I’m thinking about getting a Ph.D. or, perhaps, giving myself one. Why? Why not. Some years ago I heard about a world traveler who always signed hotel registers with his name followed by “S-mM, ScHK.” When desk clerks saw his signature they always gave him a better room within his price category, instead of the least desirable room available, a behavior ingrained into most desk clerks in Hospitality Management school.
S-mM, ScHK? Oh, that means self-made man, school of hard knocks. Don’t laugh, he could have used the acronyms for Pittsburg Institute of Social Sciences or Sam Houston Institute of Technology, but that seems to be rather self-defeating, somehow.
Giving oneself a Ph.D. is so much easier than actually earning one at a university. Actual Ph.D. candidates spend years delving deeply into a single subject (learning facts, not wisdom, cynics might say) while less motivated classmates actually receive a much broader education.
So, what do I have to do to eam my Ph.D.? Why, write a Ph.D. thesis, of course, proving that I know a great deal about the chosen subject and expounding about an area that other doctoral candidates have not as yet covered.
Without a faculty advisor to suggest a topic for my thesis, I will have to select one myself, a challenge that is surely surmountable for a future doctor of philosophy. Several enticing subjects immediately come to mind:
Art/Psychology: Confronting the direct correlation between higher ceiling heights and enhanced artistic creativity.
Law: A radical new approach to the teaching of law by incorporating and stressing ethics in every aspect of law school curricula.
Political Science: A study of why incumbents choose not to run for reelection based on their record in office, preferring, instead, to view with alarm the inexperience and moral turpitude of their opponents.
Psychology: A scientifc exploration into why men spit into toilets, aiming for the throat of the bowl, using target shooting terminology to describe results: “eleven o’clock high.”
Sociology: An indictment of Emily Post or, why “manners” has been unfairly taught since 1922 with a sinister-based orientation, ignoring the larger dexter-based community.
Please do not dismiss my possible thesis titles as shallow inventions of a bored nincompoop. These examples actually mirror real life. For example: In the mid-’90s I was a new volunteer at the Getty Villa working in the Illuminated Manuscripts Department. There seemed to be a continuous stream of learned scholars dropping by to check out the Getty’s holdings for their own individual areas of research. I overheard one middle-aged scholar explain to a young staffer that her area of expertise was “The Depiction of the Penis in Illuminated Manuscript Illustration.”
As a recovering introvert, I did not have the gumption to inquire about her rationale for selecting that particular area of investigation for her life’s work.
Ray Singer, S-mM, ScHK.