thedig13

MakeYourself, perhaps you should read your own question: "Why does Big Bang Theory piss off academics?"
 
M-ttl is an academic who dislikes TBBT, and, in Post 29, vocalized his/her problems with the show. By virtue of these facts, Post 29 is an answer to the very question which you used as the title for this thread. When people devote time and energy to answering your questions in a well-thought-out, considerate, and thoughtful fashion, perhaps you should respond with something less rude than "Boo hoo, stereotypes have a purpose" or "This post is a lot of wasted effort."
 
If you didn't want our answers, then you shouldn't have posted the question to begin with.

MakeYourself, perhaps you should read your own question: "Why does Big Bang Theory piss off academics?"
 
M-ttl is an academic who dislikes TBBT, and, in Post 29, vocalized his/her problems with the show. By virtue of these facts, Post 29 is an answer to the very question which you used as the title for this thread. When people devote time and energy to answering your questions in a well-thought-out, considerate, and thoughtful fashion, perhaps you should respond with something less rude than "Boo hoo, stereotypes have a purpose" or "This post is a lot of wasted effort."
 
If you didn't want our answers, then you shouldn't have posted the question to begin with.

You're my new hero. This is pretty much a flawless summary of everything I dislike about TBBT.
 
I was going to write a longer post raising many of the same points, but chickened out and settled for a shorter, two-line post (#24). So, thank you so much for vocalizing your thoughts, which, incidentally, mirror my own.

Well, I originally started the thread as a 'fun' thread because I too think it is funny that academics have strong opinions on it, but I think I've offended some people now. Ooops.

Dang, this post is a lot of wasted effort.

MakeYourself, perhaps you should read your own question: "Why does Big Bang Theory piss off academics?"
 
M-ttl is an academic who dislikes TBBT, and, in Post 29, vocalized his/her problems with the show. By virtue of these facts, Post 29 is an answer to the very question which you used as the title for this thread. When people devote time and energy to answering your questions in a well-thought-out, considerate, and thoughtful fashion, perhaps you should respond with something less rude than "Boo hoo, stereotypes have a purpose" or "This post is a lot of wasted effort."
 
If you didn't want our answers, then you shouldn't have posted the question to begin with.

Basically, this. Obviously, it's a comedy, so you have to make fun of the characters, but BBT does it in a way that degrades the characters instead of humanizing them.
 
Also, if you liked Futurama and Community, I'd recommend HBO's Silicon Valley and FX's Archer.

Ah, irony.

Because apparently this is how the show is written:
 
Or:
 
It's not actually funny. The joke is "haha look at these losers". I find that boring.  I don't actually see anything related to myself as an "academic" so I think you mean STEM Academics. I could care less -- though I was raised by an original wave D&D player, it incidentally, has little to do with "academia" for me. I was raised in nerd/geek culture but I still find much of it detestable (see: San Diego Comicon refuses to admit there is a sexual harassment problem at Cons) We're also expected to laugh when a woman wanders into a comic book shop "is she lost?" instead of realizing this is not weird or unusual and also not a joke. We're expected to laugh when things that look like gay advances are played out between male characters - we're supposed to find "predatory lesbian advances" funny (between Penny and Amy). We're supposed to laugh at "quirky" qualities that remind us of Aspergers. It's not funny. It's sexist, it's ableist, it's homophobic, it's racist. This is old and tired and boring.   
I think this just implies you were going to refuse all counter-arguments from the beginning. "stereotypes have a purpose". 
 
Yes! They do serve a purpose in our culture -- for anyone out there studying human behavior, sociology, media studies, humanities & what have you, we know this. Even a quick wikipedia will tell you what that purpose is!:
 
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts.[8][9][10][11] Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component and often occurs without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping and discrimination is the behavioral component of prejudicial reactions.[8][9][12] In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.[8][9]
Although related, the three concepts can exist independently of each other.[9][13] According to Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly, stereotyping leads to racial prejudice when people emotionally react to the name of a group, ascribe characteristics to members of that group, and then evaluate those characteristics.[10]
Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes[3] are:
Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance
Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior towards stereotyped groups
Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields[14]
 
 
 
huh. Who would have thought, right? You mean like how women don't enter STEM fields at the same rates as men do? Weird, right? Our Media and culture couldn't POOOOSSSIBLY affect this phenomenon, right?
 
The audience laughs at Penny because Penny (a woman) is the joke. That's it. The crux of the humor regarding Penny is she's a funny dumb girl who doesn't "get" nerd culture. 
 
And I'm sick and tired of bad, lazy writing which alienates me. It has nothing to do with feeling misrepresented as a nerd and everything to do with a lack of basic human decency and respect towards being a woman in the "nerd" culture. Other sitcoms exist. I pretend TBBT doesn't. 

Are grad students even humans?
 
No. They are odd humans.

