COLUMN: Can you talk the graduate talk?

From Nathan Smith's, "White Lightning," Fall '97 From Nathan Smith's, "White Lightning," Fall '97As I spend the wee hours of the morning cultivating a hump on my back, poring over the impenetrable essays of academic theorists, it occurs to me there may be some of you out there who have given some thought to entering graduate school. For those of you who are seriously contemplating the options, I have a few words of friendly, thoughtful advice which you should consider before you make this most pivotal career choice. If that doesn't do it for you, let me then offer you a somewhat more rational evaluation of your suitability for graduate school. You should avoid graduate school if you feel you need any of the following to be happy: 1. Money 2. Sleep 3. Fun 4. Free time 5. A life If however, you do not want any of these things, or perhaps you have grown weary of them, you may indeed be an ideal candidate for graduate school. Before deciding for certain whether you should go, take a look at graduate students in your area. We're easy to spot. Wherever there is caffeine, grad students appear. Look for the hunched shoulders, the pale skin of cave dwellers and the squinting eyes (cleary not adjusted to natural light) peeking out from the flabby bags encircling them. Anyone in the place who uses a coffee pot for a mug is most likely one of us. If you're still not sure, ask them how they are doing. If they end their response with footnotes, they are most definitely graduate students. Look carefully in the eyes of these pitiful creatures. Do you really wish to join our ranks? It's not a choice to take lightly. If you are dead set on graduate study, I feel I must provide a tip to make it a little easier. After all, there should be something in life you don't have to learn the hard way. When I think of what has been the hardest-learned lesson of graduate school, I immediately think about the different writing style I've had to adopt since my matriculation. Professors no longer want your papers written comprehensibly. They barely even want them in English. Clarity and concision constitute inexcusable offenses to the professorial ear. In order to provide you with a little head start on your way to becoming a full-fledged windbag, I thought I'd offer a little demonstration. The next passage presents a perfect example of writing in the academic realm. This particular example is sociological, but no field is exempt from the phenomenon described here. At the end, I have taken a fairly simple thesis, and translated it into the appropriate dialect of academese. See if by the end of the essay you can discern it. If you can, it no doubt reflects my position as a second-rate hack. It should be totally incomprehensible, even to the author, in order to be dissertation quality. OK, here goes. Historiographically discoursing, a certain dynamic of sturm and drang perpetuates itself through the Habermasian public spheroids in constant clash and contention for self-validating authenticity. These contests between conflictual narrative perspectives, as represented in the mutual negation of the aformentioned oppositional spheroids may be described simply enough in the safely abstracted paradigmatic discourse to which academe is so often confined, but in this travail I shall attempt to ground the nub of my thrust in the tangible, empirical and contextually dependant. That said, I shall now assay the elucidation of my hypotenuse. The most common failing of analyses presented as exertions of the aforedescribed paradigm is the focus upon spheroids of exclusive or hegemonically sanctioned interest, rather than the genuinely accessible spheroids generally less amenable to the interests of inherently elitist institutional strongholds of academic theory. It is in rectification of this oversight that I focus now on a more comprehensively encompassing manifestation of public socio-political discursivity, vis-a-vis the Ricki Lake show. Many of limited vision dismiss this locus of civil society semiotics as transparent, unworthy, or insignificant. I would proffer that indeed the level of social interest points directly to an overpowering significance. The significance of this program extends far beyond the travelling freakshow of the mass media epoch; it presents an inchoate series of arbitrary dichotomies riddling the intertwining pluralities of American culture. As even a child would observe, this discussion veers directly toward the semiotics of civil society discourse ^ la sociological theoretical analysis. And I would iterate to any such toddler, "Yes indeed my li'l chum, you have in verity delineated the discourse towards which my narrative careens. Now here's a quarter, go get yourself a Tootsie Pop." Indeed, let us scrutinize the arbitrary dichotomies of said semiotic as presented in actual Ricki Lake terms. The following pairings indicate mutually defining oppositions, semiotics of which each side has been loosely linked with American democratic ideals. In this list of oppositions, the first half coincides with all those things hegemonically sanctioned as beneficial to country and character. The latter represents damning accusations hurled at guests by audience members. Thus, the observer will note good/evil dichotomies which run along the iconoclastic fissures of Dope/Whack, Bitch/Ho, G-Money/Poindexter, Post-Op/She-Male, Incest/Matrimony, Pierced tongue/Prince Albert, Sadist/Marv Albert, or beefcake/pork hock. In short, this program actualizes the most fundamental moral codes intrinsic to our social fabric; it merits the same level of intensive scrutiny focused on more anthropologically favored subject matter, like Eggi's Village. Translation: Go Ricki! If you are ready to spend four years writing like this, even in your letters home, then you are a ready-made graduate student. If not, perhaps you should consider carpentry.