A Girl With a Sword

childhood dreams and academic careers

it's a problem:

One of the pieces of advice given to me about writing statements of purpose for grad school applications is that you should refrain from writing about your childhood. This wasn't advice in response to anything I had said or written, apparently this is just a common mistake that people made. What's really wrong with too much life-holism? I think this chart makes it pretty clear, no one studies that anymore. Whatever it was you decided you wanted to do, and still, whatever it is you and your friends think are really cool ideas, no one is studying them and therefore your advisor is going to laugh at you and you're going to have to pick something fairly boring. Man! Why does academia work this way!

Um, yeah, Spring Break is over, I'm feeling fairly jaded, trying to write the abstract for yet another paper that I feel like I've been assigned a topic for. I'm tired and worried and I'm twenty-five and afraid of academic commitment. I'm too young to die! I miss college, sweet sweet non-committal papers on whatever the hell was exciting to me at the time.