgenstein, O'Brian, and Lightman
contradict each other? What does Walt Whitman say about contradiction?
Award 10 bonus points, in any career you wish, if you are familiar
with Whitman's passage: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I
contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.) OVERALL
PHILOSOPHICAL SCORING: If you care about deep philosophical issues,
subtract 10 points from all five careers you are interested in, except
"Artist" and "Teacher".
************* Section 8: Physics and the Arts ******************
I am absolutely convinced that science is vastly more stimulating to the
imagination than are the classics, but the products of the stimulus do
not normally see the light because scientific men as a class are
devoid of any perception of literary form. J.B.S. Haldane Q: Is
Haldane right? Have you read any of Alan Lightman's works? Have you
read Norbert Wiener's novel "The Temptor"? SCORING: If you like
Lightman's work, give yourself 10 points in all categories, and double
points in "Artist". If you think Wiener was an unrecognized literary
genius, deduct 50 points from "Artist".
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wilson is discussing the human context of science: Recall how God
lashed Job with concepts meant to overwhelm the human mind: Who is
this whose ignorant words cloud my design in darkness? Brace yourself
and stand up like a man; I will ask questions and you shall answer...
Have you descended to the springs of the sea or walked in the
unfathomable deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have
you ever seen the door-keepers of the place of darkness? Have you
comprehended the vast expanse of the world? Come, tell me all this, if
you know. And yes, we do know, and we have told. Jehovah's challenges
have been met, and scientists have pressed on to uncover and solve
even greater puzzles. The physical basis of life is known... could the
Old Testament writers have conceived of such activity? And still the
process of scientific discovery gathers momentum. Yet, astonishingly,
the high culture of Western civilization exists largely apart from the
natural sciences. In the United States intellectuals are virtually
defined as those who work in the prevailing mode of the social
sciences and humanities. Their reflections are devoid of the idioms of
chemistry and biology, as though humankind were still in some sense a
numinous spectator of physical reality. In the pages of the New York
Review of Books, Commentary, The New Republic, Daedalus, National
Review, Saturday Review, and other literary journals articles dominate
that read as if most of their basic science had halted during the
nineteenth century. Their content consists largely of historical
anecdotes, diachronic collating of outdated, verbalized theories of
human behavior, and judgments of current events according to personal
ideology - enlivened by the pleasant but frustrating techniques of
effervescence. Modern science is still regarded as a problem-solving
activity and a set of technical marvels, the importance of which is to
be evaluated in an ethos extraneous to science. It is true that many
"humanistic" scientists step outside scientific materialism to
participate in the culture, sometimes as expert witnesses and
sometimes as aspiring authors, but they almost never close the gap
between the two worlds of discourse. With rare exceptions they are the
tame scientists, the token emissaries of what must be viewed by their
hosts as a barbaric culture still ungraced by a written language. They
are degraded by the label they accept too readily: popularizers. Very
few of the great writers, the ones who can trouble and move the deeper
reaches of the mind, ever address real science on its own terms. Do
they know the nature of the challenge? from E. O. Wilson's "On Human
Nature", chapter 9, "Hope" (too bad no living physicists write with
this kind of zest!) Q: Is Wilson right in asserting that the
humanity's artistic community has failed to assimilate the lessons of
modern science? SCORING: If you yourself have a strong interest in
integrating your scientific and artistic sensibilities, award yourself
100 points in the "Artist" and "Writer" categories, and subtract 20
points from "Professor", on the grounds that writing grant
applications is an effective technique for excising literary and
artistic sensibility.
