Meanderie Reads

Although I have created a separate blog to host all of my readerly insights of 2014, I have yet to really begin over there and I have had a thought that I'd like to express.

You see, I've been filling out these graduate school applications and that's all fine and well, but I still feel like I'm only grazing the surface of what I want to study. It's difficult for me to corral all of my thoughts into a three-page statement of purpose, and it's frustrating for me to try to pretend that I don't know exactly what I want to study for my PhD.

So when my advising professor proposed that I include a section explaining why I am applying to master's programs instead of doctoral programs, I was stumped for a moment. How to best explain that I want to even out my grades and prove that I am worthy? I made a show of the fact that I learn better in more focused studies, using that to explain away less-than-stellar grades that were really due to my flights of manic fancy. It's true that I got my best grades in the courses that most closely mimicked graduate level courses, and I do think that's a reasonable explanation.

I do think I will benefit greatly from a couple of extra years studying the classics and getting a better sense of my area of specialization. But on some level, I will be reading for that specialization no matter what course I'm taking. If I am in medieval literature, I will be reading with an eye to how eighteenth-century satirists stole from Rabelais and Chaucer. If I'm studying post-modernism, I will be reading how Foster Wallace and Pynchon stole from Sterne and Swift. If I'm studying Milton, I will somehow be considering Enlightenment philosophy.

I think I will also end up reading toward narrative theory and cognitive science, regardless. While this kind of compulsive linking is definitely beneficial and is far better than coasting through a master's program without taking advantage of its offerings, I still feel like I will be somewhat condescending toward the whole experience. I am afraid that I can't change my feelings that it is a waste of time that could be spent working on a doctoral project.

On one hand, I feel like I do need to pay my dues and earn my way through. I can't just expect to be admitted to a good doctoral program because I have ideas. I feel like my professor had the right idea suggesting that I build myself up with this master's program so that I can get into a top-notch doctoral program with someone that I truly want to study under. On the other hand, I'm impatient to get to work on the ideas I already have and I am also afraid that I will get bored if I'm not able to start focusing on them right now. It's a double-edged sword. And I don't want to forget about this project and latch onto something new. I know that a lot of students go in with ideas and come out with completely different projects, but I don't want to be that student. I want to follow this one through before I go off on some tangent.

Anyway, those are my thoughts right now. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

The reading blog will be at www.meanderiereads.blogspot.com whenever I get around to updating it with the one book I've read so far this year.