Tornado Dreams Warn Graduate Student of Real-Life Political Windstorm

Over the course of months I scattered muses about the torrent of tornado nightmares I experienced as a graduate student in Psychology. Having been a graduate student in multiple psychology programs ("move over, storm chasers"), I learned to expect within hours of the dream some threat or recrimination, delivered formally by letter or personally in a closed door castigation, stemming from some manner in which I behaved unconventionally or failed to behave in accordance with expectations. Just as tornadoes can take numerous forms (your "wedge," "rope," and "classic funnel" twisters), the ways I could deviate from expectations far outnumbered the deviations I could imagine...or predict. Even after a tornado dream warned me that a dizzying imbroglio was imminent, I was just as unable to anticipate the source of the "storm" as meteorologists are to pinpoint the when and the where of a twister in a tornado watchbox. But the variety of storm shapes and sizes is really beside the point, the point being that you do not want to be caught in the path of a professor's peeve, penchant, or political peccadillo. In a nutshell, the moment a psychologist gets it in his or her head that this is appropriate or right, it becomes your business to know and to conform to that value. The consequences for failing to do so may include heavy rain, wind gusts in excess of 200 mph, withdrawl from your doctoral program, large hail...

The lawfulness with which my tornado dreams preceded the adverse event continues to astound me. Over my 3 1/2 year tenure as a graduate student, I must have reported at least 15 tornado dreams, each of which, without exception, preceded the kind of recriminating episode (the one you couldn't see coming) that made my heart go pitter patter. In fact, I could also say that no recriminating episode came to pass without having been preceded by a tornado dream. Naturally, as soon as I'd awaken, I apprise my wife of the tornado dream and being familiar with the legacy of this motif, would gasp with fatalistic awe. She knew, as I, that a threat would materialize within hours, but we were helpless to diagnose the source of the adversity. Sure, we'd make some guesses. A tornado dream could trigger hours of speculating and conspiracy theorizing. But we were never right. Some part of me knew to expect something that it also knew I did not -- and could not -- expect.

I have often compared Psychology to Meteorology. In both cases, the objects of study are quite dynamic and resistant to prediction. But meteorologists have enjoyed relatively greater success because they have been able to identify all the critical ingredients in a recipe for a weather event (e.g. moisture, temperature, pressure). Psychologists have not been so successful, but they have also not been so disposed. Psychologists gave up on modeling the personality years ago. Through broad exploratory methodologies like those I designed to probe the relationship between dreaming and waking experience, I hope to take the first steps toward identifying the parameters that might allow me to understand, if not predict, the content or characteristics of dreams. This is not something my colleagues in Psychology are keen on. If they worked for NASA, the Hubble telescope would have fallen into disrepair years ago, and certainly there'd be no reconnaissance of the outer planets (like Cassini of Saturn). The lack of intellectual curiosity coupled with a fetish for the technical merits of science would have psychologists-turned-NASA-mission-officials testing the effects of weightlessness on tiny screws for decades! The true Neil Armstrongs of this field (or more accurately, the "would-be" Armstrongs who will likely not be admitted into the fraternity) would describe progress in this field as "one small step forward for man, three giant steps backward for mankind."

I never really recorded in my diary enough details about the appearance of the tornado to support a cross-dream comparison. I think I would have enjoyed after all these years an opportunity to correlate characteristics of the tornado with fine distinctions in the adverse events they preceded. What follows is a purely speculative, non-data-driven hypothesis about what kind of tornadoes might precede what kind of events.

Profile of Common Storms

• ......Theory. This is the rope tornado. These tornadoes are so gaunt as to appear harmless. But they cause some of the most severe damage known to careers. Do not include "Jungian" or "dream researcher" among the list of self-descriptive adjectives you provide during the "tell me a little about yourself" section of orientation. Some closet behaviorist on faculty may be taking notes. More broadly, beat down the urge to align yourself with any school of thought or identify your focus of research. It's not like any one else really wants to know anyway. You'd be better off steering clear of Psychology in your introductions to the faculty at large by referring to yourself as, well, anything from a "Buffy enthusiast" to a "good square dancer." Personally, I recommend "para-sailing." It shows you have an active life outside Psychology, which for some reason is very important to most clinical psychologists, who regard it as a prerequisite for mental health. What does that tell you? But most importantly, it's a hobby in which no one else, well, let's just say you won't have to worry about other students or profs requesting to join you, which brings me to my next storm.
  

