I know I've mentioned it a few times, as well as have read on other blogs the comparison between graduate school and cults. While playing around on the internet this morning, I stumbled across this link which is about LDS Mormon indoctrination, and lists with explanations steps of indoctrination into dangerous cults. I was intrigued by how fitting most of those steps could be applied to becoming a graduate student. So I felt like going through and detailing how it might fit with the graduate student experience. Again, I didn't come up with these stages/steps myself (the link to them and how they apply to Mormon indoctrination is above), but the explanations in relationship to grad school came from my brain.
1) The goal: Yes, while there can be a tangible goal coming from being a graduate student (like a masters or a PhD...), much of the time you end up just searching for answers. And in most cases, it's really just theory on top of theory. With sciences like geology, physics, chemistry...you can test and test and test your hypotheses to your heart's content, and even if the data supports your hypothesis, it's still just a theory. While you can be 99% sure that your theory is definitely the absolutely correct one, you'll always have that minute bit of uncertainty, there's no way to actually prove that it's true. For example, geologist are completely confident in their theory of how the Earth is laid out (crust, mantle, core...physical states of them, etc), but even the professor of geology 101 at my graduate institution liked to remind everybody that even though they're sure that's right, there's no physical proof. It's not an awesome math theorem where you can lay everything out in a proof and say "Yes, this is absolutely 100% true" (sorry....undergraduate degree in pure mathematics...).
2) A charismatic leader: Your advisor. Obviously. Else no one would cough up monstrous amounts of money to haul their lives across the country/world to work with them.
3) A sacred doctrine: This one's a little bit sketchy...but for most academic disciplines there's a book the professor/advisor/other grad student always suggests, says you absolutely have to buy, not rent, etc etc. At grad school it was my advisor's book on trace fossils. In undergrad, it was my number theory book.
4) Divine coincidence: Another sketchy one. You have to have come to the cult by divine coincidence, not rationally decided to join. I'd like to think this applied to me, that I stumbled upon it because of weird extenuating circumstances in my life, not that I ever really wanted to go to grad school, but ended up there as a coward's way out. I dunno. Don't have too much for this one. Maybe it's never really a rational decision to go to graduate school.
5) Positive results through commitment: Usually this one is equated to giving money to the cult. Well, first this could fit very well for you as a graduate student if you're not funded. You can't even attend the school unless tuition is paid someone. And even if you are funded, SOMEBODY is giving money to you to give to the school, in some way shape or form, be it a privately donated scholarship, department funds, whatever. You can't be apart of this cult...err university...unless you somehow give them thousands of dollars every six months.
6) Extraordinary measures: After you've paid up, you have to do something that doesn't really sit well with you. Maybe it's moving across the country, leaving friends and family behind. Maybe it's taking on a position you didn't actually sign up for (that's what happened to me...I got there and was told I'd be taking care of a scorpion and a tarantula, when I'm super highly allergic to spiders). I tried to put up with it, I really did. To really be sucked into the grad school cult, you have to get over doing things that go against your better judgement.
7) Member complicity: After you do your against-your-judgement act, you are rewarded and welcomed into the cult, whatever that entails, with privileges. The Mormon exampled listed on the webpage is about becoming a card-carrying temple member. That just reminds me about when I forked over $40 for keys so I could come work harder than any person should be required to, on off hours, at night, over the weekend, when the building was locked. Like I really wanted to do that.
8) A cycle of self breaking: To quote the Mormon indoctrination webpage on this one, "members are instructed to donate huge sums of money or contribute tremendous time and labor to the cult." It goes on to say most people don't know how much will be demanded from them before they join. Well now, that sounds like the definition of graduate school.
9) Confusion and transference: Alternating rewards and punishment to make you confused and dependent on them. Another graduate student did this to me for the three weeks I was there while my advisor was on field work. One minute he would tell me I was doing fantastic work considering the circumstances, other times he would tell me I was just being a whiney bitch and should suck it up because I was making a measly $400 more than him a year (for the record, I now make double what he does, doing glorified data entry at my job). He would say to talk to him if you had any questions or concerns, and if I wanted to talk about the way I was being treated, he would get angry and literally tell me to drink the kool-aid.
