I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT
I hate to cede so much authority to horoscopes, but my horoscope for this week says something about how I've not only lost the plot, but also the script, the popcorn, and the exit sign (a quote, I think, from a Nick Hornby novel about emotionally catatonic 30-somethings). Yesterday in class, I thought about dropping out of school. Wait, wait, what? Even the extremely abridged version of my life story would include a blurb about how the girl, finding social interaction difficult, turned to books and school for an arena in which to succeed. Two years ago, I would have told anybody that my life plans involved an immediate infusion of gradschool education, either in the form of a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies or an M.F.A. in Poetry. I was mulling over the differences between Iowa and Johns Hopkins when I was 19, and when I attended the Associated Writing Programs conference for the first time, I was too dazzled by the gauntlet of academic poetry to critique its insularity, its designer eyeglasses.
I can't say why I am suddenly so capable of critiquing the above, or why I want to trade in my Theoryhead membership card for a pair of walking shoes, a getaway vehicle, or a tent in the woods. I would do any of them now.
I want to stress that I'm not taking an anti-intellectual stance here, just an anti-academic stance. Does that make sense? I think I've had the experience of discovering that the system of thought I had previously thought encompassed the entire landscape (and I'm talking about theoretical thought here, specifically cultural criticism stuff) is only a line on the map, only a little lake on the periphery. This may be the effect of CMU's English curriculum: it's taught me that I want to reject it. If I hadn't been able to parse out the dynamics of power structures and knowledge, I wouldn't know what else I might want to do with my life. I could have sleepwalked through eight years of graduate education and ended up someplace I didn't understand.
Today I'm going to look at the application process for Library Science programs. The choice has been made. I am going to be a librarian.
I hate to cede so much authority to horoscopes, but my horoscope for this week says something about how I've not only lost the plot, but also the script, the popcorn, and the exit sign (a quote, I think, from a Nick Hornby novel about emotionally catatonic 30-somethings). Yesterday in class, I thought about dropping out of school. Wait, wait, what? Even the extremely abridged version of my life story would include a blurb about how the girl, finding social interaction difficult, turned to books and school for an arena in which to succeed. Two years ago, I would have told anybody that my life plans involved an immediate infusion of gradschool education, either in the form of a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies or an M.F.A. in Poetry. I was mulling over the differences between Iowa and Johns Hopkins when I was 19, and when I attended the Associated Writing Programs conference for the first time, I was too dazzled by the gauntlet of academic poetry to critique its insularity, its designer eyeglasses.
I can't say why I am suddenly so capable of critiquing the above, or why I want to trade in my Theoryhead membership card for a pair of walking shoes, a getaway vehicle, or a tent in the woods. I would do any of them now.
I want to stress that I'm not taking an anti-intellectual stance here, just an anti-academic stance. Does that make sense? I think I've had the experience of discovering that the system of thought I had previously thought encompassed the entire landscape (and I'm talking about theoretical thought here, specifically cultural criticism stuff) is only a line on the map, only a little lake on the periphery. This may be the effect of CMU's English curriculum: it's taught me that I want to reject it. If I hadn't been able to parse out the dynamics of power structures and knowledge, I wouldn't know what else I might want to do with my life. I could have sleepwalked through eight years of graduate education and ended up someplace I didn't understand.
Today I'm going to look at the application process for Library Science programs. The choice has been made. I am going to be a librarian.
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