*********** Section 9: Physics and the Moral Sense ******************
Consider the following passages by Jane Goodall in the light of modern
science: One
striking finding from all studies of the chimpanzee--in laboratory,
home, and forest-- is the sometimes uncanny similarity between certain
aspects of chimpanzee and human behavior: the long period of childhood
dependency, the postures and gestures of the nonverbal communication
system, the expressions of emotion, the importance of learning, the
beginning of dependency on cultural tradition,and the startling
resemblance of basic cognitive mechanisms. Our own success as a
species has been due entirely to the explosive development of the
human brain. Our intellectual powers are so superior to those of even
the most gifted chimpanzee that attempts made by scientists to spell
out the similarity of mental processes in man and chimpanzee have
largely been met with ridicule or outrage. When Kohler and Yerkes
first published their findings on insightful problem solving in
chimpanzees, these were instantly and abusively denounced as a
"pernicious, I should say disgusting, tendency to depart from the
truth" (Pavlov, 1957, p. 557). But results of this sort were
replicated, and the evidence for sophisticated mental performances
became ever more convincing. One by one, the attributes once believed
unique to man have been found to exist in "lower" forms of life. from
Jane Goodall's "The Chimpanzees of Gombe" Let us hope that this new
comprehension of the chimpanzees' place in nature will bring some
relief to the hundreds who presently live out their lives as prisoners
in our laboratories and zoos. Let us hope that, even as our greed and
shameless destruction of the natural world gradually take from yet
more chimpanzees their forests, their freedom, and often their lives,
our knowledge of their capacity for affection and enjoyment and fun
for fear and suffering and sadness, will lead us to treat them with at
least the compassion we would accord fellow humans. Let us hope that
if we continue to use chimpanzees for painful or physiologically
distressing experiments, we shall have the honesty to label our
actions what they are--the infliction of torture on innocent victims.
from Jane Goodall's "The Chimpanzees of Gombe"Q: Give three arguments
for and three against the proposition: "University faculty politics
resembles chimpanzee politics." SCORING: If you so injudicious as to
discuss this question with a tenured faculty member, deduct 25 points
from the "Professor" career option.
********* Section 10: Justice in the 21st Century **************
You have a "bad hair" day. While riding to school on the bus, traffic is
blocked by a
car-bicyclist injury accident. The driver has fled the scene, leaving
the badly injured cyclist to await the ambulance, which is delayed in
traffic. The bus motor overheats, emitting choking clouds of
particulate smog. Overwhelmed by heat and fumes, a feeble elderly lady
on the bus collapses and fractures her hip. It means the end of her
life as an independent human being. Even the developmentally disabled
adults who are riding to their dishwashing jobs at the university feel
pity for her. So do the quadriplegics and the cerebral palsy patients,
who are heading to the University Hospital for therapy. In the
confusion, your credit cards are stolen by a young, crack-addicted,
but otherwise healthy male, who exits the bus before you notice your
loss. After arriving at school, you phone in the loss to the credit
card company, only to lean that $1400 in charges have already been
rung up. Your advisor gives you hell for being late. Your allergies
are acting up. You mother calls to tell you that your father is
tolerating his latest round of chemotherapy "pretty well", but his
medical insurance coverage is running out. Arriving home exhausted,
you turn on the TV, encountering the latest horrors from Rwanda and
Bosnia, and a report on global warming. Consulting the mirror, you
find the first few gray hairs are appearing. You are approaching
middle age. You are childless because you have not yet found a
committed partner. Q: What is your next course of action: (1) Turn off
the TV and curl up in bed with books by your favorite authors, namely,
Sartre and Kafka. (2) Meditate on Beethoven's words: Art, the
persecuted one, always finds an asylum. Did not Daedalus, shut up in
the labyrinth, invent wings which carried him out into the open air?
O, I shall find them too, these wings! You put the Apassionata on the
CD player. Then you commence doing physics. (3) Call up some friends
and go out for a beer. SCORING: If you picked (2) or (3) as coping
mechanisms, you'll do fine. If reading Sartre and Kafka is your
strategy for coping, you need more help than this test is likely to
provide. Q2: (This is the hardest question on the test) Describe *ALL*
the instances of injustice that you encountered during your "bad hair"
day. Some people can identify thirty or more. Rank them in descending
order of severity. Then describe *SPECIFIC* means by which the worst
ten can be remediated. Which injustices cannot be remediated by
political means? Which cannot be remediated by scientific means? Which
cannot be remediated by cultural means? SCORING: If a preferred career
goal addresses a top-ten injustice, give it 25 points for each
injustice. Bonus Question #1: Why does the play "Angels in America"
describe dissention in heaven? Can even angels agree on the nature and
causes of injustice in the world? How will perceptions of social
justice change in the 20th century? What political dislocations will
be entailed? Bonus Question #2: What is a physician's responsibility
if an illness can be diagnosed, but no treatment is available? How is
the situation changed if a politician perceives an irremediable
injustice? Or if a professor or pundit perceives an irremediable
injustice? When is it prudent to simply ignore irremediable
injustices? Bonus Question #3: In light of your "bad hair day",
comment on the following passage by Poincare: The laws of nature are
drawn from experience, but to express them one needs a special
language: for, ordinary language is too poor and too vague to express
relations so subtle, so rich, so precise. Here then is the first
reason why a physicist cannot dispense with mathematics: it provides
him with the one true language he can speak... Who has taught us the
true analogies, the profound analogies which the eyes do no see, but
which reason can divine? It is the mathematical mind, which scorns
content and clings to pure form. quoted by M. Weisbluth in the
introduction to "Photon-Atom Interactions" What language is "so
subtle, so rich, so precise" as to allow you to think creatively about
your bad hair day?
