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Nov. 15th, 2007 04:37 pmWhile in the process of procrastinating because I really don't want to write my history paper, I stumbled again across my senior thesis. Seeing as how I was procrastinating, I read it.
Honestly, I was very gratified. It read like something professional -- like an essay of literary criticism fit to reside in any of the compilations of literary criticism that I've been reading through lately. Of course this is just my biased opinion, and obviously it's probably exaggerated, but the uniqueness of the approach still has me giggling with excitement nearly a year after its initial conception.
The craft of it impressed me as well. Usually when I re-read things I've written in the past I tend to discredit my former style of writing as childish or immature, but that hasn't happened yet with the senior thesis! I still feel like it's well-written and deserving of respect. More than that, it's well-argued, referencing just enough passages that the reader would probably believe what I have to say. I looked back at it and thought, "Gee, why can't I just whip out a history paper that looks like that?"
And then I remembered exactly how long it took me to write that marvelous masterpiece of an essay, and how engaged in the subject I was, and how many revisions it went through, and I said to myself, "That's why I can't just whip out a history paper that looks like that."
The idea is a little depressing, especially since I'm meeting with my history GSI to talk about the paper tomorrow and I don't really have much to show her, but at the same time the gratification of knowing that I'm still in love with my senior thesis is helping me to balance these things out. Whaddaya know -- IB was good for something after all. I know that in the future I'm certainly planning to make further inquiries into the literary criticism of dystopian literature in a historical context, because that's what moves me.
Just like I'm reading through a couple books of Jane Austen criticism in order to write a simple paper on Pride and Prejudice. It's so refreshing to have such a love for a subject that even the research and the work is something worth it. The only problem I have is that at some point I'll have to pick an area of English to specialize in, and I'll be torn between the Romantics and the Dystopians! Maybe it's Professor Goldsmith's fault, but at the moment I'm leaning to the Romantics, especially if it means I get to read more of Austen and learn about the critical tradition in her works. Besides, I can always wrangle the Dystopians into the focus of my history major, which looks like twentieth century western history at the moment, from the Great War to the Cold War.
And then there's always the chance that four years from now I'll have graduated with a degree in Women's Studies and be starting med school -- at least, my father would remind me of this if I mentioned how set I feel I am in the paths I want to take. After all, he went into Berkeley as a lawyer and came out as a teacher. But somehow I don't see myself undergoing the same kind of transformation. I know very well what I want to do with my life, and though the specifics might change, they also might not. And that's not exactly a problem.
This has turned into an oddly retrospective entry for something that was initially intended as further procrastination, but I think I like it that way. I've got an odd mixture of Pride and Prejudice and Fahrenheit 451 running around in my head right now...maybe I should follow it.
Honestly, I was very gratified. It read like something professional -- like an essay of literary criticism fit to reside in any of the compilations of literary criticism that I've been reading through lately. Of course this is just my biased opinion, and obviously it's probably exaggerated, but the uniqueness of the approach still has me giggling with excitement nearly a year after its initial conception.
The craft of it impressed me as well. Usually when I re-read things I've written in the past I tend to discredit my former style of writing as childish or immature, but that hasn't happened yet with the senior thesis! I still feel like it's well-written and deserving of respect. More than that, it's well-argued, referencing just enough passages that the reader would probably believe what I have to say. I looked back at it and thought, "Gee, why can't I just whip out a history paper that looks like that?"
And then I remembered exactly how long it took me to write that marvelous masterpiece of an essay, and how engaged in the subject I was, and how many revisions it went through, and I said to myself, "That's why I can't just whip out a history paper that looks like that."
The idea is a little depressing, especially since I'm meeting with my history GSI to talk about the paper tomorrow and I don't really have much to show her, but at the same time the gratification of knowing that I'm still in love with my senior thesis is helping me to balance these things out. Whaddaya know -- IB was good for something after all. I know that in the future I'm certainly planning to make further inquiries into the literary criticism of dystopian literature in a historical context, because that's what moves me.
Just like I'm reading through a couple books of Jane Austen criticism in order to write a simple paper on Pride and Prejudice. It's so refreshing to have such a love for a subject that even the research and the work is something worth it. The only problem I have is that at some point I'll have to pick an area of English to specialize in, and I'll be torn between the Romantics and the Dystopians! Maybe it's Professor Goldsmith's fault, but at the moment I'm leaning to the Romantics, especially if it means I get to read more of Austen and learn about the critical tradition in her works. Besides, I can always wrangle the Dystopians into the focus of my history major, which looks like twentieth century western history at the moment, from the Great War to the Cold War.
And then there's always the chance that four years from now I'll have graduated with a degree in Women's Studies and be starting med school -- at least, my father would remind me of this if I mentioned how set I feel I am in the paths I want to take. After all, he went into Berkeley as a lawyer and came out as a teacher. But somehow I don't see myself undergoing the same kind of transformation. I know very well what I want to do with my life, and though the specifics might change, they also might not. And that's not exactly a problem.
This has turned into an oddly retrospective entry for something that was initially intended as further procrastination, but I think I like it that way. I've got an odd mixture of Pride and Prejudice and Fahrenheit 451 running around in my head right now...maybe I should follow it.
