Influence

Much of the April 15th angst that Sean described comes from student's questioning "Will I be a success if I go to this particular graduate school?". They place a tremendous weight on this decision (and rightly so, given the 5+ year duration of a typical PhD). The decision of where to go to school presents a clean well-defined juncture, where you can imagine two clear paths before you, one that leads to a happy land filled with unicorns and flowers and all night coffee shops and independent record stores, and another that leads to a sad grey land where you spend your time shuffling piles of paper for The Man. However, having been in the game from the faculty side for nearly a decade, I can say that much of what determines whether one is a "success" is largely independent from this decision. (An aside: for this discussion I'm going ...