eh

[pylduck]

I keep looking in the fridge, hoping something I want to eat (holy shit, Giles was just trying to make a phone call on the cordless phone -- he must've been trying to call for help) will materialize out of what remains unprepared. I'm hungry!

I'm feeling remarkably unqualified to be an academic. I never have any response to articles and books I read or lectures I attend. I feel that as an academic, I should have thoughtful responses and questions that get at the critical points, problems, and possibilities of the arguments I read and hear. But for me, there's just nothing analytical in my response. I hear arguments I like and dislike, that I agree with or don't. But I don't know how to parse an argument, to understand the fields against which it works, to think about its assumptions, and so on. (The ironic thing, of course, is that I am supposedly teaching my composition students these skills.)

This all leads to feeling like I have nothing to say, nothing new or even interesting to add to the discourses of my field. All I can do is lamely paraphrase other people's arguments, missing all the nuances anyways.

Sigh.

At least I wanted to retch when I read the transcript of W's inaugural address on-line.

Comments

mmmm

[pylduck.livejournal.com]

Editor-mode does seem to help me a bit. I suppose I should try to imagine myself in that mode even when I'm not reading a piece of writing from someone in my writing group. Mostly, my difficulty is in remembering all the stuff that I should in considering someone's topic and argument -- like what other people have said, the historical contexts for their work, and so on. Being a professor is going to be hard.

Re: mmmm

[saltbox.livejournal.com]

I like editor-mode. It reminds me to ask probing questions. Which is my main problem, that I don't often remember. Part of that probably derives from the fact that, as a non-academic trying to get "back in," most of my academic reading is for pure celebratory pleasure, which often involves not turning those critical skills on.

Being a professor is going to be hard.

I hear ya. I'm lucky that in my field, though, teaching and scholarship can be pretty different. And I'm pretty good at questioning the strengths and weaknesses of legal arguments.