Graduate school: the board game.

Abstract

Cori Bargmann suggests depicting graduate school in a movie (Current Biology5:695), but as an outgoing graduate student, I envision it as a new and exciting board game.‘The Ego Game’ starts with each player on 100 ego points. Anyone who gets to the finishing square (the ‘OK, we'll give you a PhD’ square) with five or more ego points intact is deemed a winner. Points are deducted along the way for lack of enthusiasm in the face of drudgery, grumbling about lack of future job opportunities in academia and expressing any desire to get reasonable health care out of a Student Health Service.The danger really lies in the ‘kick them while they are down’ squares. Landing on one of these, the student must draw a card to determine his or her fate: persevere with idea independent from supervisor — lose 20 points; have vain hope that project will work — lose 10 points (if inside 12 months, lose 30 points); believe amount of effort plus amount of intelligence translates to amount of success — lose 50 points.Landing on a ‘good scientist’ square gives you a ‘blind luck’ card. These cards give you the right to buy papers: a total of eight cards gives you a Cell, Science or Nature paper (and 50 ego points); four cards a Journal of Cell Biology paper; and two cards a PNAS paper (although if you pick up an ‘influential professor’ card the latter comes for free). Landing on the ‘voracious young professor’ square gets you four cards towards a paper, but minus 75 ego points. A ‘holiday or alternative interest’ square means that one paper card is taken away, but wins 30 ‘grip on reality’ points which can be used to advance towards the finish, 10 points per square. If you reach the end with fewer than two papers, you must have 60 ego points in reserve to buy a ‘bowing and scraping to faculty’ card.I haven't integrated the ‘genuine interest in science’ card yet — I'm not sure where it fits. Maybe it will make the next version of the game. I hope to have this one out by next Christmas.