From Doctor to Satirist – Seven Days That Shook My World

March 31, 2010 is the conferral date of my PhD. If you are one of the 0.7% of Canadians with a doctorate then you will appreciate how significant that date is for me. Five years of pain, toil, and sweat had finally brought me to my goal. Ironically, it was just seven days later when I received a layoff notice from my teaching position at the local university.

I had assumed the PhD designation would change my status at the institution, but it never occurred to me that the change would be in the form of a layoff notice. Within seven days I went from the high of receiving a doctorate to “hi, how do you file for unemployment?” Incidentally, four of the seven days were Easter holidays. I guess that’s why it took so long to get the layoff notice. Still, I did get a good joke out of it.

Although Dr. StrangeJob uses the “Dr.” prefix in his salutation, his alter ego uses the suffix “PhD”.  His first name is Dan, so the suffix in his case is not an acronym for “Doctor of Philosophy”, but rather an acronym for “Please Hire Dan”. This is not the joke.

The joke is when I realized that “Please Hire Dan” would only work for those with both a doctorate and a first name starting with “D”. I pondered on that as I listed people I knew with both a doctorate and a first name starting with the letter “D”. It dawned on me that the “Please Hire Dan” tagline might not work for everyone in that category.

I hope someone will hire Dan because of his doctorate, but who really wants to hire a Dick with a PhD. After all, how many Dicks do you know with a PhD?

Dr. StrangeJob

Next on the Blog: What is micro and soft and desired by nerds or Genesis Part V

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