It was one of those "you had to be there" moments. It was art imitating life imitating art. The "Piled Higher and Deeper" (PhD) comics of Jorge Chan has a graduate student following of almost religious proportions, and to see him live, to witness as he presents an audio/visual extravaganza of topical humor straight from the pages of his strips is, well, moving.
While simply taking the stage Chan's presence, like a preacher in a tent revival, summons praise before a single word is said. He is a kindred spirit to the graduate student existence and the first glance of the man behind the animation recalls those moments of the nameless guy, Cecilia, the insignificant masters students and the benevolent advisors that seem to speak directly to the grad student in all of us. He feels your pain, he knows your plight; testify brothers and sisters.
Chan spoke to a standing room only crowd in the Wang Center Chapel for over an hour. Some transcripts of the question and answer period are included at the end of this article. Before the presentation there was a luncheon in his honor, and after the talk he held a book signing. There has been a desire to bring Jorge Chan to Stony Brook for years, but schedule conflicts had prevented it before now. With the efforts of the Center for Inclusive Education, the Wang Center Asian/Asian American Programming, and funded in part by the GSO, the dream of bringing Chan to Stony Brook became a reality. Though his presentation relied heavily on images that cannot be reproduced here (they are "beyond the scope" of this article), and at times it seemed a little too rehearsed, Chan still maintained control of the room with an easy demeanor and inviting personality.
After Lawrence Martin, dean of the graduate school, introduced Chan as the "Dilbert" of academia, the Doctor from Stanford asked to get a feel for the crowd by a showing of hands. Of the two hundred and fifty or so people in attendance a majority of hands were raised when asked how many of us were grad students. Six hands were raised when asked how many of the audience were undergraduates, and when about the same number signified that they were faculty, Chan asked for security to escort them from the auditorium. "I would ask about Post-Docs, but they are use to being ignored," Chan quipped.
"I was a graduate student at Stanford for around....a number of years. My thesis focus was on small robots that run like cockroaches. That's your tax dollars at work."
Chan showed a quick video of a robotic roach running on a small treadmill. A human hand appeared from above the frame and corrected the direction of the automaton. It came down again, a little more forcefully, as if trying to smash the bionic pest. He compared his roaches to graduate students "running franticly, but not getting anywhere, meanwhile a more intelligent being is stamping you down the whole time. I like to show this video because it's the only time someone sees my research. But far more popular than my research is what I was doing while I was supposed to be researching. My comic."
Chan explained his inspiration for the comic as trying to understand the life of graduate students. "What is this strange creature called the graduate student? It turns out to not be that complicated," with that he showed a diagram of the graduate student brain divided into two pieces; "Pleasing Advisor," and "Free Food."
After joking about Stony Brook facts he found on Wikipedia, Chan divulged four categories of e-mails that he receives from fans:
1) I don't know whether to laugh or cry when a new strip comes out.
"This makes me feel good," He stated.
2) Thanks for helping me slack off. I'm supposed to be doing research, but instead I just spend days slacking off.
"This also makes me feel good," Chan stated.
3) Cecilia is so hot! Can I marry her?
"To which I answer ‘no' for two reasons. A: she is an imaginary character. And B: she's my imaginary girlfriend. Create your own imaginary girlfriend."
4) You make me feel less alone. Your comic is responsible for keeping me sane.
Chan then cited a study by Berkeley on graduate life; "95% of all graduate students
felt overwhelmed. So, who are the other 5% percent? 67% feel hopeless or depressed, and 10% consider suicide. Sadly, 1 in 200 attempt it. Very sobering results, they just don't see any other way out. Well I am here to tell you that there is another way:
‘The Art of Procrastination.' Procrastination gets a bad rap because of its close proximity to its cousin ‘laziness.' Laziness is where you don't want to do anything. Procrastination is where you just don't want to do it right now."
Chan claimed that there are significant historical references for procrastination, going so far as to claim that some of the greatest minds of human time were prone to procrastination. Minds belonging to people like Isaac Newton: "What was he doing under that tree, anyway?"
Isaac Asimov: "It took him 10 years to complete his PhD in chemistry. As a grad student he was told by his advisor that he was a bad writer. Then he went on to write some of the greatest Science Fiction of all time."
Rounding out the list was the Yahoo/Google guys. "Let's see, our professor is out of town. Do you want to try to categorize the entire internet? That is some legendary procrastination!"
After charting the motivation of grad students from first year to completion of degree, Chan offered to divulge some "Secrets of the Thesis."
"Nobody is happy with their thesis. Even your advisors weren't happy with theirs. The work they are happy with, their best work, was probably done after they became a professor...probably because they used grad students to research it. Another secret of the thesis that most grad students don't realize is that your professor probably doesn't think you're an idiot. This is because he or she doesn't really spend much time thinking about you."
After his presentation Chan entertained questions from the Stony Brook community in attendance.
Q: Do you paint?
A: You mean; do I do real art? Nooo.
Q: How would you write your career goal statement?
A: What is this career you speak of? My goal would be to never write a career goal statement again.
Q: How do you spend your time? On the comic strip versus other things?
A: You are asking me if I have a day job? Did you learn nothing? I work full time on the strip. I write the strip full time and I have a PhD in Mechanical engineering-impressive isn't it?
Q: Was your character Smith modeled after a real professor?
A: Nooo. Not at all. None of my advisors know I do this.
Q: Who were your worst and your favorite professors?
A: You want me to list them by name? I do have a PhD, I'm not stupid. Seriously, I met a lot of really inspiring professors over the years.
Q: Do you write Cecila's Blog?
A: For those of you that don't know, the character Cecilia writes a blog. So, are you asking if I dress in drag and write a web journal? No. It's not me. I don't care to mention who it is, but it's as close to the character as you can get.
Q: So what was your research good for?
A: Funny, I use to procrastinate from research by doing the comic and now I procrastinate on the comic by doing research.
Q: Why is the nameless guy nameless?
A: I will reveal his name in the last comic. So keep reading!
To read the latest strip, visit the archives, or buy merchandise visit www.phdcomics.com
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