I think I have just had the brainwave that not only am I wordy, I am mobile and wordy! Oh, this could be genius. It's like mobile Facebook, but better.
Test-posting from my phone, y'all!
From: http://arttattler.com/archiverussiancourtprotocol.html
Monday, March 4, 2013
Hey, Look - It's Me!
So, a couple of weeks ago, someone pointed out to me that if I open a different browser, I can sign into the account that lets me post to this blog without logging out my school and personal accounts in my other browser session (which I can never close because I am a tab-a-holic), and I think this advice is basically genius because it removes the chief obstacle to my posting here.
Yes; I have been stiffing you all because I am too lazy to log out of two email accounts and into a third.
But, on the plus side, I've kind of also been doing things like applying to grad schools and having interviews and trying to distill a paper proposal for my senior project, so we could, objectively speaking, say that I've been too busy to write.
Which sounds ever so much better than that I was too lazy to hit a few keystrokes.
That said, hello!
I've been having some thoughts about thoughts, lately. Which could sound terribly academic and abstruse and "meta," if I wanted it to, but I'm rapidly coming to despise that sort of arcane nonsense, and so I will say instead that it is actually born of very concrete and frustrating experience.
Like I said, I have been attempting to put together a one-to-two page project proposal for my senior project. More to the point, I have been busily engaged in the process of not-writing a single page for three weeks. And it isn't because I've been lolling about (well, except for the one afternoon I curled up in the sunshine on the floor like a cat, but everyone enjoys Sabbath rest in a different way...).
No - it's because I've been thinking.
About coffee.
My thoughts are like coffee.
They require percolation before they may be deemed ready for consumption.
Once percolated, they can be consumed black, if you insist, but they'll really be better if stirred up a bit and sweetened with cream and sugar.
And you see, the problem with a paper proposal, and the reason why I detest the words almost as much as "annotated bibliography," is that a paper proposal wants to know what direction you are going to go for the rest of your paper.
"It's just an overview," says my advisor, but the simple fact is, (perhaps I'm doing this wrong), I haven't the faintest idea where my paper is headed until I've immersed myself in the research for a while and come up with about eight possible directions and then researched some more and followed a tangent and scribbled down a whole bunch of ideas very illegibly around the sides of a paper and tried to write an overall proposal or thesis at least three times. Then, and only then, may I be able to present you with something like an adequate picture of what I want to write about.
Which still, by the way, may not be entirely the same as what I end up writing about.
I understand that research should have direction, but for some reason, my head insists on thinking about things backwards.
I never start out with one definitive question to answer in research, because I find that the problem is that somebody has inevitably already answered it. And since quoting the entirety of somebody else's text is, it would seem, academically discouraged, I am always left with the sad state of an answered question and a defunct paper topic.
Call me a true child of the liberal arts, but if I wanted answers to my questions, I'd have studied math! (Well, and if I'd ever learned my multiplication tables.)
No - what I want are not answers, even, but connections. I don't want just answers - I want new ways to think about other people's answers. I want to raise questions, not answers. I'd like to think that I can make people think about other people's thoughts...which is really just a long-winded way of saying I like to suggest slightly fractious and unorthodox ideas, throw them carelessly out on the winds of dialogue, and see who bites, and how hard, while I stuff my face with candy bars in the corner.
But, in order to do this, I find that I must know other people's ideas first, and in sufficient quantity to begin yanking them out of their respective books (or fields or traditions or disciplines or specialties) and tying them together into something that approximates a decent picture of what History was actually like...every bit as complicated and inter-disciplinary and non-bullet-pointed as our modern world.
I can give you a page of proposal before my research...if you want me to make it up, and turn in something completely different.
But, if you want to know what I really think about something complex, in academics or in life, give me time, and let me play outside the box for a while.
When I've bunny-trailed and false-started and flipped out and panned out, when I've stained the margins with every kind of commentary and crumb, then I will be able to tell you what research I am going to use, what more I need to read, and what I am really going to write about.
I cannot have thoughts on a schedule.
But I will have thoughts eventually. Adequate stewing, adequate brewing.
Yes; I have been stiffing you all because I am too lazy to log out of two email accounts and into a third.
But, on the plus side, I've kind of also been doing things like applying to grad schools and having interviews and trying to distill a paper proposal for my senior project, so we could, objectively speaking, say that I've been too busy to write.
Which sounds ever so much better than that I was too lazy to hit a few keystrokes.
That said, hello!
I've been having some thoughts about thoughts, lately. Which could sound terribly academic and abstruse and "meta," if I wanted it to, but I'm rapidly coming to despise that sort of arcane nonsense, and so I will say instead that it is actually born of very concrete and frustrating experience.
Like I said, I have been attempting to put together a one-to-two page project proposal for my senior project. More to the point, I have been busily engaged in the process of not-writing a single page for three weeks. And it isn't because I've been lolling about (well, except for the one afternoon I curled up in the sunshine on the floor like a cat, but everyone enjoys Sabbath rest in a different way...).
No - it's because I've been thinking.
About coffee.
My thoughts are like coffee.
They require percolation before they may be deemed ready for consumption.
Once percolated, they can be consumed black, if you insist, but they'll really be better if stirred up a bit and sweetened with cream and sugar.
And you see, the problem with a paper proposal, and the reason why I detest the words almost as much as "annotated bibliography," is that a paper proposal wants to know what direction you are going to go for the rest of your paper.
"It's just an overview," says my advisor, but the simple fact is, (perhaps I'm doing this wrong), I haven't the faintest idea where my paper is headed until I've immersed myself in the research for a while and come up with about eight possible directions and then researched some more and followed a tangent and scribbled down a whole bunch of ideas very illegibly around the sides of a paper and tried to write an overall proposal or thesis at least three times. Then, and only then, may I be able to present you with something like an adequate picture of what I want to write about.
Which still, by the way, may not be entirely the same as what I end up writing about.
I understand that research should have direction, but for some reason, my head insists on thinking about things backwards.
I never start out with one definitive question to answer in research, because I find that the problem is that somebody has inevitably already answered it. And since quoting the entirety of somebody else's text is, it would seem, academically discouraged, I am always left with the sad state of an answered question and a defunct paper topic.
Call me a true child of the liberal arts, but if I wanted answers to my questions, I'd have studied math! (Well, and if I'd ever learned my multiplication tables.)
No - what I want are not answers, even, but connections. I don't want just answers - I want new ways to think about other people's answers. I want to raise questions, not answers. I'd like to think that I can make people think about other people's thoughts...which is really just a long-winded way of saying I like to suggest slightly fractious and unorthodox ideas, throw them carelessly out on the winds of dialogue, and see who bites, and how hard, while I stuff my face with candy bars in the corner.
But, in order to do this, I find that I must know other people's ideas first, and in sufficient quantity to begin yanking them out of their respective books (or fields or traditions or disciplines or specialties) and tying them together into something that approximates a decent picture of what History was actually like...every bit as complicated and inter-disciplinary and non-bullet-pointed as our modern world.
I can give you a page of proposal before my research...if you want me to make it up, and turn in something completely different.
But, if you want to know what I really think about something complex, in academics or in life, give me time, and let me play outside the box for a while.
When I've bunny-trailed and false-started and flipped out and panned out, when I've stained the margins with every kind of commentary and crumb, then I will be able to tell you what research I am going to use, what more I need to read, and what I am really going to write about.
I cannot have thoughts on a schedule.
But I will have thoughts eventually. Adequate stewing, adequate brewing.
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