Every Ph.D. Has A Little Crazy Inside

Ph.D. stands for doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy. Doc­tor is from the Latin doc­tor which means ‘teacher’. Phi­los­o­phy is from the Greek (the verb phileo ‘I love’ plus the noun sophia ‘wis­dom’). From an ety­mo­log­i­cal stand­point, a doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy is one who teach­es oth­ers to love wis­dom.

But ety­mol­o­gy is often a mis­lead­ing guide to real­i­ty. Just ask a but­ter­fly or a pineap­ple.

There’s an old joke that Ph.D. stands for per­ma­nent head dam­age. Humor usu­al­ly has more truth buried inside it than ety­mol­o­gy. I am con­vinced that most Ph.D.s have a lit­tle crazy in them.

You see, to earn a Ph.D. one must con­vince not only one­self but also a com­mit­tee that you are one of the world’s lead­ing experts about one nar­row slice of real­i­ty. Ide­al­ly, you con­vince the com­mit­tee that you know more about this very nar­row prob­lem than any­one else who has ever lived.

And here’s where the crazy comes in: this idea that you are unique­ly qual­i­fied to hold a cer­tain opin­ion in a very eso­teric area becomes a habit which creeps into oth­er areas of your life. You con­vince your­self that you are right and the world is wrong about some­thing quite triv­ial. Every­one does this to a degree, but there is one impor­tant dif­fer­ence: the Ph.D. believes some­thing absolute­ly crazy.

At this point you are think­ing to your­self, “Glen, I know sev­er­al Ph.D. hold­ers. They’re nice, nor­mal peo­ple.”

Yes. They are. They are also insane about some­thing unex­pect­ed. They have learned through expe­ri­ence to keep their crazi­ness well-masked. You have to dig down deep.

Talk with your friend long enough and you will like­ly dis­cov­er that they raise ham­sters for food. Or that they have a plan for which stores to loot in which order after the next major nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, and actu­al­ly have a shop­ping list secret­ed about their per­son at all times for just such an even­tu­al­i­ty. Or that they believe in flood­ing preschools with mar­i­jua­na smoke to keep the kids calm. Or that they keep a bazooka in the trunk of their car.

And that’s just the way it is. Some things come with acces­sories — Bar­bie dolls are one and Ph.D.s are anoth­er. You just have to learn to live with it. This is why I have a much high­er tol­er­ance for eccen­tric beliefs in out­side speak­ers for my min­istry if they have a doc­tor­ate. I expect the crazy. I actu­al­ly wel­come the crazy — it keeps things inter­est­ing.

So if you are my friend and are in pur­suit of a Ph.D., know that I love you and that I won’t be dis­tressed when you turn crazy in a few years.

And if you already have your Ph.D., just remem­ber that I know. Some­where deep in the recess­es of your brain is an idea. I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what it’s about. But I know it is so insane that your fam­i­ly has tried to slip phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals into your meals on more than one occa­sion, which is why you only eat foods that are translu­cent. Which is crazy.