The Hardest Thing...

Forgive me ye anonymous readers out there for my need to rant a bit… my ego requires it. I think the hardest thing for me in this first year of study here in Oxford has been my inability to understand the objectives of the coursework and assignments that have been given for each class. I understand the material reasonably well, participate, show up, and don’t have a problem incorporating the terms and concepts into the literature I read; however I have failed to pin down what the task(s) is/are with specificity. There is much discussion about what to consider for our essays, and I take careful notes of the advice given, but in executing the work, I seem to be missing a huge piece of the puzzle: the picture.

If my task is to rearrange information, then I must know what I am to apply to the work I do. What is the analysis that is being asked? If I know what is expected, I can then put something reasonable together that meets all the requirements of a task-at-hand. How was I supposed to know that the title was the question, and that I was not to interpret the question through a title? As it was, I read the question carefully, selected a title that reflected the question, and then wrote according to that interpretation. I did not know, and now I do – that titles are not an option. “Literary studies” is as black and white as the rest of academia (apart from reading literature as opposed to textbooks), and creativity is not part of the process unless it advances the theoretical and definitional parameters of the field. I am learning this the hard way.

Still an egocentric voice cries out from within: What is the purpose of understanding, if it is not allowed to express itself? If the task is to simply apply “x,” “y,” and “z” to “a,” “b,” and “c,” then I see this as simple mathematics comprised of variables to be solved and/or cancelled out. The same formulations can be applied to the essay: there needs to be a solid thesis – the main argument of an essay – and the thesis must be distributed to each paragraph of the essay, with an introduction, the body, and the conclusion clearly laid out. Each of the body paragraphs must have a point to support the thesis (or refute it to show contrast), and in this, is the simple structure of the essay. I sometimes feel like Langston Hughes from English 1B: I’m worlds apart from the flow, with the tension of similarities and differences imposing itself onto the scene. This is still me ranting and trying to sort out my head so I can properly pass the finish line towards the next start. This is my interior protest that foolishly exclaims, “I need to be right about something!”

My questions have always been as follows: What new things will I discover? What new things can I compose or create? What form will I metamorphose into once I have met the overall requirements and objectives at-hand? Will I be more learned? Will I have knowledge that I didn’t possess a priori? Will I make it through the gauntlet? Am I strong enough? Smart enough? I have wrestled with these issues for as far back as I can recall. To simply regurgitate information is to reassemble words without soul – without the “self” infused into the translation of something. I cannot be a carbon copy of another’s mind, or sets of ideas. However, as a student, it is my responsibility to tear down preexisting “knowledge” and replace it with foundational knowledge – this is the basis for becoming educated and enlightened – the process of humiliation, removal of said “self” and its reconstruction based on sound premises. Alas, as stated, I must quell these unreasonable protestations, stop distracting myself with deflective ideas, and learn to abide by what is required of me – not by what I want. After all, what we want and what we get are very separate matters; the gods of fate have their own agenda for what unfolds… but we have a hand in what is created. Who doesn’t have a crisis of identity now and again?!