You can be the tea lady or the secretary

May is upon us which means it is time for the Generals Skit. This is our big chance to expose the lighter side of Generals(?) as well as to get revenge on those professors who asked us questions we would have preferred not to have seen. All graduate students who have taken generals since the last generals skit (May 1980) are invited, encouraged, and urged to participate. ... A first meeting will be held on Friday, May 1 at 4 p.m. in room 322. We need writers, actors and any suitable special skills.

So read the note in my grad student mailbox in April of my first year at Princeton. I thought, "Oh, what fun! I'd love to help write the skit!" It was a rare opportunity in grad school to be clever and funny.

I had gotten a form letter dated April 6 from the Director of Graduate Studies stating "Generals will be given in May. If you plan to take them, clear your special topics with me as soon as possible and see Etta for paperwork."

On April 20, the graduate secretary Etta sent me a handwritten note that read, "Generals are scheduled for week of April 27. I will let you know your date by 4/22".

Having already contended with broken promises by Princeton, I was miffed that they might not honor their promise that my General exam would be in May. I pointed out that I had carefully planned my April study schedule down to the last day, and an April exam would disrupt my best laid plans.

The response from Etta, dated 4/24, was succinct: "General is Fri (5/1) 1pm". (As was the case for the other messages, the salutation was just my last name.) I could no longer complain that the date wasn't in May.

I went to the first planning meeting for the Generals Skit, which had been moved forward to before my May 1 exam date. I asked to help write the skit. The guys in charge said I couldn't do that, since if I failed the General exam, I couldn't be involved in that year's skit. They planned to write the skit themselves, before my May 1 exam.

When I passed the exam, they gave me a choice of two parts. "You can be the Tea Lady or the graduate secretary." The role they wrote for the tea lady was a mildly cruel caricature of a frail old woman. I asked to play a professor, and was told that of course I couldn't do that since all the math faculty were male. I pointed out that Leslie Jane Federer had ably played Professor Bob Gunning a few years earlier, but that didn't change their minds.

I chose to watch the show as an audience member, rather than play the tea lady or the secretary. The other female student who passed the General exam played the Tea Lady, with such choice lines as "I'm hot to trot" and "Here, have a cookie" and, according to the script, nonchalantly filed her nails (not something I ever saw the real tea lady do). It didn't have to be me, but surely someone could have written a better script!