Show & Tell

[DontHate]

I feel like so much of these threads are about reasons why we think we won't get into school. Silly reasons, like our GRE scores or a handful of poor grades when we were 18. How about we discuss, instead, reasons why we know that we're supposed to be doing this. Signs that we have a vocation. The feeling of "vocation" is definitely something to hold onto if any of us have to re-apply or consider other unconventional routes to professorships and scholarship in general.

When did you realize you loved literature? How did you know it was going to be your life? Why do you need it to be your life? What would you like to see in your obituary, if you achieve all your career goals?

[Deadinthewater]

I don't love literature, but as far as I have seen that is not a prerequisite for graduate study.

[damequixote]

DontHate, this is a brilliant idea. Personally, I was a huge loser (academically, anyway) until I took my first lit class in college. I became a lit loving nerd, got my M.A. and started adjuncting after I decided last-minute not to move my with boyfriend at the time to Whales, where he'd get his PhD. I was determined to go for the Ph.D., took an adjuncting job in the mean time, and fell in love.... with my basic writing students. Now I'm going (somewhere!!!) to get my PhD in rhet comp. So, I hope my tombstone reads that I helped a lot of losers like me make it through college.

Edited February 9, 2013 by damequixote

[Cactus Ed]

Ok, I'll bite (since Deadinthewater's response is the epitome of a buzzkill). Literature helps me understand the world around me. It gives me hope that I'll find the meaning of life -- my tiny, insignificant life as well as that which characterizes all animate beings -- by giving me kernels and nuggets of truth, word by word. For me, literature has the power to explain everything. Each novel or poem or short story or film I experience seems to me a series of analogies within a larger analogy, each speaking to some aspect of the universe in myriad ways. 

 

This is why I want to study, understand, an teach literature. Because it is a gateway for me to so much more than prestige or renown or the meteoric rise of a career. 

 

... That, and I don't want to continue as a corporate cog 

Edited February 9, 2013 by Cactus Ed

[DontHate]

I don't love literature, but as far as I have seen that is not a prerequisite for graduate study.

 

It certainly helps though

[ishmael]

Well. I've always been a huge reader. And I fought my love for literature for years... began undergrad as a theatre major. Finally, after becoming an English minor and with more than a little influence from more than one English prof, I gave in to my true love for lit and criticism. It's really been one of those situations where I denied what I was good at and what I really loved--I think people sometimes run away from their passion, for whatever reason... But two years ago I gave in and double majored... With every lit class I take, I fall deeper in love with lit, criticism, and scholarly writing. I even fought my urge to apply to grad schools until late this summer. I had a prof tell me that, "If anyone should go to grad school, it's you. And even if you just do an MA, you could do worse with two years of your life." 

 

I just love gleaning meaning from texts. I love scholarly discussion. You could say that I'm in love with the romance of the English Scholar... totally cliche, I know. But I feel truly alive when I delve into the meaning of a text. Plus, I don't think I could devote my life to some corporate job that I don't really believe in. Many people live life as though they have time... I recognize that there isn't time to wait around to find happiness. So, I came to the realization that I really do want to be a scholar of literature, at whatever cost. 

 

Meh, rereading this, I'm horribly cliche. But whatever. Maybe it's the beer talking... haha.

[DontHate]

My epiphany came when I started reading The Man Without Qualities. It was just one of those books that's so full, it made me think "I could dedicate my whole life to reading and analyzing this." 

[ishmael]

My epiphany came in two parts. Mrs. Dalloway ... "For there she was." And confirmed with Moby-Dick. Hence... "Call me Ishmael."

[thatjewishgirl]

I realized that I loved literature in high school when I read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. I mentioned this in another post, but I--maybe stupidly--got a huge tattoo dedicated to Les Mis, and I think the fact that I don't completely regret that decision because it reminds me of my love of literature tells me I am doing the right thing. (a little cheesy I know)

 

But I know I am doing the right thing pursuing a PhD because I love teaching. And more than that, I love teaching freshmen and sophomores and non-traditional students. I wish it was possible to get a stable job teaching college classes with just an MA, but since it isn't, I will keep trying to get a PhD because I really love teaching. And I think that teaching lit is the most fun, for me anyway. I thoroughly enjoy teaching literature to undergrads.

