Good Thing I Quit Grad School, Part 5298

I am what you'd call a recovering academic. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, but when you're an academic and you're stuck in a pattern of self-defeating soul-suckery, sometimes admission just isn't enough. When you're in that deep, you need to get out.

Fortunately, I've come out the other side and lived to tell the tale. And sure, there have been moments where I've had my doubts, wondered if I made the correct call. Today, however, was one of those days that reassured me I did, in fact, make the right decision.

When I was still fresh-faced and bright-eyed (i.e. first semester), I wrote a paper for a science fiction seminar on Coheed and Cambria. It felt like the right choice to me: it was sci-fi related but off the beaten path, and it allowed me to bring in multidisciplinary elements instead of merely writing about a book and some articles. As I developed the paper, the whole thing felt incredibly strong to me, and I was really proud of the ideas I was coming up with.

The general thesis, in two sentences, was that Coheed and Cambria--by utilizing music albums, online forums, comic books, and other nontraditional media to share their saga--were essentially the science fiction pulps of the new millennium. If writing was dead, or dying, in that millennium, their music represented both a rejection of writing and a vehicle through which sci-fi plots could be conveyed to the masses.

I loved it. I turned it into my Master's thesis. I had for a while considered revising it into an article. The only problem was, I had written it with only four of the five planned albums in the series completed. Then I left grad school before the final chapter was released and the whole idea was shelved.

Good thing. Today, Coheed announced the plans for the new record:

With “Year of the Black Rainbow,” we will be releasing a deluxe package that includes a NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME. Not a graphic novel, but a full 300+page prose novel, which will tell the origins of Coheed and Cambria, and much more. There will be no mystery to this story, you will be able to explore it like never before.

As a Coheed fan, I am stoked by this. But if I was still a grad student, I would be pissed.

A novel. Not a comic book, but a novel. Like, just words on paper. The most traditional storytelling medium ever invented.

And...boom goes my thesis.

Good thing I got out of the academic game! Otherwise, I'd be singing "What did I do to deserve this?" from now until the blood red summer.