The Grad School Diaries: Frost’s Hypothesis

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go, before I sleep;
And miles to go, before I sleep…”
-Robert Frost, American Poet

All right, it’s hardly an original thought; it probably never was. Ever since I first encountered the poem I’ve suspected that somebody knocked off those lines the day after Frost wrote them, and probably at least once each day since somebody else has stolen them for some purpose or other. The thing is, that does not make the original words resonate any less clearly, or lessen what they mean to those who remember them somewhere on a long road to who knows where. The lines give meaning to every seeker who encounters them and understands their subtle implications, and are not diminished thereby. Which probably says more about poetry and legendary poets than it does about me…

Physically, of course, I’ve been more fatigued than this, but when you add together the toughest mental challenge of my life with a moderate rhinovirus and enough stress that I’m barely sleeping and edgy all the time, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as tired as I do right now. But I can’t slow down now; the end of this week brings with it our methods midterm, and if I had another 18 weeks instead of just 18 hours, I still don’t think I’d be ready for this exam. It’s an intricate subject to begin with, and my middle-aged man’s memory is no help. There have actually been a few times over the past couple of months when I have actively questioned if this “drink from the fire hose” approach is really the best way to teach this subject – but I know the question is irrelevant. That’s not the point…

As previously noted, this process is intended to be transformative as well as challenging. Those of us who pass through it successfully are going to become keepers of the collective wisdom for the profession of management; everyone who can give his or her title as “professor of management” is going to be considered an authority on the subject, to some extent, by some people, no matter how full of crap they actually are. Part of this process is about character; about having the integrity to do the right thing even in the toughest times, and not whine about it. If you can’t trust us to take on a difficult class, learn all of the things required for a passing grade, and be ready on exam day without resort to any of the various Stupid Undergraduate Tricks, how on Earth will you ever be able to trust us to lay down The Truth about any subject to a class full of innocent students?

The point here is that while Research Methods is a critically important subject, and our Instructor really is trying to compress several years’ worth of class work into a single 16-week semester, this isn’t just a test of research methods; it’s also a test of us. We’ve been handed a bag of snakes; the real test is what we do with the bag…

The other thing to keep in mind is that everyone who has ever had the letters Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., or J.D. added to the end of their name has faced a similar or identical test. Sooner or later, everyone who attempts to reach this level of knowledge is going to find him or herself on this cold and lonely road, and whether or not they will ever achieve the doctorate they seek depends, at least in part, on the ability to press on when every impulse in your body is yelling at you to stop and rest. I’m not sure what Robert Frost would have made of this voyage, if he was here to see it, but his hypothesis, clearly enough, was that anybody can do things the easy way; character comes at a higher price. If you want the respect of those future students, the admiration of all of the other middle-aged people who wouldn’t dare attempt this passage at our time of life, the authority of being a keeper of the tribal wisdom, and those three magic letters after your name, you’ve got to keep going…

I have promises to keep. And a lot to get through before I sleep. If I ever do…