So most of you know I am getting my PhD {in English, in case you were wondering}. I want to be a professor and getting the ol' PhD is really the only way to go about it. I am in my second year of what will probably be a six year endeavor. {These glasses are fake. Just FYI.} But before you convince yourself that I am all smarty pants and driven and scholarly and all that jazz, let me tell you that truth... I am a bad graduate student. I mean, I am good at "doing school." I can write well, I'm not afraid to speak up in class, I always meet deadlines {although I can procrastinate with the best of them}, I am a fairly confident and innovative teacher, but when it comes to grad school, I really just feel like a big fat faker most of the time. See, in graduate school we are supposed to read all the time. When we finish our assigned reading, we are supposed to read other scholarly articles for fun. During summer break we are supposed to brush up on our Aristotle and return to school in the fall with fresh, new ideas that no one has ever thought of before, and should probably have a draft of a paper that is almost ready for publication. Ooops. Maybe I chose the wrong profession. I don't read scholarly articles for fun; instead, I anxiously await summer break so I can catch up on my Real Simple magazines. Today in a meeting, one of my classmates started talking about a concept he is working on with mapping. The problem he sees is that when we make maps {of any sort - not just geographical} they are static. They don't show movement or changes over time. If too many things change, you just have to make a brand new map to account for it, so he is trying to think of ways we can make non-static {moving} maps in academia. I spent the next five minutes thinking about the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter {the one that shows where people are moving all over Hogwarts} and decided that a Harry Potter allusion would be a most excellent introduction to the mapping article that this classmate will probably be publishing next year after he brushes up on his Aristotle over summer vacation. Harry Potter is my Aristotle. So there it is. I am a bad grad, but I'm okay with it. I will keep faking it each and every day... and maybe, someday, I, too, will publish a paper with Harry Potter introduction. I can only hope... xoxo, Jen ... Read more
