I submitted the following piece to a newsletter that is supposed to be a sounding board for members of the community of scholars to which I have been assigned. Upon review, however, the Dean of the graduate school rejected the newsletter and also requested that the whole focus of the newsletter be revamped. I wasn't the only victim but her actions proved my equation to be absolutely correct.
G=P+k where P=.75 and k=.25
The equation is complicated, yet quite simple. If the marketing tools for graduate school promoted the equation, however, less people (I presume) would come. Or at least those who come would be more prepared for the truth about the graduate experience.
Graduate school! Nobody gets there without some degree of resilience, determination, and high scholastic achievement. Therefore, one would assume that graduate school—for those who choose to accept the mission—is manageable. Graduate school is the place where scholars can share ideas, debate topics of interest, and validate their theories/hypotheses. Therefore, as far as we are concerned when entering, G=K, where K=100%. Why then, is it that so many of my colleagues have faced such adversity and borderline depression when it comes to their fields of study? We have the equation to blame.
Graduate school, somehow, is the place where the most brilliant people play the most defensive roles. One’s work is constantly questioned. Your main task, while here, is to prove yourself. There is coursework for which you have to be on the defensive by showing that you have read, digested, understood, and can articulate material that you have probably seen many times before (and which probably has very little to do with your own research). Then there are comprehensive exams, where you have to defend your competence (with the material you have spent two years laboring over) to a few professors and hope that they are kind enough to allow you the honor of being called a “candidate”, rather than just a “student”. Further up the chain, you have to spend years laboring over data and other information and then pray hard that a committee of four agrees that it is safe for you to be granted the three beautiful letters of their co-ed fraternity.
We’ve all experienced meltdowns of some kind, where someone who doesn’t quite understand our experiences as mothers, fathers, children of ailing parents, aunts, uncles, immigrants, underrepresented groups of people, human beings with problems, seems to judge us unfairly. It is at that point that we all question our purpose for giving up a life of freedom to commit to the academy. It is at that point that we reconsider why we have elected to study in a town that is the “seventh cloudiest city in the United States with cold, snowy winters and warmer, wet summers.” Binghamton is not exactly the most felicitous place for young, underrepresented academics. Dubois’ double consciousness is always in full effect as we navigate the equation that is the antithesis of every true bookworm’s existence: We are used to having our work speak for itself. We have gotten this far by way of our academic achievement, not merely by who we know.
So how do we keep smiling and stay above water when professors question our abilities, when colleagues do not respect our perspectives and just label us as “other”, when people dismiss our contributions to the academy as “radical” or fail us for presenting ideas that challenge the status quo? How do we maintain healthy relationships with spouses and family in the face of such adversity and continue to focus on working ten times as hard to get five times as far as our counterparts? How do we truly get through this graduate experience? Well, a friend of mine recently met with her advisor to discuss why she had received low grades on a particular part of her comprehensive exam. His response was simple: He gave her the equation. This woman of incredible intellectual ability, who works on average, twelve hours per day on her academics was told that she needed to “make nice” with the faculty. “You don’t smile with them enough,” he said, “so they don’t know you.”
So, based on what I have deduced from this experience thus far, I realize that we come in with the expression in mind: G=k, where k=100%. However, after the first year or two, we come to the realization that g≠k but rather G-P=k. Graduate school is not a test of all you know. In fact, your knowledge is trumped by your ability to network with a few individuals with whom the power to determine your future lies. The graduate school experience at Binghamton, for some of us, indicates that knowledge is significant but more critical is one’s understanding of how to navigate “P” in order to earn Superdelegate votes into the co-ed fraternity. However, make no mistake about it; this kind of “P” is far from democratic.
G=P+k where P=.75 and k=.25
The equation is complicated, yet quite simple. If the marketing tools for graduate school promoted the equation, however, less people (I presume) would come. Or at least those who come would be more prepared for the truth about the graduate experience.
Graduate school! Nobody gets there without some degree of resilience, determination, and high scholastic achievement. Therefore, one would assume that graduate school—for those who choose to accept the mission—is manageable. Graduate school is the place where scholars can share ideas, debate topics of interest, and validate their theories/hypotheses. Therefore, as far as we are concerned when entering, G=K, where K=100%. Why then, is it that so many of my colleagues have faced such adversity and borderline depression when it comes to their fields of study? We have the equation to blame.
Graduate school, somehow, is the place where the most brilliant people play the most defensive roles. One’s work is constantly questioned. Your main task, while here, is to prove yourself. There is coursework for which you have to be on the defensive by showing that you have read, digested, understood, and can articulate material that you have probably seen many times before (and which probably has very little to do with your own research). Then there are comprehensive exams, where you have to defend your competence (with the material you have spent two years laboring over) to a few professors and hope that they are kind enough to allow you the honor of being called a “candidate”, rather than just a “student”. Further up the chain, you have to spend years laboring over data and other information and then pray hard that a committee of four agrees that it is safe for you to be granted the three beautiful letters of their co-ed fraternity.
We’ve all experienced meltdowns of some kind, where someone who doesn’t quite understand our experiences as mothers, fathers, children of ailing parents, aunts, uncles, immigrants, underrepresented groups of people, human beings with problems, seems to judge us unfairly. It is at that point that we all question our purpose for giving up a life of freedom to commit to the academy. It is at that point that we reconsider why we have elected to study in a town that is the “seventh cloudiest city in the United States with cold, snowy winters and warmer, wet summers.” Binghamton is not exactly the most felicitous place for young, underrepresented academics. Dubois’ double consciousness is always in full effect as we navigate the equation that is the antithesis of every true bookworm’s existence: We are used to having our work speak for itself. We have gotten this far by way of our academic achievement, not merely by who we know.
So how do we keep smiling and stay above water when professors question our abilities, when colleagues do not respect our perspectives and just label us as “other”, when people dismiss our contributions to the academy as “radical” or fail us for presenting ideas that challenge the status quo? How do we maintain healthy relationships with spouses and family in the face of such adversity and continue to focus on working ten times as hard to get five times as far as our counterparts? How do we truly get through this graduate experience? Well, a friend of mine recently met with her advisor to discuss why she had received low grades on a particular part of her comprehensive exam. His response was simple: He gave her the equation. This woman of incredible intellectual ability, who works on average, twelve hours per day on her academics was told that she needed to “make nice” with the faculty. “You don’t smile with them enough,” he said, “so they don’t know you.”
So, based on what I have deduced from this experience thus far, I realize that we come in with the expression in mind: G=k, where k=100%. However, after the first year or two, we come to the realization that g≠k but rather G-P=k. Graduate school is not a test of all you know. In fact, your knowledge is trumped by your ability to network with a few individuals with whom the power to determine your future lies. The graduate school experience at Binghamton, for some of us, indicates that knowledge is significant but more critical is one’s understanding of how to navigate “P” in order to earn Superdelegate votes into the co-ed fraternity. However, make no mistake about it; this kind of “P” is far from democratic.
