The Grad School Diaries: The Saigon Principle

It’s kind of a tough time for the MSU/Broad School of Business Ph.D. Program’s first year students. Of the 5 of us who started in the Management Department this year, four of us are completely bewildered by our research methods class, and even our resident statistician says he’s a bit confused by some of it. When the math guy in the group says he’s confused, you know it’s bad. Nor are the other 10 students in our class (representing the other departments of the business school) feeling any more confident about the process. The guys from Supply Chain Management are more math-oriented than we are (it’s a more intensely math-based discipline) but that isn’t helping them much, since most of this class isn’t actually about solving problems; the Accounting and Finance students have already reached the same conclusion. If you had an eidetic memory (and a real gift for synthesis) you’d still have to pay close attention to have any chance of keeping up in this class. And we’ve already been told that this is the class we MUST complete if we ever want to become second-year doctoral students…

With the midterm in three weeks, the other four management students and I have already formed a study group to try and keep up with the class – or at least keep from falling too far behind to pass. No one told us to; we just got a study room in the Business Library and declared the revolution without further prompting. It’s an excellent example of the cohort working together for our mutual survival, which is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing. It would be nice to think of us as a pack of wolves (working together to bring down the great, leviathan prey: knowledge!) or a herd of bison (mighty creatures of the plains, forming a ring to fend off the predators away from us all!), but in practice I imagine we probably look more like a flock of sheep…

And, in many ways, I am the most bewildered of the flock. Oh, I suppose that our Chinese and Korean students are working harder than I am, what with having to take all of these lessons in a foreign language (and one as illogical and confusing as English, at that!) when even the native speakers in the class are having trouble understanding our instructor when he’s going at “sprint” speed. But all of them are fundamentally more knowledgeable about these topics than I am, and none of them are trying to cope with the deterioration of memory and cognitive function my advanced age and ongoing medical issues have produced. By rights, everyone else should have thrown me off the back of the sled by now. And yet, as far as I can tell, I’m the group’s best public speaker, it’s most experienced manager and administrator, and it’s only natural leader. To find their way through the gauntlet this program has set for them, my cohort needs me as much as I need them…

It wasn’t until I was asked to proctor a midterm exam for one of our professors and saw the way the undergraduates were looking up to me that the whole thing finally hit home. I’ve walked a lot of strange roads since I was a wide-eyed college junior; I’ve done and seen and been a lot of things – but I never did learn how to give up. Whatever else they might be, I see that same determination – that same moral courage – in the eyes around the conference table in our ad-hock study group. We may not all make it; some of us may wash out or be sent home, but we will not go quietly…

Some years ago, Billy Joel wrote a song about the experience of the American soldiers who fought in the lost war in Vietnam, entitled “Good-night, Saigon;” it’s the composition you may have heard that includes the chorus of “And we would all go down, together; we said we’d all go down, together…” My fellow first-year students and I come from different worlds, and one day soon, win or lose, we will be scattered to the four corners of the world and meet again only occasionally, if ever. But until then, we have chosen to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and fight. It’s the Saigon Principle, and if our challenge is less brutal (and our chance of actually dying in the process is far lower), our defiance and determination are no less intense…

Now if we can just pass this midterm…