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10 Things We Hated About Graduate School: A Catabasis into Academic Madness (Ad Navseam Ep. 43)

Meta Description: Join Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle in the Vomitorium as they recount the trials, tribulations, and sheer absurdity of Classical Graduate School. From carrying books in pillowcases to dodging paranoid professors, discover the cursus honorum of the Latin scholar.

Introduction: A Lowering Sky Over the Vomitorium

Welcome back to the “Vomitorium,” listeners. It is a dark and stormy night here at Ad Navseam headquarters. The sky is “lowering” (or is it glowering?), the rain is falling in a deluge, and there is a weird green stillness that suggests a tornado might be brewing.

It is the perfect atmospheric backdrop for a descent into the underworld—not the mythological Hades, but the very real, very traumatic world of Graduate School.

In Episode 43, hosts Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle had intended to speak with their mentor, Dr. Ken Bratt, about the archaeology of Philippi. However, Dr. Bratt has succumbed to a cold, leaving our hosts to pivot. Instead of the triumphs of the Apostle Paul, we are discussing the trials of the aspiring philologist.

We present to you: The Things We Hated About Graduate School.

If you think getting a PhD in Classics is all sipping wine in tweed jackets and eating parfaits off silver trays, prepare for a rude awakening. It is less Dolce Vita and more Via Dolorosa.

The Archetype of the Pedant

To set the stage, Dr. Noe introduces us to a forgotten Latin comedy from 1581 titled Pedantius. Performed at Trinity College, Cambridge, this play satirizes the very figure every grad student fears becoming: the Pedant.

What is a pedant? It is someone who is annoyingly erudite. Ask them about the weather, and they will give you the etymology of the word “cloud” rather than telling you if it is raining. The play features a school teacher, the Paedagogus Pedantius, who is trying to woo a young woman named Lydia but gets tripped up by his own grammatical obsessions.

This tension—between living a normal life and being obsessed with the minutiae of Petrus Hispanus—is the central struggle of the grad student.

The List: A Catabasis of Complaints

Dr. Winkle and Dr. Noe trade war stories from their time at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa in the mid-90s. Here are the highlights of their academic trauma.

1. The “Sink or Swim” Culture

Jeff Winkle arrived at Northwestern as a “cohort of one.” His welcome? A trial by fire in his very first Homer seminar. The professor, Dan Garrison—a man who looked so much like Poseidon that students bought him tridents—assigned the class to memorize the first 150 lines of the Iliad in Greek by the end of the week.

This wasn’t just recitation; it was an interrogation. Garrison would stop Jeff in the middle of a hexameter line and demand the gender, number, and case of a specific word. It was a brutal initiation into the guild, designed to weed out the weak.

2. The Grad Student as Errand Boy (The “Pucci” Incident)

Grad school isn’t just about studying; it’s about servitude. Jeff recounts the time he was ordered to drive to O’Hare Airport to pick up a visiting scholar, the famous Lacanian theorist Pietro Pucci.

Jeff stood at the gate for hours holding a sign that said “PUCCI,” dreading the awkward car ride where he would have to fake knowledge of French theory. The punchline? Pucci never showed. He had taken a cab. When Jeff returned to campus, his professor simply said, “Oh, Pietro found his own way,” and sarcastically added, “Kudos to you, Jeff.” This earned Jeff the hated nickname “Polly Kudos” among his peers.

3. Imposter Syndrome and the 90-Minute Lecture

Dr. Winkle recalls being a Teaching Assistant for the archaeologist Jim Packer. Packer, preferring digging to lecturing, handed Jeff the microphone for a 90-minute lecture on the Emperor Hadrian.

Jeff prepared. He went to the library. He wrote notes. He got up to the podium, delivered his material, and looked at the clock. Seven and a half minutes had passed. He had 83 minutes left to fill. He tried to riff on Hadrian’s beard (“He was a Philhellene…”), but eventually, he just had to surrender. “That’s all I got.” The undergraduates, thrilled to be released early, fled the room. Packer simply crossed his arms and said, “A little brief, Jeff”.

4. Sartorial Disarray (The Pillowcase Briefcase)

Dr. Noe admits that he did not know how to dress the part of a budding academic. Lacking a backpack, he carried his massive Greek lexicons, texts, and pencils around campus in a pillowcase slung over his shoulder like a bindle-stiff.

He didn’t realize this was a problem until he was teaching an Intro Latin class wearing a paint-stained Calvin College sweatshirt. A student, James Watson, raised his hand and asked, “Laundry day, Noe?” That was the moment the pillowcase was retired for a grandmother’s hand-me-down Samsonite briefcase. To enter the guild, you must look the part.

5. Majoring in the Minors (The “Phrynicus” Problem)

One of the deep frustrations of the discipline is the tendency to focus on the microscopic at the expense of the magnificent. Dr. Noe laments the pressure to write dissertations on “The Plow Length of Phrynicus of Pamphilonia” rather than the moral vision of Homer or the tragedy of Vergil.

He cites the controversial book Who Killed Homer?, noting that in many university libraries, books on Classics published in the last decade have rarely been checked out. The discipline talks to itself, ignoring the broader audience that actually loves the ancient world.

6. The Curse of the Poorly Bound Book

A specific and petty grievance: The Oxford Classical Texts (OCTs) of the 1990s. These blue-covered, critical editions are the gold standard for Latin texts. However, Dr. Noe insists they were bound with “spray adhesive,” causing them to fall apart in his hands (or in his pillowcase) after a few weeks of use. For $120 a pop, a scholar expects better binding.

7. The Mercurial Advisor and the Dead Dog

Perhaps the most bizarre story belongs to Jeff. He submitted a dissertation proposal on Apuleius to his advisor. They met, discussed it for an hour, and the advisor loved it. At 3:00 AM, Jeff’s phone rang. It was the advisor. “Jeffrey, this will not do. What were you thinking?” By 7:00 AM, Jeff was in the office having his work shredded. The Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of academic mentors is a hallmark of the grad school trauma.

Even stranger was the professor who became paranoid that someone was breaking into his office to steal his research on Plato. He started bringing his Doberman Pinscher (named either Zeus or Apollo) to guard the office at night. The story ends tragically and mysteriously with the dog dying in the office—perhaps poisoned by a rival platonist?

The Latin Takeaway: Per Aspera Ad Astra

Despite the sleeplessness, the stress, the parking tickets in Iowa City, and the “sopisticated” (misspelled in the brochure) atmosphere, both hosts survived. They made it through the cursus honorum.

Why? Because of the material. Because reading Herodotus with a gruff professor like Jonathan Goldstein teaches you things you can’t learn anywhere else . Because the “brick and mortar” academy, for all its flaws, is the forge where philologists are made.

However, Dr. Noe has a major announcement. He is leaving the brick-and-mortar world to go fully digital. The Ad Navseam podcast is building a studio to become a visual experience, and the MossMethod and LatinPerDiem are ramping up to bring this knowledge directly to you, the listener, without the hazing rituals of a PhD program.

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The Gustatory Parting Shot

We leave you with wisdom from the playwright David Mamet, a man who understands the stress of the dramatic life:

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

Valete!

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