**************** Section 11: Synthesis Time ****************
Here is what the outgoing president of the American Physical Society, D. N.
Longenberg, has to say about the future of physics: To some, the fate
of the SSC symbolizes the end of an era in which for most laymen
physics was the preeminent science and the physicist was the
archetypal scientist. Others argue that if the 20th century belongs to
physics, the 21st will belong to biology. Personally, I think there
may be something to that argument. Just as the astonishing scientific
and technological achievements of this century have stemmed largely
from a few fundamental discoveries in physics (quantum mechanics
especially), it seems likely that the next century will bring
comparable wonders rooted in the expanding understanding of DNA. It is
worth recalling, however, that several of the founders of molecular
biology were physicists. It is perhaps not too chauvinistic to suggest
that if there still survives among us the intellectual strength,
flexibility, and boldness for which we were once renowned, that when
the molecular biologists reach their goal of completely understanding
the genetic universe, they may find physicists there waiting for them.
D. N. Longenberg as quoted in the December 1994 Physics Today, page
44. Q: Is Longenberg right? SCORING: If "yes", award 25 points to all
careers related to molecular biology.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Critically compare Longenberg's prognostication with Wilson's account
of the molecular biology community. Without a trace of irony I can say
I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. They made me suffer (after
all, they were enemies), but I owe them a great debt, because they
redoubled my energies and drive me in new directions. We need such
people in our creative lives. As John Stuart Mill once put it, both
learners and teachers fall asleep at their posts when there is no
enemy in the field. James Dewey Watson, the codiscoverer of DNA,
served as one such adverse hero for me. When he was a young man, in
the 1950s and 1960s, I found him the most unpleasant human being I had
ever met.... "Anyone who would hire an ecologist [for a faculty
position] is out of his mind," [asserted] the avatar of molecular
biology. ... We were forced by the threat to rethink our intellectual
legitimacy as never before. from E. O. Wilson's "Naturalist" Q: Does
the burgeoning field of molecular biology require we physicists to
"rethink our intellectual legitimacy as never before"? SCORING: If the
answer is "yes" award 25 points to all career choices that will be
revolutionized by 21st century molecular biology. ---------------
1995: A Molecular Odyssey ---------------
Inspired by the words of Longenberg and Watson, you (a physicist)
begin to educate yourself in molecular biology. You start by reading
"Molecular Biology of the Cell (Third Edition)" by Alberts, Bray,
Lewis, Raff, Roberts, and Watson (Garland Press, New York, 1994). This
popular text is typically read by college seniors, first year graduate
students, and medical students. Q: How difficult is it for a Ph.D.
physicist to read and understand elementary textbooks like "Molecular
Biology of the Cell"? You find that reading "Molecular Biology of the
Cell" is much more difficult than reading a typical graduate physics
text (e.g., Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics"). For one thing,
"Molecular Biology" is immensely long, in excess of 1300 pages for the
text alone. It contains few equations and many illustrations. Most of
the illustrations are schematic, showing colorful cartoon blobs
labeled by non-obvious acronyms like "nef", "hsp70", "ATPase", and
"URF". Apart from the wealth of scientific detail, even the rules of
the game of molecularbiology are obscure. You begin to recover your
bearings when you read through the accompanying exercises in
"Molecular Biology of the Cell: The Problems Book" (Wilson and Hunt,
1994). It is somewhat surprising to you that modern molecular biology
textbooks even have problem sets! The problems are subtle and
interesting, requiring much the same order of sophisticated reasoning
as the problems in Jackson. Even more remarkably, many of the problems
reflect state-of-the-art findings in the recent biomedical literature.
