Words: Bridget Spitznagel, Dave Maltz
Music: Closer To Fine, Indigo Girls
I'm trying to find a thesis I can write,
Maybe make a contribution with my life.
But the one thing grad school has done for me
Is to help me take my field less seriously;
it's only bits after all
Well surfing has a luster inexplicable,
And research has a call that's hard to hear
I tossed my old ideas in the bitbucket
I got up, left the office, saying "---- it,
I'm no closer than before."
I went to a lecture, I went to a lunch talk,
I waited for the 'vator, I gave up and I just walked.
There's more than one way I can get out of here -
I'm still sure there has to be.
And the less I do my work, closer I am to done
I went and asked the masters of philosophy
On the Forum 2K web page and their answers came to me.
Doc' Laura abused me, and Kosh just confused me,
Confucius said "newbie" and then somebody cubed me.
I can't take this from an artificial mind,
all I want is my degree.
I went to a lecture, I went to a lunch talk,
I waited for the 'vator, I gave up and I just walked.
There's more than one way I can get out of here -
I'm still sure there has to be.
And the less I do my work, closer I am to done
I talked to the cube at 3 AM
To find company in zephyr bots or possibly a friend.
I woke up with an imprint, on one cheek, of my keyboard,
Unmotivated as I'd been the night before,
and I'd drooled on all the function keys.
I went to a lecture, I went to a lunch talk,
I waited for the 'vator, I gave up and I just walked.
We go to a lecture, we go to a lunch talk,
We wait for the 'vator, we give up and just walked.
We borrow core bibles, we look for our printouts,
We see each fall's arrivals, we track the rate of drop outs
There's more than one way I can get out of here -
I'm still sure there has to be.
And the less I do my work, closer I am to n (minus one),
closer I am to n (minus one), closer I am to done.
Background: Although graduating is the most popular way to leave (of course, launching a startup is also high on some lists), it is not the only way. At the end of every term, the faculty review students' progress. This is known as Black Friday, whether it actually falls on a Friday or not. Each students is sent a letter indicating whether he/she has been making "satisfactory progress". An "n-1" (n-2, etc) letter, when boiled down, indicates that the student has 1 (2, etc) more terms in which to show some improvement.
Tangentially, the students traditionally hold a TG ("thank God it's Friday" party, with pizza and Coke/beer) on Black Friday while their fates are being decided.
The Wean elevators' "home floor" is 3. (The three ground floors are 1, 4, and especially 5; also, there is a lecture hall on 7. Some say that 3 was once heavily trafficked, some say that the elevators couldn't handle the idea of more than two subterranean floors.) According to local lore, an undergraduate did a senior project which determined both the elevators' current algorithm and the optimal algorithm. Sadly, it turned out that reprogramming the elevators would be prohibitively expensive.
A "bible", as at other schools, is a set of class notes (lecture notes, old homework and possibly exams.) A core is one of the required courses. Printouts are supposed to be filed alphabetically but once in a while they just disappear.
Legal frufru: Lyrics © 1996, Bridget Spitznagel. Permission granted for private noncommercial use and reproduction of these lyrics, provided that this copyright notice remains intact. Other uses are negotiable.