[NON BLOG] What has been up with Randy?
Jul. 14th, 2004 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFirst, three recent episodes meriting preservation:
Now, my description of the underlying trend in my academic life since September:
I’m happy that I went to Queen’s: Not only will I get a good degree, but I now know that I’m not suited for academia.
I don’t want anyone to believe that I didn’t enjoy my time at Queen’s, since I did. (Well, most of it; the most stressful moments I could have done without.) I enjoyed my classes; I enjoyed my fellow students; I enjoyed my teachers; I enjoyed the campus; I enjoyed the city of Kingston. All in all, I had a fantastic time. The reason that I’ve decided that I’m not going on to get a Ph.D in English stems from my experience firsthand of a disjuncture. My belief in what the academic study of English literature—and, to an extent, academic study generally—should be, and what I found to be the actual case, differ.
I first noticed this critical difference in my literary theory course in first semester, after we spent three weeks studying the application of psychoanalytic theory to literature. I was skeptical about psychoanalysis to begin with; I found it oddly fitting that just after my theory course ended, an article appeared in the Toronto Star recounting how Freud’s granddaughter vehemently rejected psychoanalysis as anything more than a historical curiosity. I talked about this at the time to a friend of mine, R., a doctoral student in psychology, who was quite surprised that we were still being taught about the psychoanalytic theory of the mind.
Over the past year, I’ve found out that it’s important for me that there be some degree of mimesis, of correspondence, between what I write and the real world. The ability to describe an aspect of reality, to whatever degree I manage to describe it in good faith, is an ability that I want to continue to exercise. It’s unfortunate, then, that talking to some other students who were more committed than myself to a career in English I found out that this correspondence isn’t something that’s necessarily desired. Even when certain theories are demonstrably out of date and inaccurate, it seems that it’s still acceptable to build an entire academic industry from them.
I want what I write to not only be relevant now, but to be of continued relevance in the future. I want what I write to be closely connected to facts, and to the latest theories. As time passed, it seemed increasingly unlikely that I’d be able to claim either. The dismal career prospects in their field facing doctoral students in English merely exacerbated the issue.
This, I fear, feeds into another issue I faced: I tended to write not English papers, but history papers. I’m not sure why I did that, though it might perhaps be a consequence of my very history-grounded Honours thesis last year. I do know that I found it very difficult to avoid a focus on the historical context of a given literary work as opposed to the work itself, and that it did not become easier as the year went on. If anything, things deteriorated as the year progressed. This contributed to a general collapse which, among other things, saw me hide myself in my dorm room for most of my last month in Kingston and caused me to request and receive extensions for two final term papers.
What now?
I don’t know.
- While taking an eastbound streetcar on Queen Street West last Thursday, on the intersection of Queen with Bathurst I saw a woman in her twenties, dressed like Minnie Mouse—a white-painted face with spots of red on her cheeks, a high-cut lacy black dress—running east, followed by someone with a Super-8 camera. She waved at me.
- Saturday, I bought Kraftwerk’s CD The Mix for 7.99 dollars Canadian at the HMV on Yonge Street, at the end of a lengthy walk down that street at a time when much of it was closed off for street festivals. “Trans-Europe Express” is a great song, so pathetically emotional in its understatements (lyrical, musical).
- Monday, as I walked to the Parkdale branch (and to buy furniture), I picked up a professionally-bound zine in some retro-seventies design shop. It had, among other articles, first-hand narratives of drug manufacturing, an investigation of the gang problem in suburban Aurora, an E-mail from a Taiwanese punk rocker emphasizing the need for bestiality to be consensual, and an editorial providing helpful advice on how to write effective suicide letters (hint: keep it brief and try to blame other people).
Now, my description of the underlying trend in my academic life since September:
I’m happy that I went to Queen’s: Not only will I get a good degree, but I now know that I’m not suited for academia.
I don’t want anyone to believe that I didn’t enjoy my time at Queen’s, since I did. (Well, most of it; the most stressful moments I could have done without.) I enjoyed my classes; I enjoyed my fellow students; I enjoyed my teachers; I enjoyed the campus; I enjoyed the city of Kingston. All in all, I had a fantastic time. The reason that I’ve decided that I’m not going on to get a Ph.D in English stems from my experience firsthand of a disjuncture. My belief in what the academic study of English literature—and, to an extent, academic study generally—should be, and what I found to be the actual case, differ.
I first noticed this critical difference in my literary theory course in first semester, after we spent three weeks studying the application of psychoanalytic theory to literature. I was skeptical about psychoanalysis to begin with; I found it oddly fitting that just after my theory course ended, an article appeared in the Toronto Star recounting how Freud’s granddaughter vehemently rejected psychoanalysis as anything more than a historical curiosity. I talked about this at the time to a friend of mine, R., a doctoral student in psychology, who was quite surprised that we were still being taught about the psychoanalytic theory of the mind.
Over the past year, I’ve found out that it’s important for me that there be some degree of mimesis, of correspondence, between what I write and the real world. The ability to describe an aspect of reality, to whatever degree I manage to describe it in good faith, is an ability that I want to continue to exercise. It’s unfortunate, then, that talking to some other students who were more committed than myself to a career in English I found out that this correspondence isn’t something that’s necessarily desired. Even when certain theories are demonstrably out of date and inaccurate, it seems that it’s still acceptable to build an entire academic industry from them.
I want what I write to not only be relevant now, but to be of continued relevance in the future. I want what I write to be closely connected to facts, and to the latest theories. As time passed, it seemed increasingly unlikely that I’d be able to claim either. The dismal career prospects in their field facing doctoral students in English merely exacerbated the issue.
This, I fear, feeds into another issue I faced: I tended to write not English papers, but history papers. I’m not sure why I did that, though it might perhaps be a consequence of my very history-grounded Honours thesis last year. I do know that I found it very difficult to avoid a focus on the historical context of a given literary work as opposed to the work itself, and that it did not become easier as the year went on. If anything, things deteriorated as the year progressed. This contributed to a general collapse which, among other things, saw me hide myself in my dorm room for most of my last month in Kingston and caused me to request and receive extensions for two final term papers.
What now?
I don’t know.