10) Prescriptive behavior: guidance on how to behave. Once they confused you, you look to the leaders (advisors, professors, older graduate students) on how to survive in the graduate world. I've always been a problem in universities, ever since I started, because I didn't want to conform to what they wanted me to do. I was actually punished a few times with hard math problems at my first undergraduate school for refusing to do a math problem the hard way, just because a professor said so. That was the first issue the graduate university tried to stomp out of me. They were nasty when I didn't conform to their correct behavioral methods...ie working my butt off for less than federal minimum wage, happily accepting tasks even when I hated them, and drinking. Oh and my geo group were huge Star Wars fanatics. Sorry guys, but James T. Kirk will always have my heart in that debate.
Phew. Halfway there.
11) Goal of inclusion: the feeling that you absolutely have to be included. That you need to fit in. I never felt this need, not even when I was in elementary school, so clearly that's probably a big part of the problem why they couldn't suck me in. But they need to feel like part of their group. They get together and study (*shudder* something I always dreaded), work on papers, bitch, moan, complain, gossip. They are defined by their role as a graduate student.
12) Never expose uncertainty to those lower than you: Well this one's straight forward. You want the people lower in the hierarchy to continue to hang on your every word, to continue to believe in the graduate school cult. Because if you're uncertain, they might see past the facade of doing all that hard work for nothing.
13) Never expose uncertainty to those higher than you: Also straight forward. As soon as I started expressing that maybe this was the wrong thing, everybody was jumping to tell me how I was being hasty, just homesick, should stick it out, etc etc. While I don't think I could be kicked out from the grad cult, they sure made my three weeks a living nightmare. No one would help or listen to me, accept me, once I had said I was doubtful graduate school was the right thing.
14) The cult precludes all other commitments: The graduate cult is the most important thing in your life. No exceptions. Doesn't matter that you're 500 miles away from family. 1200 miles away from your fiance who has a commitment to the Navy. None of that matters. Everything you do is for the graduate cult.
15) Never refuse a request: A guy who only dabbles in the geology department was asked by my advisor to cover ONE day of class while advisor was on field work. It turned into three weeks, twice a week, plus every day being available to help with an outrageous 200 page project. But if he had refused, he would've lost his good standing as a helpful student in the department.
16) All requests can be challenged: you can challenge some request the department gives you. But they don't owe you anything, despite all the time and money you pour into them. Even if you help write a published paper, there's a chance you won't get mentioned or just mentioned in passing, even if you wrote the bulk of it. There were many complaints about that in my department.
17) Never take action in the cult leader's name: Surprise, surprise. The leader, aka your advisor, is free form all responsibility. It doesn't matter that you don't have background in the field and he's completely abandoned all the new graduate students and not taught you for a second on what he's giving you a 200 pages project on. It's your fault.
18) Act automatically: Just do what they say. Don't think about it. Teach the class for no pay. Add in those four hours a day on your day off to run the sieving machine. Don't ask questions, just freaking do it.
19) Witness and accept the leader's faults: one you get close to the advisor, you come to realize he has a dark side. He's not the happy, awesome person he was when you emailed, saying you'd want to work with him. Mine wanted me to come visit, immediately, when I emailed him. I couldn't, as I was in Virginia, driving to North Carolina for my best friend's undergraduate graduation, driving to New York for Fleet Week, and a bunch of other things. Well that pissed him off and he refused to talk to me until I was sitting in front of him picking classes. You have to just accept that as the norm.
And finally,
20) The leader is perfection: the final step here is believing your advisor to be perfect in every way. To accept that his judgement is right, always. You can complain that he's difficult, but that's just because he's doing what's best for you.
And there you have it. 20 (mostly) clear examples of how joining graduate school is eerily similar to joining a cult.
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