Piled Higher and Deeper

They say that American Splendor is the comic for the everyman, that Spawn is the comic for the angry goth kids, and perhaps that X-men is the comic for sideburn-aficionados. It stands to reason that someone somewhere was destined to create a comic for that underrepresented population, the graduate student.

PhD comics, written and illustrated by Jorge Cham, fits that niche, and fits it wonderfully. Cham's ability to observe the general nature of graduate life and capture it, day after day, in a 4-panel comic strip is uncanny.





These comics need no explanation; if you know grad students, you get them. If you are a grad student, they somehow evoke both laughter and deep depression.

Even better, though, are the comics that are really specific to what grad students experience. The ones that make you say "oh man, I have been there! That has happened to me!". This is especially true when the timing works out such that the circumstances of the comic occur simultaneously with the corresponding real-life events. These comics really sting.

my first assignment in the lab was to clean it up

the quals talk started in march, and i died a little

i, too, was excited to start writing up my work... for the first 5 minutes or so

red ink hurts... it just cuts at you

yeah, this still happens
Knowing that other people are also going through this crap somehow makes it more tolerable. Now if only someone would make a comic for the cyclists. Oh wait! There's Frazz!