The Case Study

I'm a grad student. A DPhil student to be precise. Like many grad students, I did not fully consider the ramifications of my decision to attend graduate school [1]. Herein, I present myself, the case study.

First and foremost, I own my mistake. I own my continuing (read: Sisyphean) ascent from naivety, my lack of sufficient due diligence, and my initial arrogance.

I'll take top-down and the bottom-up approaches in parallel. By top-down, I mean to examine the institutions and markets I inhabit. By bottom-up, I mean personal impact assessments aimed at finding my face, however insignificant, within the mob.

In other words, the invocation:

"In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves." -- Carl Sagan [2]