Giving Thanks: Research Edition

So addicting, it's like academic crack. It's crackademic.

I have a confession. I'm addicted to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In case you don't know, The Chronicle is a news source, both in print and online, that reports stories on - what else? - higher education. Stories range from pieces on academic culture, the job market, different things that schools around the nation are doing, and just about everything in between. 

While it's not really intended for undergraduates, I think it is an absolutely fabulous and interesting resource. Also, after working closely with a mentor involved in the same university politics in which The Chronicle takes an interest, I feel somewhat invested in the issues at hand, so why not read about them?

Recently, I've been drawn to the Advice section of the paper. Generally, I hate the content that appears in advice columns. I suppose I'm young and stubborn, but I've always believed that whatever problems I have are best solved by myself, not on the advice of strangers. And given that it's easier to give advice than to take it, there always seems to be an overabundance of advice in these sections, and such advice always seems to be cheap and poorly wrought. (I have similar feelings about self-help books, for the record.)

Upon my most recent glance through the Advice section, one article caught my eye, Rachel Toor's "Reading Like a Graduate Student." I was drawn in by the title alone. "How," I wondered, "does a graduate student read, exactly? Do they annotate extensively? Perhaps they all know that the key to great literature is to read from right to left, instead of left to right like I've been so foolishly doing for so long? Maybe they don't read at all?" So, determined to discover the elusive secrets of graduate-level reading, I clicked on Toor's article.

This was the most ridiculous image of Harold Bloom I could find. I like it.

In Toor's vision, graduate students have been taught to read almost too well. They are overly critical of everything. She applies Harold Bloom's theory about the anxiety of influence when she notes that "overworked and overwhelmed" students are overly critical of the scholarship they read. Toor believes that this excessive criticism stems from the students' efforts to secure a place for themselves in the academy by noting where their predecessors fell short.

Toor isn't calling for an end to scholarly critique. Rather, she laments that graduate students, in their rush to be critical, have stopped appreciating literature - scholarly and otherwise. She closes her article:

I wish there were a way to inculcate in students, as they continue through their graduate studies (and even when they enter the professoriate), the idea of how fortunate we are to be able to spend our lives reading, thinking, and writing, and that much of what we are absorbing is the best that has been said and thought in the world, even if it's not exactly their cup of decaf skim chai latte.

It's scary to come so late to a conversation (again, I think of Bloom's idea of belatedness), but I'd like to remind them that they're lucky to be included. They may not love everything they are reading. But at least they can learn to appreciate the labor taken to get it before them.

I think these points are important, but, more importantly, I think they're just beautiful and hopeful. It's easy to become stressed and overwhelmed to the point that you forget about the big picture. How awesome that we, as scholars, can make a living (or Interim) out of reading "the best that has been said and thought in the world!" How fantastic that we can be "included" in a critical conversation that has probably existed longer than we've even been alive!

It's easy to grow tired with research, to feel like you're making no progress or to become overly critical. But it's important to retain a positive perspective and realize how fortunate we are to be able to do the work we love. Retaining a positive perspective may not be how a graduate student does read, but I believe that perhaps it's a part of how the student should read.