What’s a dissertation?
Overheard on the bus onto campus two days ago:
Student A: Yeah, I might go for my Ph.D., but I don’t know. I’ll have to write a dissertation….
Student B: What’s a dissertation?
Student A: Like a 300 page paper.
Student B: (shocked awed silence) Oh my god. How can anyone write that much?
I had to control my laughter at this. After all, can’t be mocking the customers. But a dissertation is hardly a 300 page paper, although at this point I’m not sure which would be harder. I was also a bit surprised that Student B didn’t know what a dissertation is, or at least hadn’t heard of dissertations. But people can be remarkably ignorant: I remember learning in college that an acquaintance didn’t know who Mao Zedong was, and I only learned about the existence of Oxfam a couple of years ago.
Or maybe this is the Cambridge effect, where everyone is writing a dissertation. It’d be like asking what a producer was in Hollywood.
