P.S.

Additionally, Seth thought up a great title for a potential Master's thesis for me:

Sexuality in the Garden in Paradise Lost: Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Thanks, Seth!!

My Anxiety as a Grad Student

As I look back through Lynn Z. Bloom's essay (is that name real? I mean, really??), I have to agree with her findings about halfway through the essay on page 108. Here Bloom admits that competition is the main anxiety in graduate students. One of the students in her study, Ellen, admits that it can feel like “a reflection on your character if you take too long to write your thesis.” I cannot speak for my fellow students of course, but this is definitely a cause of anxiety for me. I often find myself in discussions with classmates about our progress on our ideas and our research. It’s very much a competition between us that none of us admits we’ve entered into.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about PhD programs, and my main anxiety here is that while I’ve always achieved A’s at GSU, will that mean anything to the schools I’d like to apply to? Is there even a point in applying to UT Austin or BU? How about long shots like Harvard, Princeton, or Berkley? My current professors might be impressed by my work, but what will the professors at these most elite of schools think? Will they laugh at my writing sample? Will they be able to see through me? To see my “ineptitude” (Bloom 105)? This is what makes me start scouring the internet in search of images for the New Voices conference instead of writing my blog entry.

How I Write

When I set out to produce a research paper, I do, in fact, have a method beneath the madness. Generally I find that I am writing about poetry, so the first step is to read the poem, annotate the poem, and come up with an idea or an issue that I'd like to focus my research on. Currently, I am working on a poem about Nature's fallen state in Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." I picked that topic by doing a close reading of the poem and choosing a passage that sparked my interest and had to do with my idea for my Master's Thesis. The next step is to gather together all possible primary and secondary sources that could possibly be useful. For this paper, I quickly leafed through the table of contents of my Milton text book to see if any other of Milton's poems jumped out as possibly helpful. I did end up finding one, a Latin poem, that dealt directly with this issue. The bonus in this discovery was the paragraph by the editors that preceded the poem. It listed a number of books and pamphlets written in the early 17th century that were directly dealing with the idea of Nature in a fallen state. This information led me next to EEBO, where I found these primary sources and was able firmly establish a historical context for my idea.

Secondary sources followed these primary sources. Searching on MLAIB, I found a small number of pieces of scholarship dealing directly with my topic. I printed these out and then used their works cited lists to find additional pieces. These were all printed out as well, and a few were ordered from interlibrary loan. My next step, this weekend, will be to skim through this research and make an annotated bibliography so that I can narrow down which sources to use and which to throw away. I will also peruse the books in the library to see if I can find anything else.

The writing begins after the research is mostly finished. I make a list in a Word document of all the useful quotations I have found in my research so they will be easy to copy and paste into my paper. I also make a rough outline of my paper in a separate word document. I then literally expand this outline into the actual paper. This process ensures that I do not forget to address anything and that my paper makes sense even if I end up writing some of it in fits of delirium. I then wait a few days and begin the revision process. These few days allow me to approach the project with a fresh set of eyes so that I do not overlook errors.

At then end of this process, ta da!, the paper is finished. I'm not sure if my process is the most efficient, as it does take a long time. I am definitely open to suggestions on how to smooth-line the process.

Eureka!!!

Well, once again I am completely useless in that I seem to have a mental block against remembering to post to this blog on time. Geez. Anyway, this weekend I had a massive breakthrough. I was sitting down to start working on my paper for Milton II. My paper is concerning nature as a fallen entity in "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," a topic which I chose because of its proximity to my thesis topic so that I can begin to generate ideas. I was sitting in front of this very computer with my Milton text open about to start looking up secondary sources when the fancy struck me to look through my book's table of contents to see if anything jumped out at me. That's when I discovered on of Milton's Latin poems that I had never heard of before, "Naturam Non Pati Senium" ("That Nature does not suffer from old age"). This title intrigued me, naturally, so I leafed through the pages to find it. Reading the paragraph preceding the poem, I was astonished to discover an account of "an important seventeenth-century debate" about the idea of Nature as fallen. I further discovered that two books were mentioned to have been written on the subject before Milton composed the Nativity Ode in 1629: Goodman's The Fall of Man, and Hakewill's much longer-titled response to Goodman.

After wiggling around in my chair from excitement for a minute, I started searching for these two primary texts. The library of course failed me, but I managed to find both on EEBO. Of course, they are very difficult to read and very long, but I am going to try and use better researching skills like skimming in order to be more efficient. I also found an essay on the MLAIB concerning Milton and these two authors that I have ordered from inter-library loan. I hope I hear something soon about it.

At any rate, this little weekend breakthrough has once again made me excited about school--and it's been a while since I felt able to get excited about school. I guess this means I'll be hanging out in the library this week, trying to stay ahead of the game.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

Oh, Lord. This week has been a trying time for me outside of writing. I've been trying to think about my "process", but I have spent more time concentrating on things like New Voices and what to write my Milton II paper about. I think I've decided to write about nature as a fallen entity in "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." I think exploring nature in another of Milton's poems might help me to get some creative and research-y juices flowing. I have some good ideas of my own about the opening lines of the hymn portion of this poem, so I hope it will work out...and by that I mean I hope I get an A.

Concerning class discussion this week, I am becoming terribly worried about how I am going to make it in this field. I know I want to be a teacher--I know I would make a good teacher--but I'm not sure if I can cut it professionally. What if I can't ever publish anything? What if I can never know enough to keep up with others in my field? I don't know if I am driven enough or care enough to REALLY do this.

Tomorrow is the next day, however. I've got to stick to my plan: one day at a time. Tomorrow I will look at Lycidas and see whether or not it is a better choice that the Nativity Ode for a midterm paper. I suppose that is all I should worry about today. Ugh. Milton. Why? Why do you have to be so difficult and so well-trodden?

Additionally, this should have been posted Friday, but I am stupid and forgot to copy and paste. Oh well.