Credit: PhD Comics
Jorge Cham began his cartoon strip Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) in 1997, when he was himself a postgraduate (or in American parlance, grad) student at Stanford University.
The ruefully comic portrayal of the trials and tribulations of the four main characters navigating their way through academic limbo gained a cult following, possibly due to the power of procrastination. Today the online comic strip boasts 10,000 subscribers and seven million unique visitors a year. Cham is now a full-time cartoonist and public speaker on the university circuit.
PhD: The Movie is a live-action adaptation that should please fans of the comic. Featuring a script by Cham, a cast and crew comprised of grad students and researchers and slick production, the film was shot at Caltech, where Cham once worked on neural prosthetics in an earlier incarnation as a research assistant.
Campus screenings of PhD: The Movie are being held at universities around the world. If you’d like to arrange one for long-suffering postgrads near you, check out the website.
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