Love and Work

For a long time I've been concerned to the point of obsession with the education, especially and perhaps narcissistically my own. It took three years in college to find, or perhaps realize, an interest in a set of knowledge more specific than 'everything' and there was much soul searching in the meantime (the administrators at my undergraduate university would probably be delighted at this 'journey' of self discovery and would put me in their brochures. I am certain of this.).

This tendency for over-self-reflection has only grown as the stakes of my education have grown. I don't think I am alone here at UCI in thinking that there is something vaguely 'wrong' here, if not with the education itself then with the situation as a whole. Probably most at fault are macro factors, like the disintegration of the university in general and in particular the humanities. There are medium-level factors, like Irvine, which bother some more than others (readers of this blog or knowers of me can guess my stance in this regard...).

Then there are specific things like the structure of our lists, feedback or lack thereof on papers, etc. These are things that generally get grouped within the broader problematic of "professionalization," which, in sounding both terrible and necessary at the same time, tells you everything you need to know about graduate school. I hate the term because it divides the hopefully nuanced work we do into hardened categories: that which is quirky, experimental, and creative vs. that which is rigorous, conventional, job-getting. I also hate the constant stating and restating of our "interests," this meaningless, oppressive practice that neutralizes us in advance.

This became a point of particular concern for me recently, as I slogged through writing my MA paper, which bored me to a painful degree. I've quickly realized that the most important thing for me is to not get bored, because if I'm going to be bored there are lots of other boring things to do out there in this world (well, maybe less so now...). I've also realized that I see academic work very much in terms of that thing that I've always valued above all else: art. Writing, most obviously, but writing in different forms and contexts, and not just writing. I think an academic milieu can be a supportive and productive one for working, but it can also be a destructive one.

My experience goes both ways. The one thing I, and the like-minded professors I've been talking to, need both in my work and life is social contact, community. Intellectually, this is missing, at least in comparative literature, which is why I find anthropology and the various interdisciplinary departments here so interesting and, homey. Why do people in my department not engage with each other, when they are the only people within 10 square miles or more that share the same general interests? Are they just "busy" and "tired"? Do they value their privacy, do they see in books a chance to escape, to hide, to be alone, free from fake smiles and social obligation? Is solitude a cycle that reinforces itself (as it is, now, for me)? Could I be so negative to say that some are so parochial in their interests that they lack a fundamental curiosity that would drive them out of themselves? Are they just not that into me? I don't know, but it's too bad, because it is likely that few if any of us will get jobs. So as far as I can see, the time available to us to be thinkers and writers, to make and exchange ideas (and make them in their exchange) is now. Of course we should prepare ourselves for the future, both its academic and non-academic possibilities, but in fact interaction facilitates rather than distracts from this preparation. This being more important, for me, than correctly citing my sources, than being "well read," than learning how to perform an expertise in a given subject, and certainly more important than this constant hand wringing and worrying.

So much for the potential intellectual community. As far as the social community...well, I'm the kid who threw a party that no one came to.* The sad thing is that I wasn't all that surprised.

*one person did come. still.