Disclaimer & Satire Warning!
What you are about to read is in no way intended to be offensive to bona fide PhDs who busted their chops to earn their coveted pieces of parchment. So everyone put your hackles down right now; this is satire. Put another way, if you’re a sensitive snowflake … you might want to leave now.
All Those Acronyms In My Soup
Every time I hear the acronym Ph.D., my mind reflexively serves up the joke we’ve all probably heard at one time in our lives …
Question: ….What do the letters Ph.D. stand for?
Answer: ……Piled Higher and Deeper.
Groan. I know … I know … All those comedians are out of work and here I am trying to be funny, right? I apologize, but my humor is prone to getting derailed rather quickly.
Off The Rails
My husband ran off with a woman who is a Ph.D., so one day I decided to consult my favorite PhD [Dr. Google], to see what is involved in the process of earning a coveted PhD. Prior to having a personal frame of reference, I never cared enough to bother to look it up.
The takeaway was that earning a PhD requires candidates to hone the fine art of assembling and regurgitating a voluminous body of data in such a way as to appear to have ‘expanded the boundaries of knowledge’. Wow.
Okay, so in average-joe lingo for us mere mortals, it means that Said Candidate did a ton of research and developed a thesis. Then the candidate proceeded to jump through a succession of increasingly difficult hoops to ‘defend’ their newly aggregated ‘philosophy’ in front of a panel of over-degreed academicians.
Sounds like a fun time for a Friday night, eh?
Let Them Eat Cake!
I’m sure it varies depending on the institution, but it appears to me that these overly-degreed types believe that along with their doctorate comes three additional initials to append to their signature: VOC. That stands for Vicarious Osmotic Co-Regency.
This is not a real term. I made it up. It’s a snarky was to indicate that the folks believe that since they are affiliated with institutions conferring advanced degrees, then somehow, [by osmosis perhaps?], they too are key holders to The Fountain Of Universal Knowledge.
My humor imp is whispering an old catchphrase in my ear that has something to do with Valley Girls, spoons, and gag reflexes.
But then who am I? And why should my opinion matter? Clearly, it doesn’t. I’m not any kind of scholar. Nah, I’m not even in the same zip code as any of these venerated academicians. I’m just an everyday person — and gasp! (clutching my chest!) — an everyday person not having an advanced degree. Quick! Call campus security! How dare this woman opine on the academic process when she possesses no parchment from our institution?! LOL
Distance Learning Gets A Lot More Bandwidth
I’ll step away from the podium and microphone for a moment to whisper a few off-air comments so as not to risk appearing overly flip and disrespectful.
Call me simple, but why would anyone want to pay ungodly amounts of money to vacuum up a bunch of facts (and try to store them in limited mental RAM), when any peon can access Dr. Google’s infinite knowledge base for free , simply by using a smart phone and two thumbs?
While we’re on the subject of Google — on the off chance that you have been living under a rock and haven’t heard yet — Big Brother Google IS taking over the world don’tcha know?!
You’re welcome.
Riddle Me This Batman
Furthermore, why does anyone (other than perhaps medical students taking the Hippocratic oath and intending to one day be treating patients and writing pharmaceutical prescriptions) even need or want a doctorate?
Isn’t having a Master’s degree and keeping up with annual continuing education enough to function intelligently in one’s profession and live well?
Excuse my one-off sense of humor here, but the photos I saw of a few Ph.D. conferring ceremonies looked eerily akin to being inducted into secret societies. I mean (seriously?) a ‘hooding’ ceremony?
And what’s up with the muckety-mucks wearing those heavy black velvet robes? That’s waaaay creepy if you ask me. A word to the wise: if you’re ever at a conferring ceremony and you happen to notice a pentagram drawn on the floor people are standing in a circle around it … quick! … run for your life!
Now before any of you, overly-credentialed types start getting your gums in a flap, relax. As I said, this is satire.
Not To Be Outdone
[Polishing my fingernails on my lapel.]
Well, not to brag, but I too, have assembled a few facts. I too, have developed my own ‘philosophy’ and I, too, am ready to defend my philosophy.
My philosophy is rather simple. Knowledge gained outside academia can benefit one just as well as knowledge learned by emptying one’s wallet and becoming a lemming in order to get degreed from an institute of … ahem, excuse me while I make a stiff upper lip to enunciate the word … ‘higher learning’.
To support my humor philosophy, consider the following:
- Knowledge gained through self-study never leaves one up past the eyeballs in debt for student loans. (Check.)
- Knowledge gained through self-study never requires donning that ridiculous-looking square hat with that tassel-thingy dangling in your field of vision. (Check.)
- And most of all, knowledge gained through self-study is less likely to leave a person with an irascible personality and frozen stern demeanor that says: “My knickers have been twisted and in an uncomfortable knot for decades!” (Check.)
Furthermore, it also appears that the overly-degreed types apparently think that Botoxing everything from the neck up helps them appear more intellectual and learned.
And to that, I say, “Hey! Blink will ya?!”
Acknowledgments
Humor aside, I realize that we’re all different. I honestly and very seriously respect the fact that some folks want - – and may even need — a PhD in their chosen professions. And if that’s your case, I say, go for it! Pull out the stops! Trip the light fantastic! Do backflips off the university diving board.
And when you get your Ph.D., pile it as high and as deep as your little heart desires.
And hey, while you’re at it, why stop at the degree? Why not differentiate yourself and pull further ahead of the pack by rolling up to your conferring ceremony in your very own Kat Diesel front end loader?!
What is it they say? … Go big or go home? Now that would be going big, wouldn’t it?
Um, Yeah, About That Sudden Stop At The End …
I will be switching from satire to serious-as-a-judge mode as I end this post. Degrees or no degrees, at the end of this life, when it’s all said and done, our hearts will beat for the very last time.
When that happens, we all level up.
Once we leave this life, no one gets to sit in the best seats. No one gets to take their gold name tags, keys to the executive wash room, and venerated titles with them. That is, unless you’re counting the title printed on the toe-tag at the morgue that reads ‘Highly Educated Dead Guy’.
The body that we pampered so much will go back to being nothing but ashes and dust. And what about all that knowledge we worked so hard to prove we had while we were alive? It’ll be useless as our mental faculties break up.
There’ll be no more egos to aggrandize and no more (imagined) centrality to gloat over. Everything here will suddenly become irrelevant.
And what about that $100,000+ you spent on getting yourself educated? Down the drain.
It’ll be Game Over.
The bottom line is that no matter how educated we’d become, how big our houses were, how many expensive cars we died with, or how large our bank accounts swelled to be — all of our graves will be the same size.
Nevertheless, I Say, Go For It
Live large. Do whatever flips your wig. Get a degree — or not. Hey, get two or three degrees if it makes you feel more ‘self-actualized’.
Just be careful that you don’t take yourself (and those degrees) too seriously because no one’s getting out of here alive. You can’t take any of it with you.
Just ask King Tut.
Everyday People
I’ll close by saying that my non-PhD’d philosophy can be summed up in a stanza from an old song from the 60’s.
Sly & The Family Stone once sang: “I am no better and neither are you. We are the same, whatever we do.” A couple of lines later in the song, we are reminded to love and to appreciate how there are ‘different strokes for different folks’.
And all I can add to that is: “And so on and so on, and scooby dooby doobie.”
I am Everyday People.
*** No academicians were harmed in the writing of this piece.
For years I moonlighted as a serious healthcare administrator. These days I am flying my humor flag and enjoying life. I write to dispel the rumor that I rode off quietly into the sunset. Smile and enjoy the ride. Life is good.
