Recently a 45 year old friend of mine got her BA. She did the whole thing, all the ceremonies. Then a bunch of us got rip roaring drunk, made it home in time to pay the babysitters and oldest teenagers double rates and had a pool party at a neighbors, where all of us ONLY wore gowns and caps.
Q: When Was the Last Time You Enjoyed Watching Someone Graduate?
I last enjoyed watching someone graduate in June. One of my best students ever finished his M.S., after having taken some years off to be a bartender. His family was very pleased. The experience gave him real skill with people that few physics grad students have, which make him a fine teacher. I told him about the lousy job market, but he doesn't want to hear about it. He starts in an astrophysics Ph.D. progam on August 20. After him, it's not easy to deal with the lunkheaded, tattooed, gradflake I'll have this year. (Who the hell takes a month off when in grad school? And I see the GRE prep book I lent him is still on his desk.)
ReplyDelete"Who the hell takes a month off when in grad school?"
DeleteI did, multiple times. I still finished from a top tier physics program in six years with an extensive publication record, two fellowships, and intact sanity. I did astrophysics so there was no equipment to be tended to, and I made sure not to leave anyone hanging on anything. I also worked side jobs and took courses way outside my area for fun. I was a student and a researcher, not an indentured servant.
My outgoing student knew that astronomy is a field where one needs to paddle one's own canoe, since no one will do it for you, or should. The one who's now taking a month off has obviously been helicopter parented, since he expects me to micromanage him. When he gets back next month, I am going to tell him that he needs to improve as a researcher.
DeleteYeah, so I was probably a little overreactive, but I've always disliked the "why aren't you in the lab?" attitude toward grad school.
DeleteI'll admit that when my experimentalist wife took off several weeks to help care for her dying father (the medical system of her economically underdeveloped home country not being up to the task), it hurt her lab work quite a bit.
There are several current students that I will be very pleased to see graduate. They are constantly complaining about my classes, which they continue to fail and retake. To be fair, seeing them graduate would be nice but so would seeing them drop out or get hit by a bus. Whatever gets them out of my hair. Influential deities reading this should consider that a prayer.
ReplyDeleteGee, Ben, your field being chemistry, can't you come up with a way to dispose of these students, say by setting them on fire, dissolving them, or having them breathe or ingest things they shouldn't, and have it be very much their fault, since they ought to have read the instructions first? I can see it now: "Oops, turns out that sample wasn't LSD, like you thought it was..."
DeleteSure, but the paperwork for any chemical "accident" makes it not worthwhile.
Delete@Frod: Why lend a GRE prep book to a gradflake? Did you require him to take the GRE again after being admitted?
DeleteAnd pay no attention to the Beaker. We can sneak into the gradflake's home and mix some barium acetate into the gradflake's vanilla pudding. As long as the four of us can keep a secret, no one will be the wiser.
Oooohh..I vote for dissolving!
Delete@Bubba: The GRE book is because my gradflake wants to get into a Ph.D. program next year, since we have only an M.S. I know, he ought to get his own books, but I wasn't using mine. Also, he's showing symptoms of having been helicopter parented. If one doesn't know what to do when one grows up, getting a graduate degree in an abstruse field like astronomy is a bad idea. As far as sneaking into people's homes goes, I think that effort would be better spent hammering stakes through the hearts of two bits of deadwood who really ought to retire, but won't.
DeleteP.S. I vote for cyanide poisoning. It's quick and sure. The only problem is that it's painless.
DeleteMy mother, receiving her Ph.D. at the age of 60.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching my kid graduate 8th grade this past June. I have been working at my CC nearly a decade and I have yet to have a student I really knew well attend a graduation. So many of ours don't go, and so many of ours take so many years to finish that by the time they do (often) I might not remember them that well. I know that sounds bad but it is true.
ReplyDeleteNot to sound like a gumdrop unicorn, but I actually enjoy watching students graduate every year. Every year, I'm reminded that the names being called are the names of students I, for the most part, enjoyed teaching. On the other hand, the students who showed no intellectual curiosity, never did the work, were offended when offered criticism . . . their names rarely appear on the list of graduating seniors. It makes me think we're doing something right here, and so I actually enjoy going to graduation.
ReplyDeleteI don't attend many graduations, but I really enjoyed watching my childhood best friend, who married and had two children in her early 20s, graduate from college. Knowing her also increased my sympathy for students who are juggling a lot, but also set a pretty high standard for how they handled their situations; she didn't ask for a lot of sympathy or extra support, just kept plugging along until she finished.
ReplyDelete