On being a blogger
Someone once asked me about what I actually do as a blogger, and I replied airily, “Oh, I just write a term paper a day.”
It was meant to be a joke, but the joke wasn’t so very far from the truth. And the funny thing about it is that, when I was in school, I hated to write term papers. In fact, I hated a lot of assignments and a lot of my schooling, which is a funny thing because I was an excellent student.
I liked to read and write, but I liked to read what I wanted to read and I liked to write on topics that interested me. That said, I understood that coping with assignments was part of the discipline I also had to learn. But I never liked it. I certainly did plenty of it, though, and successfully proceeded through grade school, high school, college, and then two graduate schools (with some breaks in between those two).
But looking back, I’m saddened and somewhat puzzled by the fact that I can count on the fingers of one hand the college courses that I found worthwhile. They probably weren’t the sort of thing most people would consider especially worthwhile, either. But to me they were. Here’s the list:
Russian intellectual history
Drama as literature
Population genetics
Art history survey
Poetry course specializing in Robert Frost
And in law school my favorite course—head and shoulders above all the others—was called Philosophy of Law (otherwise known as Jurisprudence).
Nowadays, such things probably have been taken over by the left, like everything else academic. But back then it hadn’t happened yet, and the teachers who taught those particular courses were brilliant.
All of this may seem rather far afield from being a blogger, but I don’t think it is. You can see that my interests then were not so very different from my interests now. My “assignments” these days are my own, and although I often decide to follow the news du jour, my real love is all the rest of it.
If I may offer an observation: Of the courses you mention as worthwhile it seems to me that you preferred courses which were theoretical rather than courses that focused on practicum. Even jurisprudence, the philosophy of law (the theory of law), seems unlike a course in how to read and write a contract or how to litigate a case.
Likewise, hating assignments and schooling — Having entertained the idea of returning to formal study I realize that, at this age, I could not tolerate busy-work assignments designed to teachv students how to write and how to critically think.
Personally, I am glad to see your acknowledgement of the art history survey; in my mind an undervalued discipline. It was, for me, a compendium discipline, a gateway to learning many things outside of the world of art. It is my decided opinion that high school history classes could be instantly and exponentially improved simply by adding some art history to the curriculum.
T:
I remember thinking back then that my academic interests would seem to suit the idea of my becoming some sort of professor. But I hated school and academia, and so I utterly rejected that notion. It was a real conundrum, and I never quite solved it (except, I guess, for blogging, which not only didn’t exist for most of my life but which isn’t going to put a lot of food on the table unless you’re Instapundit).
I have great admiration for people who can get up the enthusiasm to write about political issues every day as you and others do. I would get so tired of it very fast especially in our current times.
I’d probably end up writing more about music and why the shift is killing baseball and why technology is killing golf and lose all my readers.
Somebody asked me the other day why I didn’t go to grad school and the simple answer is I hated school. I basically coasted to a degree. I have learned so much more on my own than I ever did or would in college. Definitely now as universities are a joke now as compared to my times in the late 80s early 90s. Though there were signs as I look back now of things to come.
Thank you for presenting your term papers in a timely manner, I read them most every day and you have a nice group of folks who comment, I don’t always agree with them and at times don’t understand them but you keep us under control, only spanked me once. That was enough.
As for remember college courses 50 years ago the ones I actually learned the most from were generally the tough ones taught by professors with expectations of student performance and in the old days I had to work hard to make A’s. At the end of each semester there was a sigh of relief upon completion of difficult material, years later I realized that was the stuff I remembered and some I actually used.
I get 4 of the 5, population genetics is the one thing that is not like the others. But hey, curiosity is a funny thing.
“But looking back, I’m saddened and somewhat puzzled by the fact that I can count on the fingers of one hand the college courses that I found worthwhile.”
Perhaps SciFi writer Theodore Sturgeon’s ‘Law’ will remove your puzzlement; “90 percent of everything is crap”.
Sturgeon arrived at that adage “after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud.
Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap.
In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.”
I believe a firm argument can be made that more than 90% of today’s school courses, government deliberations, news opining, TV, film, music and ‘art’ is indeed… crap. Clearly the world is full of crap;-)
Ok, Griffin, as a desultory-level baseball fan who never loves to go to games and wants to appreciate what I watch, and with apologies to all here for the dumb questions, what is “the shift” and why is it ruining baseball?
In Grad School for an MA in History, I took two Art History classes. I enjoyed them a great deal, possibly because of my love of History and because the Professor was so very good. When my wife an I travel we try to go to the museums. I remember walking into the Schonberg Palace in Vienna and seeing the great painting by David of Napoleon at the Brenner Pass, on his great white horse. And the great paintings by Klimt. History and Art intertwined.
OK, I will wade in here with a much beloved quote (at least by me). Francis Bacon said that “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” And so, as a dilatory autodidact, I tend to hold undeveloped lumps of opinion and have no idea what I think, until I take pen to paper. Kudos to you for thinking clearly and writing well on contemporary subjects.
Colleges are hamstrung by obsolete knowledge and arrogant professors. This is true whether the professors are conservative, your Red side, or the enemy, the Blue Leftist side.
