Week Two: I Am a Rock. That's All. Just a Rock.

After Wednesday night’s class (and our discussion of the Robbins article), the importance of the “so what” question began to weigh on me. The class was edifying, but a little discouraging. I feel pretty ignorant and egotistical, actually.

Originally, the justification for my own research was self-serving – and that felt adequate. Screw the fill-in-the-blank exercises, I would have said a semester ago. I am researching my thesis topic because it’s compelling to me. Isn’t that enough? If you need a more academic justification for my work, then I’ll whip one up, but (shhhh – don’t tell anyone) I’ll confess this: my justification, while believable and defensible, will be arbitrary.

I’m not thinking that way anymore.

I can’t fake my way through the dance steps. In becomes increasingly apparent to me that I can’t retrofit my research to my justification. I have to figure out what my desire to complete this specific thesis means. Until now, my attitude towards my degree has been entirely too insular; this is what Robbins has taught me. My work, regardless of my intent, has political repercussions.

Like a messed-up Russian doll, my personal academic interests lie at the core of my work, but enveloping those interests is the politics of the English department. Encompassing that, I have to be concerned with the politics of English within the greater context of the humanities. Once I decide that my ideas deserve to be brought to life through research, my work has to continue to fight for existence in progressively vast fields of knowledge. I find that prospect terribly intimidating.

My answer to the “so what” question cannot be satisfactory only to myself, but must struggle to thrive among a host of people whom I never even knew were my audience. Even academics who never come in contact with my work (or anything approaching it) will participate in this “game,” this cycle of tension and release between the disparate fields vying for funding. I do not exist at the center of an academic universe; I am an insignificant rock among millions.

This is the most recent in a series of dark epiphanies.