Year 2, Day 194: Shakespeare Institute -- Getting Over Oneself.

Following along the lines of last month's post of being distracted... ever the overachiever, I've been even more distracted this month.  I've written some, researched some, but am finding it progressively harder as the days trudge on.  Life is always in the way, not sometimes.

So, how do I use this inconvenience to my advantage?  All it takes is a bit of an alteration to my priorities.  As it is normal for procrastination to take its toll on that which you think you should be doing, but would rather not at that point in time, I find that it is my PhD which suffers and watching YouTube videos or surfing Facebook is my escape.  However...  If I were to make Facebook and YouTube my job, then I might find that I can procrastinate by writing and researching for a PhD.

I'm a genius.

And so are all the other fifth graders in the class who thought that making video games a requirement and homework the fun or "procrastinating" part of the evening was the smartest thing they ever thought of.

I'm, in fact, not a genius.  I'm actually nine years old going on forty.

So many distractions though... why do we propagate celebrity?  Why has grammar gone down the toilet for everyone that is not me?  How is it that I actually know someone who is a member of the anti-vaccination movement, and refuses to vaccinate her babies (<- Plural)?  I have found that artists I have known are some of the smartest and wisest people on the planet, and yet many performers these days are profoundly stupid or ignorant, why is that?  Why do I feel the need to be sanctimonious, high-minded, or pretentious?  None of my role-models in life were, but I know that I can be so... and that I am, especially when writing about it.  Like now.

I suppose being a teacher, it becomes hard to turn off the pretension or sanctimony.  It is really difficult to teach children/ teenagers how to properly use language and then read some of their tweets or texts.  It would probably been even more difficult to read the texts and tweets of your students' parents.  Which I have only once, and it wasn't pleasant.

Why oh why does this line of thinking make me crazy enough to ignore my responsibility of writing and researching something I believe in?  It seems as if something is eating at me.  I know I'll figure it out if I just think about it some more.  And a little more.  And just a little bit more.

I figured it out.  All I have to do is change the way people think about PhDs in Shakespeare Studies by telling them all that we are in fact smarter than they... and they'll all fall in line, and start paying us what we are worth.  I'm a genius again, and I've really got to get over myself.

...He that is proud eats up himself: pride is
his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle;
and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours
the deed in the praise. - Troilus and Cressida (II.iii)

Year 2, Day 194 - Words Written for an Extremely Pretentious Endeavour: 5,378