Q: How many graduate physics textbooks contain problem sets whose
solutions are worthy of publication in the contemporary peer-reviewed
physics literature? Mindful of Watson's dictum (q.v.) "focus on
original sources instead of textbooks," you consult Medline, the
global database of medical literature. For the period 1990-1994, you
call up all articles whose abstracts mention five trendy proteins:
p53, actin, CD4, insulin, and hemoglobin. The results are as follows:
PROTEIN ABSTRACTS MENTIONING THAT PROTEIN (1990-1994 ONLY) p53 3,356 total
articles; 559 review articles actin 6,979 total articles; 454
review articles hemoglobin 9,194 total articles; 520 review articles
cd4 13,658 total articles; 1,007 review articles insulin 34,310 total
articles; 3,963 review articles This is a challenging flood of
literature! It seems that for any given protein, the number of
articles mentioning that protein increases year by year, with no
obvious upper bound. Assuming 100,000 proteins in the human genome
(which is a reasonable estimate), and assuming that 1000 articles
suffice to scientifically describe each protein (which is assuredly a
gross underestimate), you naively estimate that more that one hundred
million scientific articles will be required to describe human
molecular biology. Q: Is one hundred million scientific articles an
overestimate or underestimate of the scientific literature that will
eventually be generated by the biomedical research community? You ask
yourself, how rapidly is the biomedical community generating
peer-reviewed articles? Here is the number of new Medline articles
generated in each year since 1966 (the first year of indexing): New
New Year Articles Year Articles 1966 175,000 1980 263,000 1967 186,000
1981 265,000 1968 204,000 1982 275,000 1969 211,000 1983 288,000 1970
212,000 1984 297,000 1971 217,000 1985 308,000 1972 221,000 1986
321,000 1973 225,000 1987 337,000 1974 228,000 1988 354,000 1975
246,000 1989 369,000 1976 253,000 1990 375,000 1977 252,000 1991
374,000 1978 258,000 1992 375,000 1979 266,000 1993 376,000 Q: Why did
the rate of biomedical publication flatten so dramatically, starting
in 1990? When, how, and why will the expansion resume? Given that the
writing of biomedical articles has (temporarily?) stabilized at around
one thousand new articles per day, consider the following passage from
Gell-Mann's "The Quark and the Jaguar" The information explosion is in
great part a misinformation explosion. All of us are exposed to huge
amounts of material, consisting of data, ideas, and conclusions --
much of it wrong or misunderstood or just plain confused. There is a
crying need for more intelligent commentary and review. We must attach
a higher prestige to that very creative act, the writing of serious
review articles and books... If an academic publishes a novel research
result at the frontier of knowledge in science or scholarship, he or
she may reap a reward in the form of a professorship or promotion,
even if the result is later shown to be entirely wrong... Humanity
will be much better off when the reward structure is altered so that
selection pressures on careers favor the sorting out of information as
well as its acquisition. From Gell-Mann's "The Quark and the Jaguar"
Q: Are Gell-Mann's goals desirable? Are they specific? How exactly are
they to be achieved? In considering these issues, you (the young
reader) have a substantial advantage over Gell-Mann, viz., your own
career and future happiness are on the line! Doubtless this
concentrates your attention wonderfully. Bonus Question: Complete the
discussion of this section with special attention to the implications
for your family, your career, and your future happiness as a scientist
and a citizen. SCORING: If you can read "Molecular Biology of the
Cell" with ease and comprehension, award yourself 50 points in each of
your five favorite career options.
