For the majority of people around the world without a PhD, the academic title is often creatively or cynically assigned a different meaning. Talking of poking fun at those who make a living in an ivory tower—the image of an “ivory tower” is used in the Bible in the Song of Songs (7:4) to describe a woman’s purity—the lay public’s general impression or perception of most PhDs is often anything but positive. Could this be due to some subconscious “intellectual envy”?

Maybe because when they think of academics becoming politicians or of them serving as consultants or advisors for an oft-inept or corrupt government (or of an educational consultant for a publishing house hoping to boost their school adoption rate), many have mixed feelings about these exam-smart folks, who are mostly “un-street-smart,” when it comes to solving everyday life or real-world problems for their fellow citizens—their oft-halfwitted decisions often serve as a living proof of their (practical) unintelligence rather than their intelligence.

PhDs to Save the Planet from Covid-19

Below are three entries I submitted during the lockdown two-odd years ago.

Be it the canned “Permanent Head Damage” or “Post Holiday Depression,” new meanings associated with the acronym are only limited by our imagination.

Boosted Jabs at PhDs

A few years ago, I started relooking at new meanings of a PhD. Two such revised definitions were:

What’s your life’s PhD, especially when you respectfully compare yourself with those with big titles, most of whom often have infinitesimally positive or quasi-zero impact on those around them?

Meanwhile, why not pray, help, and do rather than just preach, hope, and delay?

© Yan Kow Cheong, March 25, 2023.