Graduate School 123 



table from four or five prominent scholars, each one ap- 

 parently bent on demonstrating how much less you know 

 than he knows about a particular branch of knowledge. 

 Nowadays, this picture of the general examination has be- 

 come somewhat of an illusion. The amount of knowledge 

 in even a highly speciaHzed field is now so vast that every- 

 one recognizes that the aspiring graduate student cannot 

 know it all. More often than not, therefore, the examiners 

 try to act like friendly fellows who are trying to make sure 

 that the student knows enough of his general field to justify 

 his beginning to specialize in a single problem. 



If the student has not followed the recommendation to 

 master a foreign language or two in school or college, he 

 will need to devote some time to meeting the language 

 requirement at this later stage, otherwise the last two or 

 three years of graduate school are almost wholly devoted 

 to carrying out research. Increasingly the problem on 

 which he works will be related to the ongoing research 

 program of the department in which he is studying. In 

 the most unfavorable case the student may function pri- 

 marily as a technician accumulating data to fill out some 

 design laid down by the department head. In practice, 

 however, very few research programs can be so completely 

 outlined in advance that their carrying out becomes noth- 

 ing but routine. Almost always something unexpected turns 

 up to catch the attention of the alert investigator. Often 

 such unexpected events provide the leads into a wholly new 

 line of research. A good research supervisor will encourage 

 his graduate students to follow up such leads on their own. 

 In any case, sooner or later the graduate student will begin 

 to encounter the joys (and the disappointments) of per- 

 sonal investigation. 



Sometime during his graduate training, if not earlier, 

 he will pubUsh his first paper and have the indescribable 



