less confident than ever in my judgments
It's been a very long time since I posted on my blog. So here are some thoughts.
Lately I've been feeling less confident than ever in my ability to understand or assess a lot of things.
For instance, sometimes I'll be preparing to teach a poem in my lit class. I'll stare at a poem for hours and think, "I don't get it," or "I get it but I don't know what to say about it." After hours I usually come up with something. Then I go in to teach it and realize my students came by most or all of my insights right away.
I'm starting to think I'm very uncritical and just like or dislike everything I watch or read or hear for no good reason and without adequate reflection. My critical capacities are diminishing with age...
Or am I becoming more intuitive? Or is my willingness to admit that I don't "get" something a strength, a kind of openness?
Most of the time I just feel like a very foolish visceral thinker of elementary thoughts who has somehow managed to pass himself off -- perhaps through hard work and misplaced confidence -- as intellectually capable...
Please don't tell anyone!
Lately I've been feeling less confident than ever in my ability to understand or assess a lot of things.
For instance, sometimes I'll be preparing to teach a poem in my lit class. I'll stare at a poem for hours and think, "I don't get it," or "I get it but I don't know what to say about it." After hours I usually come up with something. Then I go in to teach it and realize my students came by most or all of my insights right away.
I'm starting to think I'm very uncritical and just like or dislike everything I watch or read or hear for no good reason and without adequate reflection. My critical capacities are diminishing with age...
Or am I becoming more intuitive? Or is my willingness to admit that I don't "get" something a strength, a kind of openness?
Most of the time I just feel like a very foolish visceral thinker of elementary thoughts who has somehow managed to pass himself off -- perhaps through hard work and misplaced confidence -- as intellectually capable...
Please don't tell anyone!
posted by Mark Meritt at 11:03 PM
3 Comments:
Or you think your students came by all of your insights right away. They could be full of crap, grabbing at straws, and you might read into their half-guesses what you have figured out. Or the way you present it might make the meaning you've extracted obvious to your class and they're mirroring back what you've handed them. Not to doubt your students or anything. Just saying there are other scientifically plausible explanations.
I think it's a right to have more crochety opinions as you get older. Why explain yourself? You've had to put up with life for over 30 years. If you like Boston but not Journey for no good reason, so be it. I prefer "That's just how I feel" over a series of undefendable, spurious, inconsistent positions. Of course, I'll take consistent, defendable positions of either of those, but if you like something just because, that's valid, too.
I think there's something liberating in saying openly, almost with defiance, that you don't get something. I pride myself on being the one person in a work or social group who will stop the conversation to say "I don't know who/what that is" instead of pretending that I know everything that everyone's talking about, or that I always "get it." (To add a tangent, I think that in a male-dominated industry, it takes guts for a cute little Asian girl to admit "I. Don't. Follow. This." And it shows you've got nothing to prove and you're willing to say what you think.) Admitting you don't get something in a way puts the onus on the other speaker or object or thing to make itself clear. And if he/she/it can't, then he/she/it is most likely full of shit, and you've just called them on it!
Oh, and you are intellectually capable.
Deb,
Thanks so much for the thoughtful, kind, and I think really profound response! I agree -- I think it's great to admit when we're not sure of something, and it's a shame that such admissions can ever be construed as signs of weakness or incapacity. The ability to remain in uncertainty is actually a characteristic prized by one of my favorite poets, John Keats (negative capability, of course).
And yes, there are many things to like "just because." I don't think aesthetic judgments necessarily need defending or rational explanation. Plus, conflicting aesthetic preferences, it seems to me, are often equally defensible but just hinge on different criteria (which may themselves be equally valid and contextual).
And I just LOVE the idea of people getting heated debating the relative merits of Journey and Boston! I strongly feel, of course, that none of us has to choose between them! By the way, poor Brad Delp! Rest in Peace, Brad! He rocked and was a really great singer.
Wittgenstein wrote (of language) "Nothing is hidden." A poem is right there on the page, a string of words. Maybe the job is to describe it in many ways, not to explain hidden qualities.
It is easy for us to learn patterns and then force them on inappropriate things. We can split the atom so we split the poem. Then students (and poets) resist the simplification involved in every explanation.
Perhaps the motto should be: When a professor finishes teaching a poem, she should leave it as she found it.
G
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