---------------------------------------------------------------
No possible inheritance of built-in genes can tell us what is good for
us - because, unlike all other animals, we human beings make for
ourselves most of the problems we face. Accordingly, each human
individual must learn new goals from what we call the traditions and
heritages of our peers and predecessors. from Marvin Minsky's "Society
of Mind", section 16.2 Q: Is Minsky right? SCORING: Award 25 points to
each career choice that is adequately guided by "the traditions and
heritages of our peers and predecessors."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Here is James Watson's assessment of ethical dilemmas in biomedicine:
We are increasingly going to be accused of 'playing God' when we use
genetics to improve the quality of either current or future human
life. Partly these accusations reflect individuals who don't think we
have the right to do God's work. But at other times I sense the
uneasiness comes from the fear that we might someday use genetic
powers to further discrimination unpopular political and racial
groups. But diabolical as Hitler was, and I don't want to minimize the
evil he perpetrated using false genetic arguments, we should not be
held in hostage to his awful past. For the genetic dice will continue
to inflict cruel fates to all too many individuals and their families
who do not deserve this damnation. Decency demands that someone must
rescue them from genetic hells. If we don't play God, who will? James
D. Watson, as quoted in "DNA: the double helix, and the biomedical
revolution at 40 years." in "The FASEB Journal:", vol 8, #15, page
1222. Q: If we don't play God, who will? SCORING: If your answer is
"God will play the role herself, as she has in the past," then deduct
10 points from all medical careers. Bonus Question: In the decade
after WWII, physicists and engineers thought they were the ones who
were going to play God! Whatever happened to free electricity from
atomic power, control of weather by mainframe fluid dynamic analysis,
the blooming of the Sahara, reliable space travel, and routine
supersonic air transport? How clearly can Watson, or anyone else,
foresee the technological future? Bonus Question #2: Which profession
understands and can predict humanity's future most clearly: (1)
physicists, (2) molecular biologists, (3) evolutionary biologists, (5)
anthropologists, (4) physicians, (6) middle managers, (7) politicians,
(8) pundits, (9) musicians, (10) artists, (11) novelists?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the concluding passage from Wilson's "On Human Nature" (I have
quoted Wilson extensively because the physics community has no
similarly articulate synthesist). Prometheus has somewhat gone out of
fashion in recent years as a concession to resource limitation and
managerial prudence. But we should not lose faith in him. Come back
with me for a moment to the original, Aeschylean Prometheus: Chorus:
Did you perhaps go farther than you have told us? Prometheus: I caused
mortals to cease foreseeing doom. Chorus: What cure did you provide
them with against that sickness? Prometheus: I placed in them blind
hopes. The true Promethean spirit of science means to liberate man by
giving him knowledge and some measure of dominion over the physical
environment. But at another level, and in a new age, it also
constructs the mythology of scientific materialism, guided by the
corrective devices of the scientific method, addressed with precise
and deliberate affective appeal to the deepest needs of human nature,
and kept strong by the blind hopes that the journey on which we are
embarked will be farther and better than the journey just completed.
the concluding passage of E. O. Wilson's "On Human Nature" Q: Will the
journey on which we are embarked will be farther and better than the
journey just completed? SCORING: If you fervently believe the answer
is "yes", add 25 points to all careers. If you believe your own
efforts can make a significant difference, add an additional 25
points. If you fervently believe the answer is "no", subtract 50
points.
******************Section 12: Specific Advice ************************
Q: Do you feel the questions on this test are too diffuse, too literary? Do
you want
explicit, practical advice on advancing your career? A: Peter J.
Feibelman's book "A Ph.D. Is Not Enough : A Guide To Survival In
Science" (Addison-Wesley, 1993) provides plenty of practical advice,
especially for undergrads contemplating graduate school, or grad
students contemplating a post-doctoral position. But it doesn't offer
too much in the way of literary context, hence this lecture.
-------------------- Good Luck With Your Career! ---------------------
********************** ANSWER SHEET (spoilers) ***********************
Let me start by confessing that I don't know the answers to these
questions. No one knows the answers, and quite likely it will take us
the rest of the twenty-first century to answer them. When the answers
are written down at last, they will not take the form of a lecture or
a multiple choice test, but rather will be the chronicles of some
twenty-first century Charles Dickens, who describes and distills the
life she sees around her. Thus you, my readers, will answer these
questions implicitly, by the career choices you make and the lives you
lead.The questions were deliberately linked to career planning to help
young physicists appreciate these issues are not abstract or academic.
