Fac ut Vivas

When I first entered the graduate program in 2001, my adviser suggested that I begin writing a manuscript based on my undergraduate research. Unfortunately, the first year of graduate school for a master degree course is usually the toughest. If you thought quantum mechanics was hard, wait until you encounter it at 10 times the difficulty level and at 10 times the undergraduate pace. The same can be said of electromagnetics where one or two electrons in vacuum are “toys” compared to what your professor can conjure up in a curved dielectric surface and ask you to do method of images in spherical coordinates. During classical mechanics, you often wondered whether Newton thought of everything because nothing closely resembles F=ma anymore. Hamiltonian?! Lagrangian!?! What the?

(back to our story)… So when my adviser checks up on the progress of my manuscript and I tell him: zilch, nil, nada, NULL, void (choose two). He tells me, “My friend, two years is not a long time”. Two years. That was the alloted time for completing a master degree. Two, if you’re lucky. It becomes three if you missed the important deadlines. More if you’re unlucky. A year later, he tells me, “My friend, one year is not a long time”.

Though, an international publication wasn’t required that time, it took me 3 and 1/2 years to get my degree. So after the alloted two years, he says “What do you really want to do?” and sometimes “What’s wrong?”.

The funny thing about grad school is that some of you overdevelop into gluttons for suffering. Even after getting your master degree, you sense that it isn’t enough in a country that worships Law (which oddly enough, like our religion — isn’t followed religiously). Each layer in the degree pile makes you less suited to the local job market. The deeper you go, the more colorful the rejection notice you get when applying for a job. How can you be bothered about being overqualified when all you care about is having a job?

So once again, unto the breach, dear friends, you sign up for the PhD degree program. Unfortunately for you, it requires a published manuscript. So me and my adviser are involved in this routine exercise again. In early 2005 he tells me, “You will need one manuscript!”, and months later, “My friend, three years is not a long time!”.

It is now four years since then.