Academic Anxiety
One of the casualties in my blogful neglect has been my manifesto. As you may recall, I started out strong, deciding I needed a new manifesto that I would base upon the principles of love and honesty as I understood them.
But even as I started to work through when and how one should be honest and what that actually meant, I started to feel overwhelmed, and I sort of gave up.
Starting my path back to academics hasn’t helped either. So many philosophers, theologians and other thinkers spend so much time studying what other people have said about these principles (and others) and then spend the rest of their lives working out new thoughts. How could I possible think to come up with even a working manifesto in the face of that? What could I possibly contribute to the discussion when I don’t even know what has already been said?
(When teaching undergrads about the importance of research I liken it to coming into a conversation late: you have to listen a while to find out what other people are saying before you add you thoughts or you risk looking like an obnoxious self-important blowhard).
In the academic world, it means you have to slog through lots and lots of stuff and try to a) find where your thoughts fit and b) make sure you are thinking something other people haven’t already written about. It’s extremely disconcerting and overwhelming. I’ve had to do it recently with a dissertation proposal and a term paper. I enjoy doing the research, and thinking the thoughts, it’s preparing the justification that bothers me.
And I couldn’t do it anymore with the manifesto. It felt amateurish, ignorant and poorly constructed.
That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on love and honesty as good things to strive towards. I’ve just given up nailing down exactly what that means. Maybe later I will pick it up, but for now I’m just going to muddle through in my inconsistent stumbling way, trying to do what seems closest to honesty and love in each situation whenever I remember to think about that.
But even as I started to work through when and how one should be honest and what that actually meant, I started to feel overwhelmed, and I sort of gave up.
Starting my path back to academics hasn’t helped either. So many philosophers, theologians and other thinkers spend so much time studying what other people have said about these principles (and others) and then spend the rest of their lives working out new thoughts. How could I possible think to come up with even a working manifesto in the face of that? What could I possibly contribute to the discussion when I don’t even know what has already been said?
(When teaching undergrads about the importance of research I liken it to coming into a conversation late: you have to listen a while to find out what other people are saying before you add you thoughts or you risk looking like an obnoxious self-important blowhard).
In the academic world, it means you have to slog through lots and lots of stuff and try to a) find where your thoughts fit and b) make sure you are thinking something other people haven’t already written about. It’s extremely disconcerting and overwhelming. I’ve had to do it recently with a dissertation proposal and a term paper. I enjoy doing the research, and thinking the thoughts, it’s preparing the justification that bothers me.
And I couldn’t do it anymore with the manifesto. It felt amateurish, ignorant and poorly constructed.
That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on love and honesty as good things to strive towards. I’ve just given up nailing down exactly what that means. Maybe later I will pick it up, but for now I’m just going to muddle through in my inconsistent stumbling way, trying to do what seems closest to honesty and love in each situation whenever I remember to think about that.
posted by deadwriter at 5:06 p.m.
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