So what happened this week? Well, rehearsals for The Curious Savage are coming along, and the more rehearsals I go to, the more hilarious I think the show is going to be. There are going to be so many ridiculously funny people on that stage, you guys. And I'm not even talking about myself, because I spend so much time concentrating on not laughing that I'm not sure I even have any focus left to be funny.
My classes are great as well — obviously, the front-runner is Narrative and Ideology, combining as it does 80s movies and a terrifyingly brilliant professor, but I've been enjoying my other classes, too. It's shaping up to be a really great semester, that way; I've always enjoyed my classes at Wesleyan, but I feel like I usually have one class a semester that leaves me either grumbling over my readings or asking myself, "Why did I take this class? I hate [subject redacted]. WHY DID I THINK THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?" Not so this semester, though! Although I do have a 3-page essay due next Friday which I... should really start working on.
Other than that, though, my week's been pretty quiet, which I guess is what happens when you have two night classes every week and occasionally spend too much time being a hermit. Last night I went to the birthday party of a friend of mine, which was pretty cool. I got to engage in a lot of geektalk, and let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've spent more than three hours straight talking about Doctor Who, Buffy, palmistry, Nickelodeon, and superhero movies.
I did also watch a decent amount of TV — Glee and The New Girl during my weekly Girl's Night, and the pilots of Two Broke Girls and Suburgatory. (Two Broke Girls: so-so pilot, decent premise, great actresses, possibly worth following. Suburgatory: actually, surprisingly funny pilot. I have no idea how long they're going to be able to stretch the fish-out-of-water theme, but I'm definitely going to be checking out next week's episode too.) Now I just have to catch up on Haven, Alphas, Eureka, and Warehouse 13 — and maybe finish Sherlock, Buffy, Community, and Misfits, and start watching Castle, Farscape... All that good stuff.
"So many TV shows, so little time," sounds like a cliche, but I'm pretty sure that's actually my life.
Randomly: today I am also going to attempt to make apple butter! If it doesn't turn out well, I'm going to have to just give up the ghost and admit that our slow cooker hates me. It must know my true loyalty is to the oven.
[below the cut: my promised rant on academic essays.]
During my last post, I mentioned wanting to rant a little about certain parts of academia, mostly because they had actually cropped up that week and it was driving me a little insane. It is no longer driving me insane this week, but I feel like it's probably worth discussing at least briefly, because it's something I feel very strongly about, and something that does impact my life quite a bit, depending on what classes I'm in and what they have us reading.
Here's the thing. On the whole, as long as I'm in classes I enjoy? Doing the readings is not a chore. (Taking notes may be, but that's an entirely different kettle of something-not-fish [because why would you put fish in a kettle?]) They can, in fact, be really interesting. My Commodity class just had some readings about gift exchange that I found fascinating. Well-written, well-chosen readings make me remember why I love being at school and taking the classes I do. Learning is cool, you guys.
Some scholarly papers, on the other hand, make me want to bludgeon myself with an icicle so that I can simultaneously give my brain frostbite and blunt force trauma. Look, I get that academia has its own language, and it can be useful to have a specific vocabulary for subjects. I've used it myself when writing papers.
But there's something to be said for clarity. What is the point in making your writing so difficult to translate? Are you trying to say that your idea is so complex that it can only be presented via sentences that each take ten minutes to understand? Why does reading your paper have to make me feel like I'm, translating a foreign language, when I've only taken intro courses? Jargonese 101.
I just don't get it. And honestly, it doesn't have to be that way. I've read a lot of papers filled with weighty topics and complex ideas, and they haven't all been difficult to read. My standards are pretty simple: if I'm not interested in the subject but I can still understand what you're getting at, it's written clearly. If I'm interested in the subject but I start wanting clean my room, or take out the trash, or stick a freaking immersion blender in my skull cavity — then you need to work on your writing.
It's partially a question of accessibility, I think, and to me it says a lot about the ivory tower idea of academia. Isn't learning supposed to be for everyone? Obviously, not everyone is going to be interested, but the way these papers are written means that they're clearly directed at the only other people who are going to understand them — other academics. And isn't that a little onanistic?
I'm not one of the people who's going to rant and rave about academics being elitist. I just really prefer it when I'm able to read scholarly papers that I can understand without the mental equivalent of a triathlon. And you know what the thing is about triathlons? You can only take on so many of them at a time before your body just says, "No more. Screw you."
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