If this lecture has stimulated you to think for yourself about your
career and your life as a scientist, then it has served its intended
purpose. The key question on the test is the question about injustice
and the "bad hair day". Each century evolves its own notions of
justice and injustice. I cannot foresee how notions of justice will
evolve in the twenty-first century, but I hope and expect they will be
greatly expanded, relative to our present conceptions. You yourselves
will determine these new notions of justice. In the clinics of the
hospital where I work, physicians routinely address human suffering of
a sort that escapes twentieth century notions of injustice. How just
is the suffering created by AIDS, cancer, trauma, closed head injury,
spin bifida, and a thousand other ailments? Surely in the twenty-first
century such suffering will be encompassed by notions of justice.
These changing notions of justice will entail social, political and
legal dislocations that I am not wise enough to foresee, but which
will surely affect the careers of all young scientists. If we are
fortunate, the twenty-first century will be the century of synthesis.
All the variegated threads of science, mathematics, and the arts, so
nobly spun during the twentieth century, will be woven into a
tatterdemalion and wholly human tapestry. Each of you, in your own
life, will contribute to this tapestry, and I wish you good luck in
doing so!
January 31, 2003 The Chronicle Review
Department Politics as a Foreign Language
By KATHRYN HUME
Between longtime members of a department and the newest assistant professors
lies a gulf of incomprehension. Assistant professors cannot understand why
their helpfully meant suggestions in department meetings seem not to be
heard
and are never voted into action. Senior members cannot understand how bright
candidates for tenure could be so stupid. Both sides have a point.
The problem lies in the language that divides these two tribes, a version of
English used to express departmental matters in public. Call it
"departmentese."
Many young and some not-so-young "departmentals" never learn it properly,
condemning themselves to talking slowly and loudly in their original tongue,
wondering why no one seems to understand. The newly minted assistant
professor
might, then, profitably study this primer in departmentese before speaking
up
at the next department meeting.
Every language possesses cognitive blank spots. Latin has no one-word way of
saying Yes or No, while Anglo-Saxon does not distinguish among pale gray,
green, and yellow, calling them all fallow. Similarly, certain concepts
cannot
be expressed in departmentese. The chief of these is self-interest. In his
mother tongue, a young faculty member can say, "If you do away with the
Medieval requirement, my graduate seminar won't make minimum enrollment,
I'll
have no students, and because I really don't know anything about literature
written after 1485, I'll be forced to teach freshman composition."
Departmentese cannot express that sentiment.
In that stately language, he must instead say, "No one can be considered
educated who does not know Chaucer, and we would disgrace the department if
we
lowered our standards this way." Changing the nature of the curriculum, the
distribution requirements, and the comprehensive exams must all be
negotiated
without reference to the self-interest of people whose courses may fail for
lack of registration.
Many a department meeting consists entirely of dancing around the edge of
this
hole in the language. When trying to see why a department is divided over
what
seems like an obvious improvement, the assistant professor should ask
herself
who gains and who loses. The proposer sincerely thinks that Proposition X
would
improve the comprehensive exams but rarely expects to give up something
significant through the change. Those who oppose the proposal expect to be
hurt
by it, whatever high moral claims or student interests they invoke to
justify
their opposition.
Another linguistic blank concerns the shortcomings of colleagues. They may
publish nothing, hold few office hours, put no effort into grading papers,
and
feud unremittingly, but most department cultures do not permit anyone to
point
this out in meetings. When a department decides its hiring priorities, watch
the graceful footwork as skilled departmentals ease around this linguistic
gap.
If the Americanists push to hire someone with expertise in the first half of
the 20th century, they cannot say, "We have three people in that field
already,
but they've published nothing for 15 years, their teaching is terrible, and
two
of them won't speak to each other." Instead, the suave departmental
proclaims,
"We need someone who will bring us national recognition in this field
because
this is already a strong area, and a dynamic hire will transform us into a
magnet program."
Yes, the neophyte may feel that devoting a senior hire to a field with three
turkeys is throwing good money after bad and may wonder whether a really
stellar scholar would wish to join this unsavory flock unless fleeing a
sexual-harassment charge at home. Departmentese, however, has no words with
which to express these misgivings.
When a topic falls afoul of both self-interest and collegial shortcomings,
the
two cognitive holes merge into a black hole, swallowing all discussion that
approaches either topic. That happens, for instance, when the dean demands
that
the department raise its standards for tenure or when a main campus makes
that
demand on a branch campus. Many who now have tenure would not qualify by the
new standards but cannot admit that to themselves, let alone to others. Even
those who have been prolific usually hesitate to say aloud in a meeting that
tenured colleagues A, B, and C should be disqualified from voting on tenure
because they would not meet the new standards. The black hole swallows
discussion, and assistant professors may be given conflicting information
because parts of the department are pretending that nothing has changed.
