pylduck: (Default)
pylduck ([personal profile] pylduck) wrote2005-01-20 07:07 pm

eh

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.

[identity profile] saltbox.livejournal.com 2005-01-20 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Maybe you're like me. I never have any specific analytical responses either, and mostly am like "ooh, that's cool" or "yuck, that's not," but I'm all right at putting together something totally different that ties together the stuff I've read but really involves my own random train of thought anyway. The only time I'm good at coming up with analytical responses is when I go into editor-mode, and then I'm all "well, the argument could be stronger if . . . ."