Monday, July 10, 2006

The mystery that was Jim

The Doktah has recently been having some issues with one of her students that reminded me of that guy, Jim, who was in my class the first year of grad school. I am using his real name because I feel he will still remain anonymous, even to me, because for the life of me I can’t remember his last name, and I’m not 100% certain that his first name was really Jim. So, here he will be known as Jim.

In January, Jim ended up with the department head / interim Dean of Engineering / soon-to-be permanent Dean of Engineering as his advisor. The dean mostly did theory and computer simulation research, so Jim didn’t have much actual lab work to do, per se. He just was supposed to… I don’t know, sit at his computer and simulate stuff. Whatever those simulation people do. I don’t really understand how people do that sort of thing all day, but to each his own.

But when May rolled around, Jim sort of disappeared. It took a while for anyone to notice, even the Dean, because, as I said, Jim’s “lab” work was at a computer in an office quite separate from the Dean’s office, and the Dean, being dean, was fairly busy with administrative stuff. By July, however, when no one had seen or heard from Jim in two months, it was determined that he had left school.

Whether he thought grad students got the summer off (they don't) or whether he decided to quit school but keep cashing the stipend checks for as long as he got them, I never found out. All I know is that he never came back.

1 comment:

Banalities said...

Hmm. That is strange. Even my parents, who don't care for cartoons, and specifically not the Simpsons (mainly because they were on the other side of the whole Cosby vs Simpsons thing back when the show first came out, and were never told that the war ended... urm... a decade ago), will nevertheless, when nothing else they like is on, flip to the show and laugh their heads off.