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readams

Luckily now we have this useful FAQ on dealing with doctoral exams:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-porti...

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... which reminds me of this:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/autoweapons.html

I'd almost bet that if you posted that to a public list/newsgroup today, you'd get A. a call/visit from the FBI, ATF, etc., B. suspended or fired by your organization, and/or C. harassed to no end by idiots on the Internet, probably including being doxed.

I hope I'm wrong...

Although if you get a poisonous snake, it often means that there was a problem with the formatting of your bibliography.

That's genius.

Q: Do I have to kill the snake?

A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this.

I'm pretty sure that I just waited the snake out until it got tired.

I never actually went in for the curriculum that included advanced study with the non-optional arena fight at the end, but I can appreciate biting[1] satire done so well.

1: That's not a pun. A pun has no place near something this well constructed.

Me, too. But then...

"Q: Could the snake kill me?

"A: That almost never happens. But if you’re worried, just make sure that you write a good thesis."

Follow-up Q: How do I know whether my thesis is good?

A: Only by the size of the snake you are presented with.

If he hadn't died of boredom, I would have had a very large snake.

I got the committee to argue among themselves about the snake, and then another class needed the classroom (2 hrs after start).

What does the snake represent?

FTFA:

Q: This whole snake thing is just a metaphor, right?

A: I assure you, the snakes are very real.

Yeah, that's great, but what does it actually represent? The writer is doing the usual "wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, get it" thing, but I never did postgrad and I don't get it.

I believe they're alluding to your PhD defense, due to questions like "does my advisor pick the snake?". Your advisor doesn't pick whom you do your defense to, but its not a random choice either.

It represents the type of A/V cable used to connect your laptop to the projector

That is only one of many possible snakes. It was not known to exist in thesis defenses before circa 1995. Since that time it has become a regular foe.

Oh, so THAT's why my projector that I used for my PhD defense didn't display red.

Why, did the red elements mean something special?

</dijkstra>

I'm assuming it's the exam team member that wants to torpedo a student to show how smart s/he is by asking something tricky or tangential.

I was lucky. My supervisor asked for recommendations for who to ask from the Math department and I replied "a push-over". He thought for a second then said "Ok, I know who to ask."

My advisor occasionally kept snakes.

He asked the question "What is a random variable?" in an EE qualifying exam (not mine). The correct incantation ("A measurable function into the reals") was not heard from the candidate. A lot of other stuff was heard, at length.

The cure for this particular case of snake bite was a remedial class in measure theory.

It depends on which department you ask.

Benzene.

Thesis defense, I think.

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