The young professor who aspires to be listened to must learn institutionally
effective ways of approaching problems. Let us return to the original
problem:
The neophyte says something in a department meeting, and after a hiccup of
silence, the discussion resumes as if nothing had been said. Most
universities
operate in a manner reminiscent of both the Pentagon and the Catholic
Church.
Few members of those establishments expect the draftees to decide whom to
fight, or the pope to take direction from the parishioners, and neither
draftees nor parishioners would find that demands for such powers would win
immediate welcome.
The academic equivalent is the assistant professor who proposes, for
example, a
concentration in media and cultural studies to be built out of thin air in a
traditional literature department or who wants the department to give far
more
weight to teaching in its tenure procedure.
Very often, the assistant professor argues for something that is too clearly
self-interested, thereby damaging the self-interest of others. More seminars
in
cultural studies mean fewer for historical areas. Reduce the publication
requirement to accommodate more dedicated teaching (with computerized bells
and
whistles), and the department and college would both lose in the
benchmarking
studies of publication that determine everybody's raise and the unit's
standing
in the university. The neophyte has no idea what the broader effects of such
a
change might be or indeed that such effects exist.
Or consider the techno-literate assistant professor who sincerely believes
that
all historical courses would be more effective if augmented by Web sites
(created by faculty members) loaded with art, readings, and music of the
period. The older professors are unlikely to know how to produce such a
thing
and probably feel no need for it, having never experienced it. Those who do
not
greet the idea with cries of joy are thinking about the time it would take
to
learn to create what they consider a dubious benefit at best.
But why the silence? The assistant professor is sincere, idealistic, and
devoted to student interests, but proposing something that only she knows
how
to do is self-interested. She loses no time in learning the skill and might
gain prestige from leading the department in new directions. Others would
lose
months of working time that could be spent writing a couple of major
articles,
for which they anticipate real rewards.
The department's inability to "hear" such suggestions relates to the lack of
language for self-interest and the issue of collegial incompetence. That
assistant professor can indeed advance her vision for the department but
must
work incrementally. She should create her Web site and demonstrate it to all
who express interest. She should encourage and help friends to create
similar
sites. Finally, in return for a course reduction, she could offer to teach
those now convinced of the worth of Web sites how to build one, and she
would
gain that desired prestige in the long run. That approach could work and
would
do her no political damage; trying to make Web sites into policy at a
department meeting makes her seem variously impractical, unreasonable, or an
irritating nuisance.
Most departmental issues affect individual self-interests, and assistant
professors must learn to recognize the self-interested kernel in their own
suggestions as well as the self-interest they can see all too easily in
others.
They must work with the interests of others as much as possible and be
prepared
to compromise. Those at the intellectual and political extremes of the
department tend to make demands that violate departmentese's boundaries of
self-interest and collegial criticism. Those whose positions lie to one side
of
the middle but do not come across as extreme have some chance of leading the
department a few steps in their preferred direction. A year or two later,
the
department may be ready to take another step in that same direction.
A major shift in department policy may well take a decade, and it will come
step by compromised step, so that self-interests can adjust. Assistant
professors who understand the cognitive blanks in departmentese quickly
become
audible in department meetings. Those who do not doom themselves to
sickening
frustration.
Kathryn Hume is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at
University Park and the author of American Dream, American Nightmare:
Fiction
Since 1960 (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Jim Battista
news:2538...@web2news.com:
> If you go to a competitive undergrad school, would it be more
> difficult to get into a competitive grad school than if you went
> to a less competitive undergrad? I mean if everyone in your class
> has awesome credentials, won't it be difficult to compete against
> them? But if you were to go to a less competitive one... wouldn't
> the opposite be true?
You're not competing against other people from your school. You're
competing against everyone in the country who feels like applying.
Ya gots two choices:
Go to a good competitive school and face competition from 99 of your
classmates, who look similar to you in many respects.
--OR--
Go to a less competitive school and face competition from 100 people
from the school you would have gone to, who look similar to you in many
respects except that they went to a better school.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.