I have heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
I know this is intended to be a humorous, lighthearted statement, but as a doctoral student, I am thinking this makes me certifiably insane.
After yet another mini-meltdown last week prompted by some harsh comments from my Committee that intended to be helpful, I immediately surrendered and vowed to walk away from this hideous scholarly process.
At some point, you just have to cut your losses and I am well past that deadline.
Still, here I am, wrapping up another Sunday marathon session of proposal research dissection and writing. Another Sunday I will never get back. Truly, this must mean I am insane.
But there it is. Something in me will not allow me to quit. Not today, anyway. The stumbling block this time? The section of the proposal in which I deliver a sound and convincing explanation of the relevant literature I have examined which sets up my research topic: The changing communication technologies in grief literature.
My idea is clear: To examine grief literature in its original and now multimedia forms to identify if the newer communication technologies have led to the creation of a new form of grief memoir.
I have read Kubler-Ross, Doka, Attig and Bowlby. I have identified relevant observations from de Certeau, Benjamin, Eagleton. I’ve read fascinating memoirs by Allende, Buckley, Glick, Didion, Lewis, and Pausch. I’ve even discovered a growing library of resources on the subject of online grief communities, memorialization and social network philosophizing.
If I am not there yet, I have got to be close.
Tomorrow, I head up to Newport for a face-to-face meeting with Professor 1 and possibly Professor 2. I think all this technological communication is somehow a barrier to human relation. In other words, perhaps my Committee and I need to see each other as human beings. Then, our communication may take on a form that leads to a sense of support and encouragement and a “working together.”
Isn’t it funny that a project focused on the effect of newer communication technologies should contribute to a challenge in communicating as human beings?
Don’t answer that.
Copyright 2011 By Marianne V. Heffernan
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