Research in Hell (aka Grad School)

I went to my advisor, said, "I know what I can do,"
and laid it all out in just a page or two.
"No, no!" he said and lectured me and told me to return
with a formal, nice proposal on a triplicated form.

Chorus:
"You see, you just don't have the knack for this thing.
Research must be approved, with the ring
of authority garnered from effort and sweat.
We won't let you out of grad school yet."

So I went and tapped out a twelve-page design
and asked my advisor to read it and sign.
"No, no!" he said and lectured me and demanded
to set up a committee or my TAship would be remanded.

(Chorus)

So I started my research and waited and hoped
the committee would like me and even could cope
with seeing each other another damn time for another damn meeting
with a stupid grad student and why do I have to sit here.
By the time the committee met, it had been another year.

(Chorus)

The committee finally met, and it said,
"You must redo everything. That old project is dead."
So I went and got another committee,
another six months to get some faculty to agree on anything.

(Chorus)

Eighteen months later, I was finished and done
with a draft of my thesis. I was ready to run
out of there right after my readers approved.
Then they came back to me and said, "This will never do."

(Chorus)

My new advisor said, "This isn't quite enough.
You've only explained half of this and none of the other stuff.
You really need at least twice this space to fully explain
your argument, your theory, your data twice again."

(Chorus)

Finally, I brought it in, in a pickup truck.
Twenty thousand pages, and most of it was muck.
My thesis defense was easy, a breeze.
No one had read the thing, and so they were pleased.

"You see, you finally have learned it by now.
Fill up the space with jargonish words.
Concise explanations are all for the birds.
Grad school's not for thinking, anyhow."

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