The Machiavellian's Guide to Graduate Study

One day, near the end of last semester, I had a strange encounter on the bus home from the office. Three stops before mine, a passenger bumped into me on the way out. As he passed, I saw he was older, say about 30, skinny, disheveled, with a gray face that made him look thoroughly beaten. His receding hairline suggested that he was a fellow graduate student. We locked eyes for a moment. His held a wild intensity that was somewhat disturbing. And then he was gone.\nWhen I got home, I found that a couple sheets of folded paper had been shoved into my jacket pocket. It was a manifesto of sorts, typewritten, anonymous, titled "The Machiavellian's Guide to Graduate Study: Things Grad-Student Kind Was Not Meant to Know." Perhaps the guy had recognized me from my IDS mug shot, or perhaps he was handing them to people at random. It might not have even come from him. But as soon as I read it, I knew it had to be published. \nThe guide is composed of ten rules for success and happiness in one's graduate career at the cost of any higher ideals -- such as the advancement of knowledge -- or, to a degree, the success and happiness of others. Being a conscientious, dedicated and moral grad student myself, I personally disavow it. By exposing it to the light of public scrutiny, however, I hope others will write in to confront and ultimately defeat its cynical prescriptions. Of course, I understand this means making it available to grad students, prospective grad students or even undergraduates of such low character that they might actually find it useful. But I prefer to believe that my peers' better natures will win out.\nThe Machiavellian's Guide to Graduate Study:\nRule #1: When a sane person cannot handle it, go insane. Haven't you noticed graduate students and/or professors sometimes wander around muttering to themselves? Academia runs according to its own rules, divorced from reality -- learn them in order to bend them.\nRule #2: Procrastination breeds efficiency. In the business world, people get rich through "just-in-time" production. Nothing breeds novel solutions like having an assignment due in 20 minutes.\nRule #3: Take anything seriously, and it will cripple you. Why worry? Let others do it for you.\nRule #4: The brighter the candle, the quicker it melts. Graduate study is a long, hard slog, like marching into Russia in winter. Best not to be Napoleon.\nRule#5: A conscience only complicates grading. Remember that your funding is not based on the opinions of your students. And they are only rarely armed.\nRule #6: It is easier to fake effort than brilliance, and often more rewarding. In fact, the longer you make a paper, the more revenge you heap upon your professors.\nRule #7: Lies can be uncovered, but interpretations can only be debated. There is always some other nutty person who will believe you. This is how schools of theory are born.\nRule #8: Never ruin a good theory with facts. Most of the people on the New York Times Non-Fiction List don't do it, why should you?\nRule #9: Consulting a professor is like praying to a strange, primitive god: do it only when you are desperate or when what you say will appease it. You have a place in the academic universe, and it is just above sea cucumbers.\nRule #10: Regarding gods and faculty, know that the intervention of either requires a sacrifice.\nNow that they're out, I'm sure you see the fallacy of these rules. Right? Right?