Piled Higher and Deeper (also known as PhD Comics) is a newspaper and webcomic strip written and drawn by Jorge Cham that follows the lives of several grad students. First published in 1997 when Cham was a grad student himself at Stanford University, the strip deals with issues of life in graduate school, including the difficulties of scientific research, the perils of procrastination, and the complex student–supervisor relationship. the strip's website received 6 million visitors each year.
History
Piled Higher and Deeper was first published in The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, in October 1997. The newspaper had put out a call for comics and Cham, a student and teaching assistant at the time, discussed ideas for comics with his brother and friends. Cham's brother, Jaime, suggested there should be a comic about grad school "because that's when the real pain begins". Cham had no formal art training and had never tried drawing comics before but his comic was accepted. Cham created the website a few weeks later. Cham continued the strip while completing his PhD and later while an instructor in mechanical engineering at Caltech, then in July 2005 left this work to become a full-time cartoonist.
Originally, the strip was drawn in black-and-white, eventually became grayscale, and finally became color in June 2004.
The strip is free online and is also syndicated free to student newspapers, with Cham earning a living through book sales, merchandise, and giving lectures.
Themes
The title of the comic comes from an old joke about becoming a Ph.D., which explains that "B.S." stands for "bullshit", "M.S." stands for "More of the Same" (or "More Shit"), and "Ph.D." stands for "Piled Higher and Deeper".
The comic follows the lives of graduate students and their professors. Reviewer Sara Coelho said "the comic deals with everyday frustrations of life in the lab – procrastination, dealing with advisers, serving on committees, lack of inspiration". Comics deal with the isolation of graduate work.
Cham's comics have also been on real-world research, such as a five-comic series following a visit to CERN.
Characters
Piled Higher and Deeper introduced its main characters early in its run, and their personalities have remained fairly constant during the strip's several years of publication. In the strip's first few seasons, the characters were clearly Stanford University students, though the number of school-specific references and jokes has decreased since.
Cham has said that while the character are not based on real people, he was inspired by colleagues, classmates, and his brother's friends.
Students
The Nameless Grad Student (a.k.a., The Nameless Hero) – a graduate student in engineering, this bespectacled protagonist has procrastinated through the entire strip without receiving a name. He looks similar to comic strip author, Jorge Cham and is modelled after him (at one point, the younger sister of the character, Dee, remarks that her brother has dreams of quitting grad school and becoming a cartoonist). Cham chose to make the character nameless as "when you're a graduate student, professors never remember your name."Little is known about the hero's background, although early on Mike Slackenerny states that he knew the hero's older brother (who quit his PhD and went on to work for a "Silicon Valley Company"). As he is seen playing with two children at home during his winter vacation, he probably has younger siblings, nieces and/or nephews, or cousins. He has been increasingly seen with a set group of friends (one is named Mikkel) and seems, at least marginally, to be the most favored graduate student of his advisor, Prof. Smith. At the conclusion of the film, the character states for the first time that his name is Winston, named after Jorge's father; in the films, Winston is a biochemistry grad student.