A scary realization

I have only recently come to the conclusion that I have not learned any of the things my study is designed to teach me.

I have basically just been sitting here jerking off the entire past four years. I have no idea how to do research, how to analyze information properly, or how to present it fairly. What’s more (and more alarming), I have no particular interest in knowing those things either. What I want to do is write fiction, and I find that my ideas generally do not come from research (even though intellectually I ‘know’ that’s the ‘proper’ way to do it), but are simply conjured up out of my own head.

In short, at the end of the day I am completely unqualified to write a master thesis in literature. Nor am I even sure what I would do with a masters degree if I had one. I suspect this last year (and quite possibly the previous four years I spent getting the bachelors) has been a complete waste of my time.

I could, if I wanted, put a more positive spin on it. I could say that my own way of thinking is so deeply rooted, my own convictions so deeply held, that this education has not uprooted it, and that I don’t want to compromise my own opinion about, say, the death of the author, in order to write a suitably even-handed and mellow academic term paper. But to me that’s just spin, a prettier way of saying “I haven’t learned anything”. Even if I do have these deeply rooted convictions, going to and then resisting a study meant to teach a different way of working is a waste of time in one way or another, or both at once.

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