Before sitting down to tackle this post, I had some "ants on a log." For those of you who aren't familiar with this childhood delicacy, ants on a log IS edible, and the culinary creation is made up of celery (sometimes carrots, sometimes both) smeared with peanut butter and topped with raisins. This return to my childhood was necessary before expounding the mind-numbing subject matter in which I've been immersed this week. The juxtaposition of ants on a log and "Empirical Research and Theory" and/or "Rhetorical Theory" creates a nice balance. If you get scared or overwhelmed by the content of this blog post, revert to the simpler times of your childhood, grab some ants on a log, and keep reading.
If you talked to me on Wednesday evening, I was on top of the world! I had floated through my first graduate class, and I LOVED it! "Personal Relationships and Health" is the only class I chose for myself this semester, and it is taught by the professor for whom I'm TAing. We're reading about physiological effects of social networks, social support, and close personal relationships on mortality, the immune system, health behavior, etc. How cool! I was walking on sunshine after that day.
And then Thursday came.
The first indication that I was in over my head was all the terms I wrote in the margins that I needed to Google later in order to understand the lecture. Let me give you some examples straight from my five-subject, college-ruled notebook: empirical, rhetorical, empirical v. rhetorical, prospectus, rhetoric. It turns out that the definitions of these words and/or the differences/similarities/overlapping of these words is blurry for many people. That makes me feel better. It still makes my brain feel like a ball of tangled yarn.
And then I entered hostile territory - territory on which I have stepped once before, and the results were not good. Talk of the Fertile Crescent, the Sumerians, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, ancient Romans and Greeks... it took me back to Western Civ... and that was a very dark time in my life. As a matter of fact, it was the worst grade I received in college. Nay! The worst grade I received in my LIFE! I left class that evening in a fog. So much reading. So much jargon. So much writing (okay, let's be honest, I'm excited about the writing).
Oh, and I wrote something else in the margins of my notebook as I was reading for class this afternoon. This is a direct quote from one of the sixty million books I had to buy for "Empirical Research and Theory":
"About the only solace we can give those about to embark on theory building is that it probably won't kill you and that if it doesn't kill you it probably will make you stronger."
I like this author's sense of humor, and I suppose this will be my mantra for the first year of grad school: it PROBABLY won't kill you.
Alright, readers: I promise more delightful and visually stimulating posts in the very near future. I can promise this because I'm headed out on the town with my cohort this evening. Hopefully I'll have some tales of The 1984 Club, a subgroup of my cohort that you're sure to hear more about soon.
Peace, love, and rhetoric (whatever the crap THAT is)--
Emily
No comments:
Post a Comment