Post #8

I feel like I’m going through extreme fluctuations in my level of confidence concerning my thesis. At the beginning of the semester, I felt relatively confident in my ability to write a paper...after all, writing is what I love to do! Literature and communicating my thoughts on literature and other forms of writing are the bases for (what I hope will eventually be) my career. Then I underwent a steep drop in confidence when I realized just how much work all of this was going to be and when we read numerous articles on managing stress and how few jobs there really are out there. However, now that we have started to put together the individual parts of our prospectus, my confidence is slowly but surely returning. Knowing that I can work through my thesis in a similar, step-like manner slightly puts my mind to rest.

Although I know my introduction needs quite a bit more work before I will feel confident including it in my prospectus, the peer review session really instilled me with a little bit more confidence regarding this whole thesis deal. I used to balk at the idea of anyone other than the professor reading my writing. Peer review sessions in grad school have helped to alleviate that anxiety and have shown me that sometimes the more feedback you can receive from your qualified fellow students, the better equipped you are to fix problems whose solutions have been alluding you. Much of the criticism I received in our peer review session included aspects of my introduction that I knew I needed to work on but was not exactly sure how to fix. I knew my thesis was a confusing mess, but I wasn’t sure how to fix it. I’m horrible at knowing when and how to split my thesis into two parts; I am afraid my thesis will be unclear and difficult to locate if it cannot be found in one sentence. However, it was the aspect of my paper that people criticized the most. Since the thesis was difficult to understand, so many other aspects of my introduction were hurt. From the criticism I was given, I have been able to re-work my thesis (into two sentences), which I hope improves the quality of my introduction.

Post #7

The concept of originality in writing has not been something I’ve really had to worry about before. The majority of the papers I wrote in undergrad, usually focus papers or assigned topics engaging with the text, required very little research and little to no originality. The aspects or themes I found to comment upon were probably the same ones everyone noticed and then made the subjects of their papers. Even the papers written in graduate school have parameters attached to them in some capacity that help direct what my topic needs to be. Even though my senior capstone, which was basically a thesis on the undergraduate level, was an “original work,” everyone in the class received quite a bit of guidance and help from the professor in formulating their topics. I have arrived at a preliminary scope for my thesis based on the articles and essays I’ve read, but only a more intense review of the literature will tell me if this idea has any merit and originality or if it will all have to be scrapped. Returning to the drawing board is not a pleasant possibility, but it is a reality.

Salinger studies has placed a large emphasis on the concept of Eastern religious thought in both Salinger’s personal life and in his writing. I am not familiar enough with Buddhism and Hinduism to make a complete judgment, but from what I have read, there are many articles on this topic which seem to present a (mostly) complete picture of Eastern philosophy in a number of Salinger’s writings from The Catcher in the Rye to relevant short stories in Nine Stories. I will need to become more familiar with these philosophies in order to intelligently comment on them if they happen to come up in my paper, but other aspects of Salinger’s works, especially the short stories in Nine Stories, have sometimes been neglected in favor of the predominant trend of finding religious symbols in “Teddy.” Many of Salinger’s stories focus on children, and while the role of children has been commented on by a few critics, “The Laughing Man” stands out as the one story that contains a number of children but has very little criticism written about it.

Post #6

We have read many important and informative articles in this class throughout the semester. We have learned about the history of English departments, how to write for an audience, and how to interact with your mentor and thesis committee members. However, the article that has remained on my mind constantly since we read and discussed it is “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go” by Thomas H. Benton. I came into graduate school with many of the unrealistic notions that he mentions. The state of the English faculty in universities is different than it was when my professors and mentors at my undergraduate institution were hired. I went to a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, and almost a third of the professors in the English department only had MAs and were not looked down upon as inferior teachers; I saw no difference between their ability to teach me about novels, poems, and literary theory and the ability of professors with PhDs to teach me the same concepts. However, as more and more students are pursuing MAs and then PhDs, institutions are naturally going to hire the most qualified applicants. With such large numbers of applications, those who have a PhD at the end of their name and have large numbers of articles published listed on their CVs are going to be hired by institutions looking to prove themselves as distinguished institutes of higher learning.

This article and the advice it contains may seem overly bleak, but Benton does provide a wake-up call that has led me to two different realizations. The first is that I must look at other career options when I leave graduate school with my thesis completed. The competition for jobs is cutthroat, and thus students are fighting to enter into PhD programs, programs that are going to accept those with greater qualifications than I can feasibly attain within the next year or so. The second realization is that this thesis is very important (more important than I thought) if I decide to take the risk and apply to a PhD program. My thesis must be as polished, relevant, and interesting as possible if I stand any chance of being accepted by a PhD program in order to pursue my dream career.

Post #5

The act of taking this class has alerted me to many of the insecurities I have related to my writing (some of them I was vaguely aware of and other I have been successfully repressing). “Why Graduate Students Can’t Write” presented a fairly comprehensive view of many of the stumbling blocks and difficulties that students working on their dissertations and theses encounter; the ability to structure writing times in such an unstructured time frame was an issue that I was aware of but had never really applied to my own list of thesis concerns. My main concern, building on last week, relates to time management. I find that much of my motivation for completing a task stems from the fact that I am given a deadline, and if I do not complete my work by then, I will be penalized. Never one for extensions, a specific due date is something that I need to motivate me toward completion. I know that writing my thesis is a whole different undertaking than just a seminar paper that needs to be 15 pages. When I have a due date for one of these papers looming at the end of the month, I know that I just have to work hard and complete that work, and then I will be done. It will not be the same type of process for the thesis. Such a long and unstructured time frame will not give me that final date that I can consider a “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Recognizing my need for deadlines helps me realize what type of professor I need to pursue in my quest for an adviser. I need to set up my own schedule, whether it be one outlined in one of the many “How to Write Your Thesis” books or one I devise on my own, but I also should attempt to find an adviser who will hold me accountable to these deadlines and who will place the same importance on adhering, as strictly as possible, to an established schedule.