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And then along came Russ

Last week’s column was about my struggle to get accepted into a Master’s program.

The struggle had only one cause — I wanted an MA in English lit, but I’d been an American history major.

Here’s the thing: Grad schools are fueled by a near-bulletproof fiction. It is in order to succeed in, say, an English Lit M.A. Program, you need to have an undergrad degree in English lit, which is sheer bumpf. If you have basic smarts and exceptional study skills and work ethic, you’d be amazed what you can achieve in academe.

But to reinforce their fiction, graduate departments will nix non-major undergrads, while at the same time admitting lousy students in the appropriate major.

The cynical reality is, as a group, graduate departments are as selective as the Selective Service System is in wartime. That is, they’ll accept anyone who can walk almost upright, speak in almost complete sentences, and — most importantly — keep writing checks that don’t bounce.

While my experience worming my way into The Hallowed Halls was unusual, I think my pal Russell Sheffrin’s was unique.

Little Lavoisier

His story began in eighth grade when he fell in love with chemistry. From there, it was a short hop to make chemistry his career. He was going to follow in the footsteps of Lavoisier (though not L’s last step, which, sadly, ended at the guillotine).

Always serious, even as a little kid, Russ pursued chemistry with grave purpose. In fact, he was the only kid I knew who followed the experiments laid out in his Gilbert chemistry set, rather than do what the rest of us did, which was try to make either fireworks, accelerants, or explosives – or all three.

After graduating from SLHS as the class of ’64’s valedictorian, Russ went to Williams college, majoring in — what else? — chemistry. Everything was tickety-boo till his senior year,when he had a crisis of faith. Maybe he didn’t want to be a chemist after all. Instead, he thought he wanted a job where he helped people.

Such musing were interrupted by a metaphoric knock on the door. It was everyone’s least favorite uncle — Sam — sending his greetings.

Shortly after that, he found himself an officer in This Man’s Navy and in that billet his future career path was settled. He was going to become a psychologist.

One outta 15 ain’t bad

After the Navy, he taught at Paul Smith’s for a year and applied to 15 universities’ Ph.D. programs. Most of the schools required the psych Graduate Record Exam for acceptance. Since Russ had taken only three undergrad psych courses, he knew the GRE’s would be a wash, so rather than even giving them the Ole College Try, he ignored them completely.

In return, 12 schools thanked him profusely for applying and wished him best of luck in his career choice, whatever it’d be, since if they had their say, it would not be psychology. The remaining three schools said he could take something called the Miller Analogies. He assumed he did pretty well on it because only one of the schools rejected him. Now he was down to the last two, one of which asked him to come for an interview.

The interview went swimmingly, or so he thought. He was witty, glib and nonchalant — a real laid-back, Sixties kinda guy. For example, when asked why he’d chosen their school, he said because it was closest to home. Little did he know that was exactly the type of student psychology departments were not looking for. They wanted to turn out scientists, researchers, professors — all the academic machers. And what they’d been dealing with ever since the late sixties was a bunch of panty waists who wanted to save the world, one group session in a hot tub at a time. Only a couple of days after the interview, their rejection letter arrived.

Not one to let moss grow, Russ started to explore Civil Service jobs in the mental health field, when one late afternoon he got a call. It was from the last grad school. A very cheery voice on the other end extended greetings on behalf of Old Siwash and then cut to the chase.

“So,” he said, “how would you like to be part of our graduate program in psychology?”

“Er … do I have to come for an interview?” asked Russ.

“No, no, you’re in. Just tell us if you want to be in the program.”

Of course he immediately agreed, and to make a long story short, he succeeded admirably, graduating with honors.

So now that you know how he got admitted, let me make a short story long and tell you why he got admitted.

A couple of years later, he met the Graduate Department dean at some reception or other.

“Ah yes, Sheffrin,” said the dean. “I remember you well.”

“Oh really?” said Russ. “Why?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said the dean.

“Not to me,” said Russ.

Then the dean went on to explain Russ’s unique status.

In the late ’60s till the late ’70s psych departments were full of softhearted hippie types who wanted to go into therapy to, just like Russ, help people. But this was at odds with the peeps who ran the departments. They wanted hardcore, hard-nosed, hard-hearted types to go into research and raise the status of psychology to a serious scientific discipline like chemistry and physics. The dean saw none of those types, only the dreamy space cases with their Albert Schweitzer complexes. Or at least that’s all he’d seen till … along came Russ.

Ah yes, Russ.

The dean was enthralled with his record. Sure, he had no background in psychology. But he was a chemist, a scientist, a man of rationality, not emotion. His year of teaching at PSC enforced that. Moreover, he’d been a Navy officer. The dean, though he’d never served himself (flat feet and a sinus condition), had a favorite movie — Mutiny of the Bounty with Charles Laughton. He’d seen it dozens of times and his favorite scene was when Laughton, as Captain Blye, seeing some poor wretch in chains on the deck, turned to a junior officer and said, “Who gave this man fresh water?” He knew what Navy officers were all about. No panty-waists there, thank you.

Of course, Russ was none of those things. In his own words, he was a “soft-hearted fellow, and probably soft-minded, with the soul of hippie but with a buttoned down exterior.”

As I said, Russ was a smart cookie. So he made no effort to correct the dean’s misconceptions, and instead kept smiling benignly and nodding his head in apparent agreement.

The story had a happy ending.

First, Russ got his Ph.D.

Next, the dean got had. And by the time he found out, it was too late to do anything about it.

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