PhD movie screening draws over 800 attendees, overflows 26-100
PhD movie screening draws over 800 attendees, overflows 26-100
Thursday night, a line of people that extended from Building 26 down the Infinite Corridor to Lobby 10 waited to watch the film adaptation of Jorge Cham’s PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) comics. The majority of the attendees, perhaps unsurprisingly, were graduate students.
Ironically, several PhD students near the back of the line couldn’t get there earlier because a meeting with their adviser ran late (Cham often parodies the tension between graduate students and their advisers in his comic). There was an overflow of about 250 people after seating capacity (566) was reached, and many people stayed in the waiting area outside of room 26-100 in hopes of grabbing seats abandoned by early leavers.
The PhD movie is a comedy that follows the lives of four graduate students as they navigate their way through the unique culture of academia. The showing at MIT was followed by a live Q&A with Cham and cast members Evans T. Boney ’06 (Mike Slackenerny) and producer Margaret A. “Meg” Rosenburg ’07. The movie was first screened on Sept. 15 and is currently showing on hundreds of academic campuses worldwide.
The Tech caught up with Cham for a video interview yesterday. Look forward to that early next week, but in the meantime, check out a teaser at http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N50/phd/video.html.
—Kali Xu