[chaucerettescs]

When I was a baby and used to take my mom's books off the shelves and become very upset that I couldn't understand the words.

[Deadinthewater]

I don't love literature, but as far as I have seen that is not a prerequisite for graduate study.

 

Man, I seriously expected this to get at least one upvote...

[lisajay]

Man, I seriously expected this to get at least one upvote...

i would've upvoted it, as it made me laugh, but i can't upvote on my phone. so... uh... +1

[ProfLorax]

I love stories. Ever since I was a child, I loved to listen, read, and tell stories. I didn't realize why until I was in college, and then it hit me. Now, I tell my students why we spend so much time analyzing literature, myths, film, and TV series: because if we want to really know the values of a culture, we look at the stories it tells. When I first realized that, I finally felt validated for my years upon years of analyzing EVERYTHING. And while the rest of the world always vehemently replied with, "it's just a book/movie/TV show/story!" I felt at home in English and Women's Studies departments, places where everyone was devoted to teasing out understanding or meaning or lack of meaning behind stories. 

 

Forgive the incoherence. It is late. I am sleepy and plagued by a wave of feelings thanks to a stupid YA book actually wasn't stupid at all-- just very very sad. And uplifting. AGH THE FEELINGS. 

[ishmael]

I love stories. Ever since I was a child, I loved to listen, read, and tell stories. I didn't realize why until I was in college, and then it hit me. Now, I tell my students why we spend so much time analyzing literature, myths, film, and TV series: because if we want to really know the values of a culture, we look at the stories it tells. When I first realized that, I finally felt validated for my years upon years of analyzing EVERYTHING. And while the rest of the world always vehemently replied with, "it's just a book/movie/TV show/story!" I felt at home in English and Women's Studies departments, places where everyone was devoted to teasing out understanding or meaning or lack of meaning behind stories. 

 

Forgive the incoherence. It is late. I am sleepy and plagued by a wave of feelings thanks to a stupid YA book actually wasn't stupid at all-- just very very sad. And uplifting. AGH THE FEELINGS. 

This.

[muchado]

I've always loved reading. My Dad loves to tell stories about how I got mad at him when he would read to me because he wasn't using all the words on the page (if you've read to little kids, you know how easy it is to say "and the mermaid was happy" instead of actually reading the story). However, it didn't really hit me until high school how much I wanted to pursue literature as anything more than just a hobby. I had always planned to be a doctor, until I realized how much more I loved my English classes than my science classes. And that was it. I've never stopped trying to figure out how the words we use shape who we are. 

[jmcgee]

I ruined tons of my books when I was little because, besides not being able to put them down while eating, walking, etc., I also tried to read while showering. 

 

Is this thread everything we wanted to say in our SOPs but weren't allowed to?  I like.

Edited February 11, 2013 by jmcgee

[dazedandbemused]

I ruined tons of my books when I was little because, besides not being able to put them down while eating, walking, etc., I also tried to read while showering. 

 

Is this thread everything we wanted to say in our SOPs but weren't allowed to?  I like.

 

I thought I was the only person who read in the shower! Nice. I actually perfected my method around 13; the pages still got crinkly, but they didn't get soaked by the spray anymore.

[Porridge]

This thread could potentially turn into a terrible SOP. 

 

"I am applying to University of X because I love literature. As a young child, I sat on my grandpa's knee as he read me stories. It was these tender moments when I was 4 years old that I decided to become a Professor of English. Thus, I believe I will be a great asset to your institution for this very reason that I love literature like no other person in the world."

[bluecheese]

"I am an animal. Language is my worst deformity. When I was a child my parents threw books at me and I chewed and swallowed them like discarded flesh. The flesh was toxic and it caused me to grow mass upon mass of benign tumors. My eyes and hands are especially corrupt and deformed with these masses of flesh as try I manipulate things like new books. Please accept me to your graduate program, it will make me feel sad and bourgeois. My weirdly shaped body will drop book on the floor and I'll cry. I'll shiver in the corner because I have no fur, I only have language and clothing produced in oppressive factories... I have no faith in literature."

