The Power of Procrastination

Jorge Cham, the author of the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip, has been called the Dilbert of academia. The strip appears in numerous university newspapers and chronicles the struggles and humor of the lives of graduate students, the majority of whom admit to feeling overwhelmed and often depressed. Cham speaks about his experiences bringing humor into the lives of stressed out academics, examines the source of their anxieties and explores the guilt, the myth and the power of procrastination. Three books compiling the strips have been released, including Life Is Tough and Then You Graduate and, most recently, Scooped!. Cham completed his doctorate in mechanical engineering at Stanford and is currently an instructor and researcher at the California Institute of Technology.