Job Related Humor

A sense of humor especially important if you work at a service job. Working with people can be fun and interesting, but sometimes it's just wearing. At such times a sense of humor becomes even more necessary.

Often the best humor is unintentional. Over the years I have accumulated a "smile file" full of stuff I have come across at work that made me chuckle. I don't keep track of the names of people who have unwittingly contributed to my "smile file," especia lly since the things that amuse most are the sorts of things that anyone could have written.

Take your pick from the following:
  [Graduate School Defined]   [Reasons for Study]     [Declined Admissions]  and
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Grad School Defined

From the Usenet Newsgroup Soc.College.Grad:

Someone posted a question: "Can anyone give me the names of schools that offer graduate programs in virtual reality?"

Shortly after that, some wag posted a reply: "One could argue that's what graduate school IS.... :-)"

No, I wasn't the wag in question. But I will admit I thought about posting that comment.

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Give Me a Reason

Applicants have to write a statement of reasons for graduate study as part of their application. Sometimes, as a result of their haste to get a statement done and turned in, things come out a bit differently than they intended.

For example, there was the counseling applicant who explained her desire to become a counselor (in part) in these words:

"I have always been fascinated by the development of young children, how they develop into fully speaking and thinking adolescents..."
If you're talking about adolescents, "speaking and thinking" is probably the right order.

The following statement was part of an incomplete application file that didn't get sent on to the Political Science program (or, as the applicant spelled it, Polital Science)for consideration:

In Homer's great literary voyage through the seas of turmoil and prehistoric angst, all but one issue was latched away from the drift of inevitability. That one issue, feminist power identity, eludes this master admiral of the continent's inland seas. Homer makes no clear identifying remorse or recourse about the role of women in modern day anthropological methodology. Ignored discourse, or thought, on this matter creates an unusually problematic conceptual framework on modern classical inquiry on the feminist power identity. Not enough was t he fire and brimstone approach to his "ethnographic," if you will, retelling of man's need to control his environment, but yet a true lacking of a classical f.p.i. (feminist power identity) questions modern inquiry.
That sounds to me like the sort of thing that gets written when one is in the "dash-anything-off-to-get-the-application-form-in-the-mail" frame of mind. Or perhaps it was the "UWM-is-my-forth-or-fifth-choice-so-I-don't-care-what-I-write" frame of mind. Or perhaps it was the
I-have-no-clear-idea-what-to-write-about-so- I-will-string-together-jargon frame of mind.

It would have been interesting to have been afly on the wall in the Poli Sci department had they had the opportunity to review the application. Mentioning classical literature and contemporary anthropology make one seem well rounded, but misspelling the department's name makes one seem a bit careless. And what exactly did the applicant mean by that last sentence? 

Intended Humor

Sometimes, the applicant intends to amuse. Take, for example, the applicant going on from a Master's degree to a Doctoral degree in the same program. He knew the department, he knew his advisor, and they knew him. But he had to write something in his reasons statement, so he gave this reason for seeking a doctorate:
"I've wanted to be a physicist ever since I was a child. It dates back to the time I was five years old and my dad took me to the circus and I saw all these men with funny clothes and red noses pile into this itty-bitty car. They were very funny and they made me laugh. I said 'Who are they, daddy?' and he said, in his big, booming father-type voice, 'Why, those are the physicists, son.' And I've been hooked ever since."
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Thanks, but no thanks...

Then there's the person who wrote to decline our offer of admission (check the reasons listed--but especially their order of appearance):
"This is a letter to inform you that I will not be attending your school...I really love your school's qualities and feel honored for your award and appreciation. However, due to a series of considerations (a cat, a significant other, workload and stipend, focus of academic and creative faculty, the stars...), I'll be accepting an offer elsewhere..."
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Fill in the blank...

Then there are the responses to questions on the application form. Some of these are the product of filling out the form in a hurry. Some are the results of a bit of creative thinking. All lightened my day.
  1. the person who wrote "mindless assembly work" in the "position title or type of work" box in the Employment and Other Activities section.
  2. the person who wrote "only God knows" in the "Credits earned" box.
  3. the applicant from the People's Republic of China who identified her previous address as "The Party School" (presumably a school run by and for the Chinese Communist Party, but the American connotation of the phrase tickled us in the admissions office).
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last revised 19 January 1999