Chains of Habit

I have a friend who graduated from our PhD program almost a year ago. He is still unemployed. He travels from thousand miles away to see his advisers every few months since he is still working on some papers with them. Yesterday, he was telling us he needs to go to another state for personal reasons. And then he said: "Oh, I need to tell my adviser that I won't be available for a while". One of my friends said: "Dude, you graduated a year ago. They are not paying you any money. And you still feel like you need permission from your adviser to be gone for a month". That's some crazy shit indeed.

Important Question

If you don't speak English....

If you don't speak English, it doesn't mean you cannot be a PhD student or even a well-known prof. Your language skills are especially of no importance if you are in a technical field like Computer Science or even Accounting. I had a friend - a guy from China who was majoring in Accounting. He was a friendly and fun person. But after more than ten years in the United States he could barely put a coherent sentence together. Yet he was teaching 1-2 courses every semester. I once read one of his student evaluations and it went something like this: "Great guy. Knows Accounting. Does NOT speak English!". What the heck, I even met well-known profs who I could barely understand. What counts in academia the most is doing research. Everything else is secondary (of course, I'm talking about research schools here).

Academic Types

Folks, in a way, I'm a nerd myself. I have a lot of respect for bright, inquisitive minds. However, I often feel uncomfortable being around academic types. I've met some academics I really liked, but those were rare cases. I once realized, to my great surprise, that I feel much more comfortable and happy around a group of uneducated, drunk, and cursing dockers from Louisiana than around professors at a conference.

In my mind, there are two archetypes of academics.

Type I: "Loser"

• Nerdy-looking
• Bold
• Looks exhausted
• Likes to talk, but doesn't like to listen
• Divorced/never had sex
• Doesn't even look like a man
• Works at a teaching school
  

Type II: "Harvard Business School Professor"

• Tall
• Good looking
• Successful with women
  
• Smiles a lot
• When you talk to him he smiles and acts very polite yet you read "I don't give a fuck about you" in his eyes
• Doesn't look like he is full of himself, yet he really is
• 
  

Type III: "Imbecile"

• Seems to be very exited about the useless things he works on
  
• Looks and acts like he is on Prozac
• Laughs a lot
• Despite his cheerful ways has a bad sense of humor: laughs at things which are not funny
  
• After returning from a conference in an exotic country, all he talks about is his hotel accommodation and food he had eaten

Type III: "Teenager"

• Somewhat of a rebel, i.e. does very fuzzy qualitative stuff in a field dominated by quantitative research
• Very critical to the corporate world
• Has a sober and cynical judgment
• A bit intoxicated by his "coolness"

Type III: "Satan"

• Seems to enjoy torturing PhD students
• Is obsessed with power
  
• Very manipulative
• Will not tolerate anyone disagreeing with him
• Full of himself

Type III: "Senior Scholar"

• Seems to be very happy with his life
• Has a good sense of humor
• Very hard to surprise or impress: he has seen it all!
• Achieved a lot mostly due to his good personality and excellent people skills