As a cult member, I learned more than I had imagined was possible. And, as promised, the cult provided me with a like-minded community. The 30 or so other students, all overworked and overstressed, banded together into a unit that looked out for its own in a myriad of small and large ways. As difficult as the initiation rites for the Ph.D. program were, moving upward in the cult's hierarchy increased the stakes and the challenges of the rituals. That killing of a text by close reading is called the dissertation.
Most Ph.D. sects are quite adamant that only their manner of reading the sacred texts is acceptable.
As a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts, I studied under Peter Elbow, the highest high priest of composition studies. He had an iron grip on the English department. Soon after joining the Massachusetts temple, I was given the opportunity to teach in Lithuania. My assignment was to demonstrate to Lithuanian secondary-school teachers how American professors taught writing. I naturally outlined Peter Elbow's famous philosophy, which included forbidding students to lift their pens from the page before time was up, even if they had nothing further to say.