PhD movie – our lab lives on screen
“The highlight of our week is drinking beer on Friday evening… while talking to the same people we’ve been talking to all week.” – that quote from the first PhD movie is perhaps the best description of our weekly MDC beer hour. So which opportunity could be better to show the new PhD movie? Together with about 30 visitors from other Berlin science institutions, mostly PhD students, we watched both oeuvres from Jorge Cham, the creator of the “PhD Comics” (www.phdcomics.com). Thanks to the financial support of the MDC Freundeskreis, we could host this event on our campus. Part 1, released four years ago, introduces the main characters and the entry of the fresh PhD student Winston in the lab of “Prof. Smith”, head of some obscure biochemical research group, a perfect cliché of a principial investigator and at the same time perfectly witty and the ultimate nightmare of all subaltern scientists. In scenes familiar to all of us – although both funnier and scarier – he starts to crawl through the downs and ups (well, there are some) of basic research. Meanwhile, Cecilia, graduate student in theoretical informatics, doesn’t only need to cope with life and lack thereof in science, but also with lazy undergraduate students.
In part 2, the entry is grim: “Grant funding levels are at an all-time low. Statistically speaking, you’re three times more likely to get cancer than you are to get a grant funded by the NIH to cure cancer.” So the Smith lab has to fight against the fierce enemy and competitor, Dr. Singh (they went to grad school together) at a conference, where the movies brings in an elegant way all essentials of science together in a few thrilling scenes: fighting for grants, beating the competitors, starting collaborations, publishing, perishing. When the presentation finally gets started – ” How many PhD’s does it take to get a laptop presentation to work? N plus one where N is too many and one is the person who will finally go get the AV technician.” – exciting battles in after-talk discussions follow, the kind everybody would whish for at boring sessions, but nobody really dares to start.
Meanwhile, Cecilia struggles to write her thesis and cope with the ever-changing demands of her supervisor. In dramatic scenes, the epic battle to reconcile all time constraints of the thesis committee culminates in the only possible opportunity for the defense – in a week from present day, so the presentation is prepared in the well-known hurry. Also the final cliffhanger, when the archenemy of her supervisor wants to fail her, is overcome and the happy end can come. Well, at least some temporarily happy end, because: is research ever ending?
