Inching towards the Finish Line for the first paper

So I've been reading all the posts with great pleasure -- even the ones that vividly enact your frustrations!  I know I shouldn't take pleasure in your frustration, but I do, and here's why. The obsession with minor points, the changing of directions, the worrying over whether there's enough evidence for one thing or another, the panic over whether something has to be in (or left out), the sudden inspiration (hey!  North and South is about consumer culture!), the desire to throw all the books out a window, irritation at a weirdly organized index, the picture of a hamster in what appears to be a bicycle helmet, the need for a bowl of noodles -- all these are tokens of  genuine scholarly inquiry.  When my first-year students in Writing 125 do their 'research papers,' I can tell that they aren't ready for this kind of total absorption in the research process. They can only take so much of it because so many aspects of research are truly thankless. No pay-off.  I know what it's like to read 100 pages and take one phrase from it.  That's a true representation of the process. And so is reading 100 pages and taking 1000 phrases from it and feeling totally overwhelmed.  Worse, you are probably already thinking about this project all the time.  Research does that to you.  It latches on.  That's why I love it so much, and appreciate your willingness to go down this road.

On a lighter note -- yesterday, while I was teaching Jane Eyre, I referred to Celine Varens (a character in the novel) as Celine Dion.  Believe me when I say the class laughed at me and not with me. My heart will go on.

So finish up your papers and get on with fall break.

I want to see a movie this weekend. What should I see?

Yrs,
Researchteacher

Slight delay in posting because my home computer (laptop) finally departed this world -- though not completely because it still will type the number '6'. Something wrong with the keyboard, I suspect, but the keyboard is in such bad shape (two letters fell off long ago) that it is time to get something else -- which I have done.

I'm not going to proofread/correct this blog in the hope that will encourage you to go forth with blogs without fearing typos of imperfect grammar.  Let's forgive ourselves all typo and bad grammar in advance and that will free us to just type for five minutes.

I've been reading the posts with great pleasure -- Kelsey's on the no-cliffs of N and S, Andi on the chain of events (lazy cat) that brought her to Oliver, Lisa on Braddon's influence and the injustice to Lady A, Alexis on the Eliot blonde, Julia on her choice of Mill.  I think I'm up to date since my computer debacle and have put the blogger Icon on this laptop.

I've been thinking a lot about my own experience taking a class sort of like this -- my first semester of graduate school at UC Berkeley in 1984(!).  I had picked a Beckett play as my text, but I wasn't able to do it because they stuck me in the Renaissance section (30 graduate students were divided into three periods and you had to pick a text fromthat period). So I ended up picking John Donne's Holy Sonnets (which are seen as a single text), which I loved then and love now.  Because the period was Renaissance, much of our work was about establising the text itself (the problems of transmission are much greater the further back in time you go).  Then we just did a lot with 'theory' -- how would you read the text if you were a Lacanian, how would you read the text if you were a deconstructionist.  The professor was old school -- he taught through intimidation and humiliation. In addition to the weekly research papers, he would assign mountains of reading (two books, I think). We couldn't do it. So one class when a particularly long and hard paper was due, we didn't do the reading. When he asked a question, there was silence. So then he went around the room asking each person individually if she had done the reading. No one had. Then he told us to get out.  Which we did.  It was a misery. 

When I decided to conjure my course, I promised myself I wouldn't be like this Berkeley professor.  I know it's hard to engage with ME Braddon AND throw yourself into your research.  I want you to have enough knowledge of Braddon so we can have some discussion that will allow you to see how to move from text to context, but I want most of your passion and energy to go into your research. 

I'm not going to read this blog over but I fear that somehow it's just about classwork. Sorry!  Can't stop myself.

On the lighter side, we are going to the Boston Animal Shelter today to pick out a cat. This is not my idea.  My 12 year old son Ben wants a cat.  Any advice?

I don't know if this blogging set up will make you more or less likely to feel like writing about your day-to-day researcher lives, but I'm going to go forth as a tester to see how I like it myself. Then I'll post this scintillating bit and see whether we'll go forward.  But first let me offer my thanks to Kelsey for showing us the way, even if we don't end up pursuing it.

So today I am re-re-reading Lady Audley, and thinking about how to help you use certain approaches to it for your own projects. I'm thinking about how Braddon's early work as an actress informs the book. If you didn't know MEB had acted in her youth, would the reading experience be the poorer for it?

I'm also starving, so I'll sign off and make myself a sandwich. There. Wasn't that interesting?
Yrs,
researchteach