Edited February 11, 2013 by bluecheese

[Datatape]

"I am an animal. Language is my worst deformity. When I was a child my parents threw books at me and I chewed and swallowed them like discarded flesh. The flesh was toxic and it caused me to grow mass upon mass of benign tumors. My eyes and hands are especially corrupt and deformed with these masses of flesh as try I manipulate things like new books. Please accept me to your graduate program, it will make me feel sad and bourgeois. My weirdly shaped body will drop book on the floor and I'll cry. I'll shiver in the corner because I have no fur, I only have language and clothing produced in oppressive factories... I have no faith in literature."

 

[champagne]

This is probably a common experience for everybody, but literary research was the first time I didn't feel like I was doing "work". Simple but true.

 

 

As far as an epitaph or obituary goes, I would modify Keats'.

 

"Here lies a man whose name was writ in water. His ideas, however, sculpted our minds."

[jmcgee]

I thought I was the only person who read in the shower! Nice. I actually perfected my method around 13; the pages still got crinkly, but they didn't get soaked by the spray anymore.

 

That is awesome!  We are soul friends fo sho!

[rems]

"I am an animal. Language is my worst deformity. When I was a child my parents threw books at me and I chewed and swallowed them like discarded flesh. The flesh was toxic and it caused me to grow mass upon mass of benign tumors. My eyes and hands are especially corrupt and deformed with these masses of flesh as try I manipulate things like new books. Please accept me to your graduate program, it will make me feel sad and bourgeois. My weirdly shaped body will drop book on the floor and I'll cry. I'll shiver in the corner because I have no fur, I only have language and clothing produced in oppressive factories... I have no faith in literature."

 

OMG I can't believe I missed this. This is awesome, and being around people like you is why I like being an English scholar. 

[Vavasor]

Well, I feel bad sometimes that I didn't really grow up reading literature. It wasn't really until my senior year in high school. I'd read a lot of Simpsons comics in the past, and Matt Groening makes a lot of literary allusions and I wanted to understand them so I started reading things like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, and so on. I decided I wanted to go to college and be an English major, and by fall of my sophomore year I had more notes on literature I'd studied independently than I had for any of my classes.

 

Making up for lost time!

Edited February 15, 2013 by Vavasor

[Stingermania]

When did you realize you loved literature?

 

I honestly don't remember. I loved literature when I was a child. I was born in a literary family, my father is a writer. He can't publish anything because of the regime censorship. I should've hated it but I loved it. Maybe we have a literature gene. Maybe it's an acceptable form of madness. I don't know.

 

How did you know it was going to be your life?

 

I can't do any other thing. I can't sing, or run for office, or shoot myself into space. As a small child I imprisoned myself in my room and did nothing but read. I didn't develope any useful skills. I never had any other options I guess.

 

Why do you need it to be your life?

 

I like living. I know it sounds stupid but I am really grateful to be alive. I love all the little pleasures, pains, things like that. But I'm unable to experience it myself. I'm socially inept, physically weak, and a coward. I can't go to parties and woo the girls. I can't go to tours around the globe. I can't pick up a gun and fight a tyrannical regime. So the only way for me to experience life is second-hand, and the way to understand life is to analyze literature.

 

What would you like to see in your obituary, if you achieve all your career goals?

 

"Here lies silent another voice of the cacophony of 21st century. We find most of his ideas stupid, but nevertheless he taught us a lot through his mistakes."

 

Also, I'm not sure if joining academia will mean we're not in a corporation. It's also a church. People have dialogues in an inner circle with an incomprehensible jargon, and they will hide the result behind a steel wall of expensive books and journal articles. Of course, you might ask me "then why are you so desperate to get into this system", well, poverty, the ability to get out of Iran, and also (and mainly) because I highly respect the people involved - I'm just not a fan of the overall system.