Year 1, Day 140: Shakespeare Institute -- The Book.

Thus begins "reading week" and I'm already anticipating the end of term.  It is this week that I have planned to be working from morning til night on catching up on homework, reading books for the bibliographical essay/ literature review essay, and start the gargantuan amount of writing that I must do in the next couple of months.  I have already begun (somewhat) on the reading, but it is this week that I must really put the pedal to the metal on this.  I plan to have at last twenty books included in my bibliographical essay, and I think I've read three of them.

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It is with great enthusiasm, however, that I report, I have found "the book." That one book that says everything you need for it to say.  Written by someone who has spent a great deal more time in scholarship than I, and takes the time to cite all of his references (thus giving me more titles to books I have not yet found, and will read when I have been given the time.)  The great, and tragic, part about finding "the book" is not only do you have a frame of reference, or methodology to research already performed, but you also have research that has already been documented, and you know then exactly what NOT to do.

While all of us in academia have at one time or another wished for a paper, assignment, essay, or even tome to just write itself, we've never thought or even wished for someone to tell us exactly what to write, think, or believe.  We don't want to plagiarize anyone... ever.  We want to have that "Holy Crap" idea, write about it, and get credit for it.  One day, making money giving lectures and becoming the world's leading authority on the "Holy Crap" idea, and all other ideas we've had since then.  We want to be inspired, just like anyone else.

Finding the book that says it all, is terrifying.  Finding out that your idea was discovered the year you graduated high school, even more so.  Finding a book that does not tell you what to say, but rather, is really close to your own research, and by eliminating the possibilities of straying in that direction your research becomes more focused, and far more useful.  It is a truly wonderful thing to not only find a book that speaks your own language, and in that language, tells you exactly what has already been said.  Confused yet?

Well, the good part about me finding this book is that it is on the topic I am trying to develop not only for my bibliographic essay this term, but also for my pilot project this summer, and if all goes well, my PhD. dissertation.

I know I said, "THE book"however, I'm still kind of afraid that there might be another book.  And another one.  And another one.  Ah, the fear returns.

That strain again! It had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet as it was before. -- Twelfth Night (I.i)

Year 1, Day 140 -- Words written: 0.