PhD Comics goes surreal

Surreal, or real?

From the latest installment (Cecilia in Thesisland, Part 6) of an ongoing series by Jorge Cham's cartoon blog Piled Higher & Deeper, we find

Click on the image or the link above to go to the full cartoon.

What a wonderful combination of the reality of dealing with teaching duties while working on your dissertation and the daily reality of dealing with undergrads!

Well, not my daily reality. This (and the even better situations in other panels) only happens because other faculty send the message early and often that they will give credit where it is not due. It doesn't take long before students realize you mean every word in the syllabus, particularly if you give a quiz on the first day of class that asks them to find the place in the syllabus where you say how they can earn extra credit in the class.

Sure you can go to that wedding. That invitation will explain why you missed the first (and easiest) test of the year and will have to use that zero as the one exam you get to drop, but a wedding does not excuse you from having to learn the material.