Hmm on you and your wedding you go by the number of posts so from 'new bride to be' to 'bridezilla' after a few thousand - sickening isn't it!?

We could start off as lowly researcher to chair of the department!

I like that idea! I just posted on the dreadful Hotukdeals, and I'm a 'Flint' (next I'll be a 'Matchstick').

Hmm, I'm not too encouraged by the idea, since if it's true to real life, you'll probably have to be a PhD student for longer than you expected, you'll have to be a post-doc more than once, there's no telling whether you'll ever get to be a lecturer and will have to stay as that for ages, then there's senior lecturer, all the competition to be a reader and then even more competition and uncertainty over whether you'll get the rating of Professor. And then, then, by the time you get to Vice Chancellor status, which will be years away, something better than the t'internet will have been invented and this site won't exist. Oh, and I forgot to mention, outside of cyberspace you'll probably have been awarded your PhD ages ago and so you'll have not need for the forum.

Yeah, I agree with Wally. Also: it would be far to much, and far too depressingly, like real life, and we need blinding escapism to get through this crazy process. What about celeb status - like D list, C list etc that could be funand not serious so less chance of competitiveness? Or we could collect baked beans until we have enough for skin heads on a raft AKA beans on toast.

Eska, that's a brilliant idea! That way I could finally beat my arch nemeses Gary Barlow and Darius Danesh by progessing to B list celebrity ahead of their C list celebrity status. I'd love to see the look on Darius' beardy weasel-face when I steal all of the column inches in The Sun and The Daily Mirror. Take that Darius! That'll teach you for making my ears bleed with your hideous song Colour Blind. And when I get to A list celebrity status, just to peeve Posh Spice off, I'll release my own perfume that will outsell hers: Eau de Peasucker - aromatic composites for the cerebral woman.(up) I vote we do this!(up)

I'm afraid, Wally, that Gary Barlow, being a song writer of beyond Lennon and Mcartney status, has A* plus sleb status; in my eyes at least; I'm still mourning what X Factor did to his songs this weekend, and it could well be the final nail in the X Factor coffin round at my gaff; this time, they've gone too far.

See how I came out of the closet and just let my affection for the semi-colon loose all over the place just then?

Yeah, if this were a game we could have alternative means of raising our profiles, like the perfumes or fashion lines, or having an affair with the nanny etc.

Must go and get ready to teach now.

Horror of horrors!

I've just seen that a certain clog has as many stars as me - how is this possible?! Surely I am more helpful than him (sorry clogsie but IQ aside, I am clearly the better student for the stars). Can someone please rectify this before I have some kind of personal crisis?

*fish fish fish..........

Sorry Teek - I've already rated you which means you'll have to suck up to some newbies if you want another star. Can we ask the Mods to demote Clogs? Maybe he can just have a big troll next to his name?

Exactly, he'd love his own special icon!