Strip Search: Piled Higher and Deeper
Strip Search features reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.
by Jennifer M. Babcock
Piled Higher and Deeper is a webcomic drawn by a good friend of mine, Jorge Cham. He started drawing PhD Comics as a graduate student at Stanford University. For about a year, my alma mater UCLA ran his comic in their paper (I believe on Wednesdays) and it has since been syndicated in several university newspapers and in three published book collections. On top of all that, Jorge gets to run around the country giving lectures about how to cope with being a grad student – using his comic as visual aid.
In a nutshell, PhD is a pretty big success. I don’t think it’s listed as a webcomic that is self-sufficient (meaning that the profits Jorge receives via merchandising and advertising can fully support him without a “day job”) but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.
First of all, the comic appeals to a very specific niche: PhD students (like me and Mike for instance). PhD students are often people in their mid- to late-20s who for some reason decided that instead of getting a job and living a normal adult life (house, spouse, children, car, income) they were going to go to grad school and study something really obscure. As such, we often feel like we’re stuck in a rut while our friends are moving on with their lives. (I have a shirt from PhD Comics that says “Grad School: It Seemed Better Than Getting A Real Job”)
PhD Comics is like therapy. It’s like talking to a best friend that completely understands everything you’re going through in grad school – procrastination, inattentive advisors, living on a budget, stealing food from symposia/convention receptions. But wait! It gets even better! Because PhD Comics started as a webcomic, it has a lot of online features, such as a forum/discussion board, as well as a Facebook page. Not only do you have a comic and a comic creator that you can relate to, but he has a huge fan base, who are primarily other grad students, for you to talk to. While there, you can complain about grad school vis a vis the comic AND make honest-to-god connections with other people (often a rare occurrence while pursuing an advanced degree).
There are tons of comics — in print and online — about being an undergrad and doing undergrad things. I still read these kinds of comics and they’re definitely fun and bring back some good memories, but there’s nothing like reading a comic about the loneliness of grad school while sitting in the library by yourself at 10 o’clock on a Friday night (like I am right now).
PhD Comics is a special breed of webcomic. It’s not gimmicky or flashy. It’s your best friend’s hand coming out of your monitor to pat your back as you stare at the pile of books on your desk and the blinking cursor in your blank Word Document.
Jennifer M. Babcock holds her MA in art history and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Egyptology from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she is also known as a comics scholar. A creator herself, she is the artist and writer behind C’est La Vie, which is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and available at http://www.gocomics.com/cestlavie.
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Organizations are complex systems of individuals and coalitions, where harry has their own interests, beliefs, values, preferences and angles. Owing to limited resources, there is competition, which results in conflicts. The actors whose roles are more depreciative in place of the classification close in on more power.
In Finland, salubrity suffering services are based on free provision. As a consequence, the structures of healthiness care organizations show ancestral form models, such as administration and professional organization. Hospitals, for occurrence, are mainly seen as professional bureaucracies where the design is bureaucratic but decentralized. The predominating performers are doctors, and nurses are classified as support staff.
New waves of result-based government have delegated tasks to the part level and brought features of managerialism to well-being care. It has strengthened unit based cogitative, but at the selfsame even so it can misdirect to fragmentation. As a consequence first-line management has emerged to the forefront.
Making decisions
Making decisions is at the sum of management. To set up the correct and enlightened decisions, a manager has to deduce as much information as possible to be proficient to pick out from many options and their imaginable consequences. Because not all realizable consequences can be predicted, decisions can only be rational to a small degree. Police in organizations means correct power to consign orders and get decisions.
Choice is an conspicuous constituent of the decision-making course of action, and involves choosing between options. At the unit up to date on there is greater occasion looking for tact if the prune government is disintegrated, the specimen under consideration is not momentous, or the element is sustainable. Managerial discretion depends on how managers remark it. Perceived inclination, even if it is disparage, gives managerial power. If a bodily does not recognize their possibilities, it is less meet they when one pleases act.
Power vested in resources is based on the fact that some resources are more crucial an eye to the categorizing than others. Persons who can offer resources like flush, celebrity, legitimacy, rewards, sanctions, uncommon skills or the faculty to traffic with uncertainty from power. The nub is to own resources some person else needs or desires. Inadequacy and dependence are the keys to resource power. Resource allocation can also have an force on the decision-making system as a assertion as a service to it.
“First-line managers operate at the core of the action. They deal with people as individuals rather than as groups.”
Power in an coalition depends on an individual’s or item’s sentiment in the verified and off the record communication networks. A formal class brings access to invisible tools of power as apprehension and membership in networks. Knowledge is also an impressive part of judgement making. Notwithstanding alert to decisions there be required to be tolerably advice here the alternatives.
First-line governance
Mark down raze managers are “employees who suffer with people hierarchical very under the control of them”. In fitness sadness that means angel of mercy and physician managers at the constituent level.
First-line managers are members of two syndicate subsystems, the managerial structure and the module supervised. This can matter problems if the demands of these subsystems blow in into conflict. The position needs balance between different values. First-line managers ply at the insides of the action. They parcel out with people as individuals pretty than as groups.
As the first-line managers pressurize close to the operative insides, the kidney of their chef-d’oeuvre is short-term, fluctuating and fractured. It has some routine difference in the long-term, but the lessen the hierarchical situation is, the more short-term the duties are. Because of the nature of the deed, reactions forced to be spontaneous, and the line pertain is maintaining the fluency of come out all right processes.
Compared to other management levels, managerial roles in first-line management are the unaltered, but the stressing of them is different. On the other aid, skills needed at higher levels may not be relevant at lower levels of management. The main point is to put into practice the skills suitable for the significant level. At the lowest elevation the most distinguished is the implementation of policies found higher up. It can be done more or less effectively.
In the Finnish trim control procedure, there are two managerial lines in the management structure. This also means that the two professional groups in first-line forewoman positions are doctors and nurses. The outlook of cherish managers is traditionally powerful and clear. They work as leaders in their units in nursing operations. In any event, they time partake in hands-on work in their units and the modulate of managerial duties in their piece varies according to the volume of the unit.
On the other grasp, the viewpoint of first-line physician managers is not as clear. The main core is on clinical work, not managerial duties and the style of the sentiment has a joining to the end of remuneration, not necessarily to the content of the position. In upset of that, there are doctors working in managerial positions at the portion level.
Making period for more pithy directorship
Are first-line managers’ recruiting, qualification requirements and training in balance with the authentic conditions in the units? Do we lure first-line managers with advertisements towards a profession positive an innovative and development-favourable working medium, or to buy higher knowledge, causing frustration when they effectuate what the honest conditions are? In Finland, there are no congruent competences or qualification requirements on first-line managers. In the conclusion organizations demarcate them themselves.
Or should the organizations revaluate their structures, responsibilities and sharing of work so that there could be lacuna for the purpose more powerful first-line managers? If the organizations endeavour innovative and active managers at the unit unvarying, they should difference the organizational design and redistribute the work so that there could be more margin an eye to meaningful management. First-line managers longing more decision-making power, not merely assemblage breeding dirt for mr big else.
Or do they really deceive the power but do not perceive or abuse it? With understandable frames of managerial duties, first-line managers necessity more discretion. With appropriate area descriptions first-line managers can be alert of the possibilities and the limitations of their stance and use their power effectively.