I was going to complete my series on academia after installment III, but having gotten carried away about the failings of graduate education, I felt I ought to say a few words about what I liked about graduate school.
I can go all the way back to Rutgers, where I got a degree in Political Science that for many years I saw as nothing more than a detour and a waste of time. I have often said to David that I don't remember anything I learned in PoliSci, but it's not true. I learned a number of useful things that continue to serve me pretty well today.
The most useful was statistics, which I studied because one of my concentrations was in mass political behavior. While I can no longer define "factor analysis" or even "regression" at the drop of a hat, I do still know how survey research works, all the places that bias can creep in, how statistics are useful, and what the limits of that usefulness are. Ironically, I learned all this in the class I should have failed; even at the time I was aware that it was one of the more useful courses I'd ever taken. Everyone should know enough about what statistics can and can't do do defend themselves from the distortions of the media.
I also know a lot about how the political system works, and doesn't work. And I know how politics is studied, which is mainly only useful if you're going to study politics. I still find it interesting, if only as a further defense against the distortions of the media.
I read much of the same theory in PoliSci that I eventually read in English, and having a prior exposure to it helped me finally make sense of it when I was an English graduate student.
At MSU, studying English, I was old enough and wise enough to recognize crap when I saw it, both in the content of courses and in the attitudes and behaviors of professors. I had one professor who was arrogant and dismissive in class. I was in the minority in not being afraid of him, and as a result I was able to learn from him. For students who have strong self-esteem and some trust in their own judgment, the pitfalls of graduate school need not be so terrible.
I took a couple of excellent courses. The very seminar in which I suffered through the Footnote Incident introduced me to nearly one hundred years worth of African-American film and literature. The earliest films were especially interesting. The more I learn about the vibrant artistic and entrepreneurial black culture of the early 20th century the more fascinated I am. From other students in the class, I also learned the meaning of expressions like "kitchen" and "Miss Anne," which I like knowing.
I think Cultural Studies can be taken too far, as when a famous visiting scholar regaled the department with a glib paper on Monica Lewinsky and Hester Prynne. But my Renaissance Literature class took something of a Cultural Studies perspective, looking at exploration and colonialism. We read everything from explorers' diaries to documents about how to manage slaves on your plantations in the Caribbean. By the time we got to Shakespeare--as you must, in any Renaissance Lit class--we could place his work in a context of colonial expansion. It was a new way of reading him for me, and enlightening. I had a similar good experience in seminars on 19th Century American Lit and Colonial Lit, and discovered in the process that I love those first couple of centuries of American writing.
But the best moment of my time at MSU took place in my thesis advisor's office. I was doing a thesis on Walt Whitman (now to remain half-finished in perpetuity), and Dr. Rachman pulled out a copy of Leaves of Grass to make a point. "Listen to the first few lines of this," he said, and started reading "Whoever You Are, Holding Me Now in Hand." Before we quite knew it, he had read the whole poem aloud, and when he was done, the two of us just sat there for a minute and grinned at each other. We remembered why we loved Whitman; we recognized that we both loved him; we were glad to be sharing him with each other. That's what I went to graduate school for.
Posted by Su Penn at July 9, 2003 08:27 AM | TrackBackWell, after all...
"Nor is it by reading [this book] you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me"
My experience is that writers, as a class, crib from Whitman as cluelessly as an Australian bower bird--in an effort to to adorn his pathetic little nest--swipes a blue trinket. It doesn't much matter to the bird whether it's a cigarette pack or a pendant of lapis lazuli. (I know this from personal experience, having once been clueless myself.)
Whitman was constantly warning that academics would never understand him. I would class most academics as just another part of this "writers as a class."
I'm encouraged by your critique of the amazing ways of academics. We need more of this honesty.
Posted by: Mitch Gould on July 9, 2003 07:45 PMI am always seeing Whitman quoted, two lines out of, say the 52 long sections of Song of Myself, and being irritated at his words being taken out of context. I often suspect the quoter has not actually read the poem being quoted; certainly they rarely seem to have read it carefully.
Posted by: Su on July 10, 2003 05:32 PM"sailor, lover, or quaker"
LEAVES OF GRASS : 150 YEARS
1855 - 2005
LeavesofGrass.org is coming...
We are notifying select correspondents that a partial preview of the
forthcoming Web site is now available for comment at
http://www.generalpicture.com/log150/log150.htm
The partial site is only suitable for Windows users and the Internet
Explorer browser. Support for other platforms and browsers may follow at a
later time. The site is best viewed using a screen size of 1024 x 768
pixels.
LeavesOfGrass.org will be dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the
publication of Walt Whitman's life work, Leaves of Grass -- 2005. Our
research has so far failed to identify significant efforts to commemorate
this milestone, so the Web site seeks to foster awareness of its importance.
In addition, the site serves to publish the results of over a decade of
research into what this author calls Whitman's "quaker paradox," a problem
that has perplexed Whitman scholars for well over a century. Whitman never
joined a conventional Quaker Meeting for Worship, but his poetry, prose, and
personal conversations are replete with self-identification as a Quaker.
LeavesofGrass.org will draw upon a multidisciplinary study of literary,
religious, cultural, and industrial histories to place Leaves of Grass in
the context of 19th century sexual and spiritual radicalism, making use of
many key clues only two or three years old.
Please give us your thoughts as the remaining pages are being added, a
process that should take less than a month. Should you care to share this
temporary site with others, feel free to direct them to the temporary link
above. Should you encounter any technical problems or can suggest
improvements to the content, please forward them to this author.
Ciao,
Mitch
mitchgould@generalpicture.com
Because I am a big fan of web accessibility, I rarely patronize websites that require Java or Flash, that only render properly in certain versions of certain browsers, or that tell me to set my screen size to a certain pixel size. If a URL takes me to a page that simply tells me I need certain things for access, I generally won't click through. Why should I, as a reader, have to do that work? There are plenty of other easier places to visit.
Also, I want the following people to be able to read my content:
If you're publishing a web comic or want people to be able to watch your film, you certainly need images (and are probably aiming at a technologically proficient audience anyway). If your content is mainly text with a few still images, there's no need to get fancy, and exclude people in the process. And when writing about Quakers, simplicity is always best, n'est-ce pas?
A good resource is Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen.
Posted by: Su on July 18, 2003 07:04 AMUPDATE: In a bit of synchronicity, Kuro5hin mentioned Jakob Nielsen this morning, too, with a link to Nielsen's website on web usability.
Posted by: Su on July 18, 2003 08:53 AMI took your advice to heart and found a way to make the Website links function on more browsers... even those such as Mozilla which loudly trumpet their adherence to Web Standards even though a thick plague of nasty bugs stymies said adherence. (I should know. I lectured on programming the Document Object Model at Netscape headquarters a few years ago.)
As for accessibility, PDA compliance, etc, been there, done that in my Web design in times past. These lofty ideals are not really ready for the real world. Take PDAs, for instance. The limitations of these devices are determined by manufacturers who want to cut corners on electronic components such as memory and displays, to increase their profits. Why should the whole Web be dumbed-down to accomodate such mercenaries?
Posted by: Mitch Gould on August 21, 2003 04:32 PM