• ......Participation. There is no such thing as a "request" or even a "suggestion." When a psych prof "suggests" you do something, especially when he or she "has a suggestion for you" in those words, you take it as you would any standing order from a drill sergeant. Choice of the word "suggest" is symptomatic of an attempt at managing an impression as a populist ("I'm a good guy, man of the people") and benevolent deity ("God of the New [most modern] Testament") as well as being symptomatic of the time-tested expectation that you will throw yourself on the suggestion like a selfless soldier on a live grenade.
  

  This is the tornado you don't see because a dry, windy day produced a funnel with relatively little condensed vapor near the ground. In another, less metaphorical way, you don't see this tornado because it's rooted in deception and lack of communication. There is a lot of hard policy and procedures that live between the lines of anything written in a department handbook (even one written to resemble a Department of Defense Operations Manual). When the department head goes out of his way to let you know attendance at weekly colloquia is not mandatory, what he really means is that it is an opportunity to prove your devotion to the department. More often than not, the faculty are noting who's been naughty (not attending) and who's been nice, and come Christmas, you can find more than a few lumps of coal in your stocking. Just remember that if they had required attendance, they would have had no way of knowing for sure who is a team player and who is not. Some may call this 'entrapment.' But as far as meteorology is concerned, it's as ingrained a feature in the program climate as barometric pressure. Also, pay your graduate student association dues, even before your electric bill, no matter how little interest you have in this straw authority, no matter how little interest you have in the golf outings, and how little interest you have in watching the pet rat walk a tightrope for the department talent show. They want to know you like them. If you don't communicate to them that you view yourself as fitting in, they will most likely decide you don't fit in. And this includes letting them know how much interest you take in your professional development. You need to appear to be looking into joining extracurricular research teams in the hopes of becoming the sixth author on as many four-page publications as possible. I don't care how frivolous the research, how much it may wreak havoc with your thesis schedule, or how meaningless a role you play in the research. Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. And most grad students do not defend their thesis inside four years (or their dissertation in seven).
  

• .......Politics. This conflict produces the classic funnel tornado. You'll know the damage when you see it! When a professor asks you why he did not see you at the election day poll he worked just outside your neighborhood, adding "we really could have used you," just say you cast an absentee ballot for you prior state of residence and leave it at that! For crying out loud, do not imply you may not have voted Democratic!
  

• ......Personality. This is the wedge tornado, because to violate this law of thermodynamics is to invite a storm event with the widest path of destruction. Do not get personal with your work! Do not get any bright ideas! You may be excited about teaching for the first time. But make no mistake, it's not really your classroom. You are a trainee, and you represent the department by proxy. It would help to think of yourself as the terrycloth equivalent of your practicum supervisor, even if the practicum supervisor is a wire-mesh pedagogue at best. (You remember the Harry Harlow experiment). If your teaching practicum supervisor is a physiological psychologist, do not write a syllabus that allocates only one lecture to physiological psychology while allocating four to personality. I don't care how expendable the structure of the ear, do not forget to teach it and test it if it's in all the textbooks. Do not recommend a textbook other than the most recent edition of Myers that comes standard in the department. And under no circumstances should you, even in jest, suggest forgoing a textbook in favor of a packet of original readings! This all goes in your file! Similarly, abort any claim to creative control, even on projects you presume to be your own. Indulge your thesis advisor when he tells you to abandon the exploratory analyses you want to implement in favor of the usual lineup of t tests, ANOVAs, and correlations committee members can comprehend on little sleep and even less interest (in your research). And count yourself lucky your advisor did not require under the terms of your assistantship that you propose a thesis that advances his or her own research.
  

The strongest tornados are those characterized by the greatest difference in barometric pressure inside and outside the funnel. Just remember that if the policies, procedures, and prejudices are exerting strong pressure from outside you, and you do not feel that pressure, conditions are right for the development of an F-4 or F-5.

Like most tornado victims, I feel very unlucky for having found myself at any point along a path of destruction as narrow as it is potent...as potent as it is narrow. A guy just can't help but feel singled-out. And just like a tornado has an internal anatomy of suction zones and vortices wrapped within the exterior funnel cloud, so this political adversity is wrapped inside a charged climate of latent personality conflict & professional training. The 'leading event,' which packs a condensed punch of verbal abuse, is wrapped inside a wider thermodynamic system. You have the latent rising heat, the personality conflict, that dismissably dim sense that maybe some of the profs would not like you if they knew more about you. Listen to that voice inside you! And then, in the path of destruction behind the tornado, there is a protracted period of probation marked by sustained tension and vigilance. This is when you assess the damages and determine whether your standing in the program can be salvaged (or whether you will drag out the inevitable to the tune of insoluble loan debt). Just where was this tornado on the Fugita scale? Then you take stock of faculty expectations and monitor your behavior, molding it to those expectations. It's a skill not unlike hand-eye coordination. You just have to play a lot of ball to develop the skill.