fuck this job.com

You are wise to be bailing... one of my best friends in the world has wasted the majority of his youth in pursuit of degrees... My father teaches at a University and is retiring this year due to the bullshit and retards he has to deal with... best of luck with the overseas gigs. I've been doing it now for two years and the $$$ is great!

Professors in school do not know squat about the real world. They are insulated in their precious little ivory tower safe and secure from the competitive pressures of an open market. They are kings in their little empires and consider their graduate student indentured servants.

Don't be fooled, the reputation of professors is built upon the labor of graduate students. Also, the professors are not your friend, and they never will be. In academia, all profs scrounge for funding dollars and as a result have to be quick to destroy ANYONE who they see as a threat, no matter how small.

Anyone so petty as to drop names is very insecure and not sure they themselves deserve to be where they are at.

Sounds like your graduate school is getting you ready for the real world...It's not much different than what you describe....

I know what you mean about arrogant snobs.

I once worked with a guy like those you described. One time someone asked him if he wanted anything from Mcdonald's. MY GOD you should have seen the twisted, revolted look on his face. He made a face and just shook his head.

If you knew the guy he was implying "Gods don't eat that pig swill. We're above that". Mcdonald's for crying out loud! What an ass.

[Moderator]

i'm currently back in school. community college to be precise, and decided to live my dream of becoming a columnist for the school newspaper.

after writing in two issues, i'm dropping it. the editor did something stupid the first time around and not call ahead and arrange for me to get into an event i was supposed to cover so i actually had to fork out money to get in, but that's not my issue. she had me rewrite an opinion piece about 3 times!

i mean, i was already getting annoyed with such bland English 101 criticism like "good strong author's voice" and that kind of garbage, but she forbade me from writing an opinion piece in the first person! i can open up any newspaper from the local rag to the New York Times and find opinion pieces written in the first person. her reasoning was that "even the professionals have a hard time with writing in first person", so basically, she said i'm not allowed to do it because i'm a nobody.

i was pissed, but i really wanted to make this work because i hoped to have some pieces and maybe one day write editorial columns in real life, so i edited my piece while trying to keep the same idea. i wanted the piece to be fun and interesting by opening with a bit of a story.

she then came back and told me to cut out most of that offending intro because she wanted me to get "right to the point".

so, it wasn't enough that i eliminated the first person stuff like she asked. she had to totally win the argument by cutting anything that resembled a personality from the piece. notice that it wasn't an issue the first and second time around that i didn't get right to the point. she had to drive home the point that i'm nobody.

well, guess what? this nobody has better things to do than waste their time on a crappy-ass newspaper with a section of editorials that read with the earnestness of entries into a 5th grade essay contest. when i was in a "real" university, i had professors ask to keep copies of my essays. i don't need some two-bit who probably reads Dave Barry and scoffs that he's a "bad" writer because he writes in the first person and "you're not supposed to do that".

I dropped out of Graduate School, the professor in my first semester was such an asshole I just didn't have the stomach for 2 more years of bullshit.

Nice to hear that there are others seeing thru the BS out there. Funny thing is, I stick by what I said earlier, but I am conflicted about the place. I mean, I just got nearly $1000 funding today, and might get 3 times that. Also, I know super COOL profs who are real people and agree with me, and sadly have stories of the shit they went thru until they got in a position to dictate their own terms.

And that is the question - do you have the guts to eat enought shit until you get the piece of paper that says 'Shit Kicker' instead of 'Shit Eater'. Because that is what grad school is all about.

I think I need some time off to get the passion for it back. Until then, I shall try to see only the + things, and avoid the peanut gallery.

But until graduation, I guess it is back to swimming in it.

what a Phd is, basically.
"Take everything professionally and nothing personally."
- Me

...that I never went to grad! School, that is. Just remember, the real world is full of assholes also.

"Just remember, once it's quitting time they don't own you."