Tenure Memes

Evolution of physics in one gut-punch! The top row shows the glorious mad scientist days with Tesla's lightning experiments, Bohr's atomic models, and Archimedes yelling "DON'T DISTURB MY CIRCLES!" while being murdered (priorities, people!). Meanwhile, modern physicists are stuck in computational purgatory—racing tortoises for tenure, wrestling with unsolvable halting problems, and feeding papers into the academic machine just to get more papers out. Gone are the days of electrocuting yourself for science... now we electrocute our keyboards instead! The universe went from "I'll figure you out with this lightning coil" to "please let this code compile before my funding runs out."

The "How to Physicist" guide perfectly captures the existential crisis of academic physics! While non-academics think physicists spend their days unraveling quantum mysteries or smashing particles, the reality is much more... mundane. Shopping for ties, making pasta, exercising, and vacuuming—all while having an existential crisis about your citation count. The punchline hits hard: despite your impressive academic pedigree, the brutal "publish or perish" culture of academia means your dream of becoming a tenured professor remains frustratingly elusive. The only solution? Make memes about your academic suffering! Because if you can't get citations, at least you can get upvotes.