First day of graduate school.
My first day of graduate school was spent in a small computer room on the first floor of my department building. Although small for a technology lab space, the room spanned the width of two normal classrooms. Thin melamine desks were lined up in rows with plastic folding chairs neatly pushed up against their sides. As our gaggle of students entered the room, the soft hum of fluorescent lights and old Dell PCs greeted us.
I quickly found a seat towards the front, next to the podium, plopping my heavy backpack down at my feet. A middle-aged man walked in and arranged his briefcase on the podium chair – clearly our professor. He stood not much taller than me. He was quite thin but not muscular. His neat hair was thinning near the crown. He clicked a few keys on his keyboard, and the projector whirred to life with a distinct buzz. The class went silent.
Upon introducing himself to us, he pulled up the class syllabus. I had already read through the document the night before and had found nothing especially noteworthy. The syllabus contained the same list of homework, quizzes, tests, and projects I had come to expect from increasingly rigorous coursework. The first portion of the class was spent going through the syllabus expectations line by line. I was bored quickly.
In between pages, our professor took a sip from his coffee. The next page was the one that I always found most awkward to sit and listen to as a student – Academic Misconduct. Our professor scrolled down and smirked, “Ah – this is simple.”
“If you cheat in my class, I will do everything in my power to get you kicked out of this university. I don’t tolerate cheating, never have, never will.”
He paused.
“Any questions?”
There were none.
We quickly moved on from this part of the syllabus and found ourselves on the final page, where the grading scheme was shown. Placed here is a typical grading breakdown of letter grades and assignment weights. Our professor paused again for another sip from his coffee.
“In your undergrad, had you ever heard of the saying ‘C’s get degrees’?”
Some murmured in agreement, others chuckled, and a few nodded silently.
“I wouldn’t expect that any of you followed that advice, seeing as you’re sitting here, but I have some advice to give now – and just hear me out. In graduate school, ‘B’s get degrees.’”
I made a face then, wondering why this would be the advice given to us on the first day of our graduate career.
“I know you all are high performers; you wouldn’t be sitting here if you weren’t, but –
A’s don’t really matter here and will probably be impossible for you to get. So, B’s get degrees, and it’s better that you know that now.”
Approximately two weeks later.
I was back in the same class as on my first day. I found the content we were learning repetitive and tedious, but not difficult – simply annoying. Today, I had expected more of the same.
Our professor started by generally introducing our topic of the day.
I was mentally preparing to zone out.
After covering the theoretical nature of the topic, our professor moved on to an applied example using aptitude data. For the uninitiated, aptitude data concerns measures of cognitive and intellectual potential – specifically for humans. Today, we used IQ variables and other demographic variables, such as education level and gender. Our professor, who had done some work in this area, wanted to provide some key background information on the specific aptitude variable we were using that day.
He gave a brief run-through of IQ’s history, usage, and criticisms. Then he told us that a main criticism of IQ is its use in student selection, specifically its correlation with test performance. In the context of graduate school selection, he said, IQ has been found to correlate with GRE scores. He then shared that he disagrees with the broader push by graduate programs to eliminate GRE requirements for admissions because of this. Specifically, the GRE should continue to be required and should probably be more stringent, as it can help weed out those with lower IQs from graduate applicant pools.
When asked about his thoughts on the common criticisms that IQ tests are linguistically and culturally biased towards English-speaking and Western cultural references, he was dismissive. He remained adamant that IQ had been normed across all cultures and languages and, due to its correlation with test performance, that GRE performance remained a useful and necessary metric for prospective graduate applicants.
He then looked across the room and told our group that we wouldn’t be sitting in his classroom if we weren’t the highest performers, with all A’s and fantastic scores.
He said this, despite not being able to recall our names if asked by the end of the semester.
—
I acknowledge that this is my very first post and that it has very limited context. These two moments are but singular points in what has ultimately been a long journey in deciding that academia would never be my path and that there will always be hostility towards someone like me within my academic community.
Until I set foot in my very first graduate class, academia had been a place I dearly called home. It wasn’t until I entered the belly of the thing that I realized my home had been crafted using curated illusions and trapdoors. I believe that these early moments, like many others I have had (and hope to share), were catalysts for the painful destruction of my naivete about my expectations of my academic community and for the necessary personal growth that followed.
One of my sincerest hopes is that what I write here may chronicle the one thousand small cuts that turned my passion into something I now detest. I also hope that my stories may serve as a guide stone (or a warning?) for those who are considering this path but feel met with magician’s mirrors everywhere they turn while researching whether it might be for them as well.
E.M.