Category: Academics

This has been nagging me for a bit, but I wasn’t able to formalize just what has been bothering me until now, and it is this: I’ve taken a wrong tact with the Summer Institute project, I’ve been projecting my issues outside when it needs to be internal. It’s not about him, what he did, but about me and how I’ve reacted, and how I’m cognicent of not liking how I’ve reacted.

This necessitates some change in approach, but the concept is still sound. And better, the concept lets me really tackle what Brian and I were talking about last week. You see, last year’s SI theme was tragedy, trauma, and they really saw how hard it was for the people involved. Brian wanted to do something different, he wanted to do hope. But hope was nixed as cheesy, so they dressed it up in something pretty and resold it. But at the core, this is supposed to be about hope.

No, I don’t trust easily or well, but that should be my focus, that and my desire to come out from beyond it. Hope, not trauma, not hurt. Hope.

I was in lecture from noon to 1:30, group meetings on porject proposals from 1:30 thru a little after three, tea until fourish, then happy hour at Flowers until about 20 minutes ago. It’s a very good thing I adore the majority of the people I’m working with. In particular, I would love to open Brian Reed’s skull and consume his brain, and the knowledge contained within.

“Grissom, do you ever worry about professional suicide?”
“Not while I’m committing it.”

Brian Reed and I had a lovely talk this afternoon, first at Aqua Verde and then on the bus ride home. Our conversation ranged from corpse flowers to constellations and our axis of perceptions, and of course my project. He’s intrigued, which is nice, and willing to work with me, which is excellent. What I most wanted to document, though, was talking about how I feel like such a fraud when I teach. I mean, who’m I to know enough to teach about any subject. Brian told me that this is the mark of a true academic – to be aware of those borders of knowledge, and to know when you’d come upon them. That it is those borders of knowing where our knowledge ends that allows us to teach to begin with. Then he reiterated thinking that I’m an academic – a true one, not one of those fakes wandering around. (I say this in jest. Mostly.)

It was also very nice to be reassured that I don’t talk too much in class; there are some that do, but I am not one of them.

Being at the level of having a relationship with a professor, one of interested equals talking instead of a power hierarchy of command, is very… I don’t want to say refreshing, because that implies I’ve not had that sort of relationship with Phillip. Rather, with Brian (and Ellen and Arianna, the other SI professors), it’s reaffirming. It’s not just Phillip, it is that I’ve reached a level in academia where I can have this cooperative exchange. It’s nice, validating, reassuring. This is the right place for me.