Jamie,
As far as I am concerned baseball was degraded by the following: a) the designated hitter, b) NL and AL teams playing one another during the regular season and, c) changes to the strike zone. Baseball is a meant to be a pastoral game, slow paced with moments of excitement. Once baseball was not the national sport I knew it was all down hill.
I am one of those (now) rare persons who don’t have a degree but have managed to make it professionally in tech. I was not able to finish my degree (at the time in computer science with an engineering minor) because I met my husband and we started a family. I went back to work asap after having my son and kept finding a way to pursue my chosen career. I taught myself and worked harder for that than I would have if I had finished school. Can you tell that I am proud of that? haha.
I also blog on technical subjects and it is indeed very difficult to do without discipline. Because of an influx of work, I have been forced to not blog for a couple of weeks. I love and hate it.
My favorite undergrad courses: Aerial photo Interpretation, Geomorphology, Geological Map Making, and Petroleum Geology. Some I cared less for: Paleontology and Mineralogy. Those I hated: Literature courses of any kind, and History courses of any kind. In Naval Post Graduate School my faves were: Introduction to Fortran and Cobol, Introduction to Semi-Conductors (They were very new at the time, but we knew they were the future.), and Advanced Meteorology.
Quite different than Neo’s likes. I was not interested in philosophy or history until I spent time recruiting on college campuses in the late 1960s. That experience made me realize that politics and ideas were shaping the world in ways I didn’t understand. (I still don’t quite get it, but I’m slightly more informed – especially from reading Neo and her well-informed commenters.)
At one time I thought I might try blogging, but realized that I didn’t really have that much to say. I started reading Shrinkwrapped, Ziggy and Neo in 2004/5. (I need a lot of therapy!) Shrinkwrapped and Ziggy quit blogging some years ago. Thus, my admiration for Neo and her ability to keep on writing her term papers.
Blogging kind of reverses teacher and student positions: Neo writes the term papers, and we get to grade them!
More seriously, every day is like walking into a series of seminar classes without knowing what the subjects will be, although there are some on-going topics, and holding our conversations with the other participants at one remove.
Bloggers and commenters can partake of any mix of Bacon’s three legs of education (as noted by gpc31): “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
Maybe I’m an odd among odds, but I liked school, because there was: a specific curriculum, with some variations; a set time for investigation, discussion, and evaluation; and (in college) exposure to subjects I could not have encountered on my own. And access to libraries.
It helps that I had some really good teachers, and quite decent schools (I only appreciated them in retrospect, after discovering not all teachers and schools were like mine).
And, it was before the full-scale invasion of the socialists, PCers, and their ilk.
I still had sane educators.
Neo, thank you for all you do.
I feel your pain. I never got less than an ‘A’ on a college paper – and I HATED writing them. Because my dad ( a history prof) taught me to COVER EVERYTHING, analyse every fact, investigate every angle, cross every T, dot every I, shine a light into every dark corner and then look around for what I missed. Exhausting. Now I enjoy the fruits of your labors and fully appreciate them. You are so thorough and balanced, you weigh the issues so rationally, reading your blog reminds me of the paces my father used to put me through – only now you are doing the work and I get to enjoy it. Mahalo!
I, too, loved art history – the fun part of history. When I home schooled the kids, their ‘classical’ program had art history as a regular part of the curriculum. Every year was a different aspect – one year would be painting, another sculpture, another architecture. It instilled in them at a young age a real appreciation for human creativity and the ability to comparatively critique. They actually remember all those confusing Gothic cathedral styles! And what my daughter has to say about ‘Mannerism’ can’t be printed on a PG rated blog…
Once again, Neo, thank you for all you do. 90% of everything may be crap – but not your blog.
Like Molly! Very glad you’ve kept it up, and huge admiration for your work.
You are so thorough and balanced, you weigh the issues so rationally,
Yet you clearly have, not just emotion, but actual passion for a more balanced, good AND bad of both sides of an issue.
Glenn’s link fests at Instapundit tell me a bit more overall news, but I find myself here, in gladness, the most.
Tho I continue to like Econ far more than Art, despite knowing that Art moves folk more strongly for the final decision chosen within usually reasonable bounds more dictated by the Econ.
A heartfelt “thanks” for all the appreciative comments.
More seriously, every day is like walking into a series of seminar classes without knowing what the subjects will be, although there are some on-going topics, and holding our conversations with the other participants at one remove.
I was surprised when some of the only people who could comprehend my research was from Mensa and Prometheus Society. When I looked at how small those high IQ societies were… I realized just how far from the norm I was. Even the President of the Prometheus Society constantly gets stumped about me and wrong on various topics when we clash. So don’t feel bad if people fail to understand Y. I wouldn’t have understood Y’s new stuff 5 years ago, either.
Jamie and Parker,
About ten years ago a bunch of data driven execs came into baseball and their numbers said that by positioning (shifting) more defenders to the batters pull side defenses can more effectively get batters out.
In response hitters instead of trying to go the other way decided to attempt to hit over the shift and hit home runs. The result has become a game with more homers than ever but also with way more strikeouts than ever meaning the ball is in play much less.
It’s an example of something helping teams win because it does work but it also makes the game far less enjoyable to watch.