Year 3, Day 308: Shakespeare Institute -- Giving Cause for Concern

For a PhD student, nothing stings quite so much as the expression, "Giving Cause for Concern."  It is what they put on your supervision form when they believe you to be underachieving in your writing.  They have just had a supervision with you where you could not answer all of their questions, because part of your process to get the most out of each meeting was to clear your mind (as it is sometimes hard to follow the supervisor's train of thought if you have your own agenda in there) and you couldn't think of a sufficient answer to the question they are now "Giving Cause for Concern" over.  Every time you have a supervision, both of the people assigned to you talk about you and your work until the very moment they have something else going on, a meeting, another victim, a lunch, or something, which can either be a good thing as they are excited by your work, or a bad thing, because they have a lot of criticism for you.  The strange thing is that you don't know which it is until about a day later... because all of us in the PhD business strut around this tiny village day in and day out needing to be taken down a peg or two... when you get the supervision report saying they are "Giving Cause for Concern" over the work you have just handed in.

I have been told I am satisfactory before in these reports.  I really have.  Never a "Very Satisfactory" from them -- which is a real classification, by the way, as if to say one's work could be "incredibly normal" or "ultra-mediocre" if one worked hard enough at it -- but I've been told that I am good enough.  On paper.  Where they, instead of highlighting "Giving Cause for Concern", I imagine them nodding to themselves and saying, "Oh, why not?  He's done an alright job for us this month, nothing incredible, and he certainly doesn't stand out from a crowd.  But we'll give him this moment... Satisfactory!"  It says a lot that you are aiming right at the middle of the bunch when you are writing a PhD (a work that is supposed to be an actual, original piece of scholarship, bt-dubs-) so that you don't rock the boat, or act the upstart, or insult those that have come before you.  I've been told that no one ever recieves a compliment around here, especially about their writing, when they are writing a PhD.  Once again, because us PhD students are the jackasses who invented the "construction-worker-wolf-whistle", the "I-don't-care-if-I'm-standing-in-a-crowded-elevator-fart", and "Donald Trump Hair", and therefore need a dose of humility every chance the administration gets.

I'm fairly certain I'm completely alone on this one.  No other PhD student has ever felt this way, ever. The fact that I have admitted to receiving a "Giving Cause for Concern" means that I am weak-willed and shall never recieve a University appointment, or that I shall be run out of town as soon as the villagers have decided to fire up the torches and pitchforks, or that my supervisors look on me with shame and embarrassment and will insist on calling every academic institution in the world after this to let them know that I am not worthy.  I will be relagated to a minimum-wage customer service call center in the middle of America for AT&T, or CableVision, or Comcast, or Verizon, or the complaint center for Young Misunderstood Democrats in Texas... My brain goes overboard sometimes, but you get the idea.  Getting this 'grade' is bad.

In fact, the only thing I can do, other than throw myself off a metaphorical bridge, is ignore this and move on.  Keep writing the best I can, and keep getting the crap kicked outta me.  Ask for acceptance and get denied.  Keep asking, keep writing, and one day I'll have a PhD and feel relief because I no longer have to ask people if I'm a bad writer.  This bad grade, as it were, is not recognized by me.  If I get kicked to the curb it will undoubtedly be unpleasant, but way less torturous than I have imagined it to be.

Today's lesson: If you tell someone they suck at something often enough, they will eventually ignore you and do it anyway without you.  If you express your disappointment in someone often enough, they will eventually ignore you and be awesome without you.  If you are taking your bad day out on everyone around you often enough, your friends will write it off as a personality quirk and avoid you on those days... your students will believe it is their fault, process this blame-cycle, eventually see reason, then ignore you and do it anyway without you.  Unless you are JK Simmons at the end of Whiplash, then and only then will your dickishness pay off in the form of a killer drum solo.

Dromio:
But I pray, sir, why am I beaten?

Antipholus:
Dost thou not know?

Dromio:
Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.

Antipholus:
Shall I tell you why?

Dromio:
Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say, every why hath a
wherefore.

Antipholus:
Why, first, for flouting me, and then wherefore, for
urging it the second time to me.

Dromio:
Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason? -- Comedy of Errors (II.ii)

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