The Further Adventures of Dr. Walonoski

This past weekend, Yilin and I went to Connecticut to visit my parents for Easter. We went up to the Norman Rockwell Museum and took a tour with a woman who knew Norman Rockwell, and whose son had posed for a painting. She was ancient. She was also very humorous.

I also got to see my latest diploma. It's surprisingly plain and unadorned for what it represents. It reminds me, in a way, of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After Indy survives all kinds of craziness, and gets beaten up and struggles to reach the Holy Grail, he finds that there are actually three grails. The bad guy with him grabs the bejeweled gold cup, naturally, as that is what most people would expect the Cup of God to look like. (I mean, check out the Vatican.*) Bzzzzt wrong! It was the wooden cup.

So while I had visions of my diploma being an etched plate of solid gold with platinum accents and my name spelled out in diamonds, I was sadly mistaken. Despite the amount of effort in finishing my Ph.D. (never mind just getting into Columbia), the end product does not adequately represent the struggle. Well, OK, I concede that I didn't have to dodge booby traps in Mayan temples or cut any rope bridges in half, but my advisor did try to rip my heart out. Alright, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. Yes, I am the wiser for those 8 years, and changing my salutation from "Mr." to "Dr." as well as adding a few letters to the end of my name is helpful in the job hunt, but part of me still thinks the diploma should be so wondrous to behold that the common man must avert his eyes. ;)

*The Vatican. Yes, as you may or may not know, an Archbishop was recently (mis)quoted in an interview with L'Osservatore Romano (the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican) concerning many modern day activities which he views as deadly sins. (He was properly quoted in that paper, but his words were taken out of context and subsequently misquoted into an official list of seven deadly social sins by various media outlets, including Bloomberg.) The archbishop said that certain modern day activities, such as "carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos" are offensive to God, and therefore deadly sins.

Well, all of my grad school friends, I hope you aren't Catholic, or have repented your scientific ways if you are. Presumably, the Archbishop is talking about scientific experiments with humans, human embryos, and perhaps even human cells. I have manipulated the DNA of human cell lines in culture. Does that make me a sinner in his eyes? Maybe. Maybe not, since I didn't directly experiment with 'whole' human beings. But he also mentions artificial birth control (of course), so I'm doomed from that angle.

Interestingly, he also mentioned "excessive accumulation of wealth by the few". To me, that smacks of hypocrisy. Critics will state the Vatican often has yearly budget deficits in the millions of dollars (in 2003 the Vatican had $251 million in income and $263 million in expenses), but what about all the material wealth? OK, perhaps they've changed their ways, and no longer "need" more solid gold life-size crucifixes adorning the bathroom walls. But come on, the Vatican has tremendous assets, which equals wealth. If I had a ridiculously huge mansion like Xanadu in the film Citizen Kane, my local or federal government would surely consider that property to be wealth, and tax me on it. I wonder if the Italian government taxes the Vatican?

Regardless, I bet that Archbishop has an etched solid gold certificate with platinum accents and his name written in diamonds proclaiming his religious title.