Damn chief, I didn't know I could group people like that as opposed to seeing them as individuals...life just got a whole lot easier!   

But seriously, if I want cleverly written entertainment about geeks and nerds, Futurama and Community are far superior.

Oh boo hoo.
 
Stereotypes have a purpose, there are many stereotypes that are true and many generalizations that one could make about any group of people. Academics are often geeks and nerds, it's the truth, suck it up. Yes, the show is over-exaggerated but it's a comedy show on cable TV, it's not setting out to be a realistic portrayal of life, it's just playing on common stereotypes which can be funny - it's okay to laugh at yourself once in a while. Also, I think it is one of the better-written sitcoms on cable TV right now (which is not saying much cause sitcoms suck pretty bad nowadays).
 
And I'm not sure how much you've watched the show, but they make the audience laugh at Penny as well. Penny's role is not necessarily to be the 'normal' one, her role is contrasted with the main 'geeky' characters and the show makes just as much fun of her as they do of the geeks.
 
If anything, the 'normal' non-academic people that I know who watch the show love the academic characters and think that the show has made 'geeky' cool. It seems like academics are the only ones angry about being called geeks, but it is what you make it.

Not to nit-pick, but I'm getting paid very, very generously to spend 5-8 years "giving up pay."

Try patching things over with the third writer AND building a new relationship by doing summer research. That way, in September/October, you have two choices as to who can write the third letter, and can decide based on which professor you think would write the better letter.

UC Davis is having a new graduate apartment complex built, and it is currently leasing for the 2014-2015 year. I got a heads up from the history graduate coordinator.

'Nice set of hooters you got there.'

Only appropriate when at a dinner involving endangered owls. But if she gets the joke, you know you've got a winner since she obviously has good taste in movies.

Not quite on topic but related: a POI recommended Pierre Bayard's very entertaining "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," which I found to be a good way to break the spell of the "I'm illiterate if I didn't read every word" panic. He argues roughly that the ideas in books rarely matter as much as their relations to other ideas, and that figuring out those networks of ideas rarely requires reading whole books. Even more relevant to grad school coursework, he says that sometimes reading carefully is actually a hindrance to the comprehension of broad context, which is really why books matter in the first place. 
 
I don't mean to suggest any particular conclusions from that about how you should approach course reading, but it seems important to remember that at least in some cases, "not-reading" is just a different kind of reading, not an inferior one.

Yeah, I would say that people overestimate the important of your adviser having to do exactly what you do. My adviser works on a different time period and country, though same general region,and we have different thematic interests. And you're right, your interests are likely going to change... I would say that of the people I know, about 2/6 are doing exactly what they set out to do, 3/6 have stayed in the same general time and/or region but changed interests, and 1/6 have made dramatic changes (like Europe to South Asia, or 16th century to 20th).

Yes, my adviser does something very different from me overall.  As a professor at a different university from my own told me, you will have many advisers throughout your career.  Yes your departmental adviser is important, but they are not the only person whose help you will need.  This was said as encouragement, since my work (history of Med) does not traditionally fit well in my department, although I have been able to compile a committee where each member's expertise is able to speak to a different field that my work fits into.

There was no clear "fit" between me and my advisors (or other faculty members) at my department when I started here four years ago. Yet I have had a very rewarding, productive experience, and cannot imagine receiving more practical and fruitful help from other professors, even if their research interests corresponded more closely to mine. My point is that we shouldn't overhype "fit," however you define it. 

Most PhD programs offer funding, even for non-US applicants. Is there any reason why you were denied funding from all three?
 
Knowing absolutely nothing about any of the programs, I'd lean towards Princeton for the aforementioned prestige and resources, but if other schools are stronger fits, then those might be better for you.
 
Finally, I'll reiterate what's been said before: Unless you have ample family money (i.e.: enough to pay for 6-8 years' worth of tuition, housing rent, and living expenses without a smidgen of debt and without dipping into your savings), you should stay away from unfunded PhD programs.

I could've sworn there was another thread with the same premise a few years back, but a search revealed nothing. It's the start of my finals week, so I figured that I may as well kill time by (re)creating this thread.
 
So, fire away! If you could design/teach/enroll in any seminar you wanted, what would it be?
 
Feel free to mention course titles, central topics/themes, proposed readings, and what you find interesting about the seminar (or where you got the idea from).

Not to nit-pick, but I'm getting paid very, very generously to spend 5-8 years "giving up pay."

Basically, this. The annual income of a graduate student or an adjunct is a lot of money to a lot of people. Most income-earning individuals in the U.S. make less than 25K a year. No matter how you cut it, the lifestyle of an academic is relatively cushy and the salary is enough to survive on; anybody who argues otherwise is, frankly, a little out-of-touch with reality.

Not to nit-pick, but I'm getting paid very, very generously to spend 5-8 years "giving up pay."