Sometimes, serious research results in delightful finds. This is the case when I happened upon PhD Comics: A Grad Student Comic Strip. PhD Comic, which in this case stands for Piled Higher and Deeper, provides an accurate portrait of the modern academic experience. The artist is Jorge Cham started the comic at Stanford, and with some clever crowdsourcing from the student body, has consistently delivered an average of 25 comics a semester since the Fall of 1997. In that time, he amassed enough material for 3 books.

With so much material, it is kind of difficult to pick a few to highlight, but I particularly like the ones with graphs. For example, this May 3, 1999 Comic is titled “Grad Student Work Output” made me smile.

or this one about the correlation of Campus Architecture and Parental Contributions

Anyway, a good place to start may be the List of Comics archive, but if you were to get a PhD in PhD Comics, consider showing Jorge your appreciation by buying the book.