Published: Mon 07 April 2008
By Joseph Reagle
In praxis .
tags: phd
If only I had something like this while working on the
dissertation!
— “We here at Mead understand that as students get older and wiser,
they need notebooks with increasingly narrow lines,” Mead CEO John A.
Luke told reporters. “In college, people are at a stage in their
education where they require 9/32nds of an inch between each line, which
is why we make college-ruled notebooks. But I think we can all agree
that grad school is a completely different world than college: a world
where 9/32nds of an inch is simply too much room.”…“How can we expect
graduate students to learn to gather information and construct knowledge
independently within their specialized field of study using
college-ruled notebooks?” he added. “These students need a
narrower-lined notebook, and at long last, they have it.”…“Just think:
If you are writing a dissertation on elements of thanatopsis and
necromimesis as they relate to cacaesthesian themes of mid-20th-century
Irish literature, do you really want your notebook lines to be more than
seven millimeters apart?” Luke said. “Of course not.”…“Gone are the days
of graduate students having to tediously pencil in new lines between
each existing college-ruled line just to make the notebooks usable,” the
press release read in part. “And with the time you’ll save by not having
to flip a page every 33 lines, you could earn your Ph.D. a year early.”
(The
Onion )
Ported/Archived Responses
Joseph Reagle on 2008-04-14
I liked it because it was mocking me :) I continue to use marble
composition books in most of my writing and often spend too much time
preoccupied with selecting notebooks, pens, and papers!
Kat on 2008-04-12
I think this is mocking people who will 1) spend too much time in
school, and 2) trek to multiple office-supply stores in one day just to
find some looseleaf narrow rule paper (yes, narrower than college rule),
and I’m not sure I like it!
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