Dissin' on Dissertations

On Friday I attended not one, but two graduation ceremonies honoring Frank’s sister, Julie. I remember at my graduation from the college of communication at UT, we just handed the announcer our name on a piece of paper and he proceeded to butcher it across the loud speaker. By the time we got to the middle of the stage to collect our letter telling us we would one day get a diploma in the mail, they had already butchered three more people’s names.

But when you’re becoming a pharmacist I guess there’s more fanfare. Each kid got about 45 seconds of recognition plus a hood. And that was just the first graduation. When we reprised the whole thing for the second graduation, I needed a little more entertainment to keep me amused.

That’s when Frank’s mom and I discovered the dissertation topics in the program. You see there weren’t just pharmacists at the second graduation but also dentists, periodontists, prosthetic orthodontists (no idea), nurses and other molecular, micro scientist-type people.

Now I knew these people would do better than "Different Leaves” but still, I thought I could at least pronounce their dissertations. They were things like:

Linker Histone and Core Histone N-Termini Contributions to Chromatin Structure and Condensation Using a Reconstituted Model System (Is that even English?)

Characterization of Bone Morphogenetic Protein-9 Expression, Binding and Biological Activity in the Adult Rat Liver (Ew…he’s a rat doctor)

Contributions of the Core Histone N-terminal Tail Domains to Higer Order Chromatin Structure: A Chromatin Model System Reconstituted from Bacterially Expressed Purified Components (Um...)

A Feasibility Test of the Systematic Terraced Exercise Protocol in Mexican-American Fourth Grade Children in states that start with the letter “N.” (I Love it when they’re super specific.)

We based our applause on how much we liked their topic. For instance, if it had something about finding a cure for breast cancer in it, we cheered really loud. If it had “protons” and “photons” we did a golf clap. Then one woman had one that was something like, “The impact of male and female relationships.” How simplistic. That sounds like one of my MSN articles. Could I turn in a stack of ‘em and get myself one of those PhDs? We booed her.

Naturally, reading those topics made me feel just a little bit stupid. But then again, I bet those guys wouldn’t understand the complexities of my work: “Your Ex: Friend or Foe?” or “Two-minute tone-ups that work!” Or maybe we could put our minds together and create an intellectual yet entertaining dissertation. But the minute they bust out the rats, I’m outta there.