The toughest part of grad school is learning the vocabulary. No, let's go deeper: the toughest thing I face is committing whole swaths of new concepts to memory. The vocab of the concepts is like the icing I can't mix, on the cake I can't bake. In a policy sense. If you follow.
No, you don't follow. I'm making up my own similes to confuse you as much as I'm confused. We're confused together. How nice.
Met my study group this morning on campus. We've staked out a spot in the student union which, if you saw it, would seem like the worst place to study. It's on the upper floor next to a staircase and above the open foyer. Right below is the popular coffee shop. The upshot of which is, that is a damned noisy, echoey place to try and hold serious conversations! But for some reason - habit, masochism - it suits us well, and we rarely meet elsewhere.
Anyway, as we were talking about economics, and the conversation drifted into full-blown social welfare function wonkspeak, I began to feel keenly how little I know about policy, and how it seems like everybody else is so much better at this. Then I glanced down at my three-ring binder. Tucked into the clear exterior pocket were two cutout blue pawprints. How they got in there, I don't really know. They're left over from a recent game of B1ue's C1ues with my daughter - you know, you find three clues to figure out the mystery, etc. And I thought to myself, "I don't belong in grad school, because I'm always one clue short of a thinking chair."
It was an utterly ridiculous thing to think or believe about myself, but I did sit there for several seconds, staring transfixedly at my binder. I lost all train of conversation. I felt very sorry for myself. It was a laughable but pathetic moment, all at the same time.
::tsk:: Honestly.
Well, note to self: remove those damned paw prints poste haste. Would anybody like to suggest a more positive reinforcer for the front of my binder?
A picture of a large brain. Or how about that screensaver of Ahnold that was circulating a few months ago?
Posted by: Jo | November 14, 2004 at 06:53 AM
Yeah. "Get Back To Work"!
Posted by: pam | November 14, 2004 at 07:23 AM
I don't think that's true at all. Just because some of us have the lingo down doesn't mean we're anything more than trained parrots you know. That's what I always say.
"Polly wants a cracker!"
Posted by: maya | November 14, 2004 at 03:48 PM