Let us go, then, you and I…

I’d really love to be one of those people who can dream up a snappy title for the first entry in a new ‘blog. Barring sudden inspiration, however, I’ll continue to lean heavily on T.S. Eliot for all things titular. It’s a cheesy, English major-y thing to do, but so be it.

I suppose introductions–to both myself and my work–are in order.

 I’m a rising senior at the College, originally from a tiny pocket of rural Northern Virginia (yes, there is a rural Northern Virginia), educated at boarding school in Connecticut, and currently majoring in English and Classical Studies. Also, I’m just back from W&M’s study abroad program at Oxford, so I’m not a half-bad person to ask about that if you’re a (prospective or otherwise) student with questions.

This summer I’m completing a Dintersmith Fellowship through the Charles Center, which basically means I’m being funded to spend ten weeks of my summer beginning work on my honors thesis. The fellowship is new this year, and as an extension of it and other summer grants, the Charles Center is setting up this pool of blogs by undergraduate researchers. The hope is, I believe, that they will serve as a link between undergraduate researchers and a hodgepodge of other researchers and prospective students. So. Welcome to the blog.

My thesis research, then. It’s mainly about Wordsworth, and specifically Wordsworth and the Odic Tradition (that is, the tradition of odes, not the tradition of the Norse god Odin–I’ve had questions about this, and, much as I’d love to combine both, it’s the poetic form and not the deity that I’m interested in). For this reason, it’s generally “W.w. and the O.T.” to my friends and, probably, to readers of this blog.

This brings me to my first bit of advice about honors theses: please, please, for your own sanity, if at all possible, pick a name for your project that will not require additional clarification to each and every person you speak to about your research. I realise that this may be pretty difficult for those closer to the scientific end of the academic spectrum, but–at least if you’re in the Humanities–save yourself a headache and don’t get into the habit of calling your project something as foreign to the human ear as “Wordsworth and the Odic Tradition.” This requires that, the moment you’ve said “tradition,” you must attempt to relieve the tension in your listener’s face by following up, “that is, uh, the tradition of odes.” If you’re not careful, and you’re anything like me, you will end up rambling about Odin, and how your project has nothing to do with him, to people who have never heard of Odin–or odes, for that matter.

We talk an awful lot about the passion we feel for our research, but an important part of pursuing academic research is realising that not everyone is passionate about, or educated in, the things we are. Learn to tell the difference between someone who wants to hear about the finer points of margin formatting and someone who’s asking you about your thesis out of politeness, and you’ll save yourself (and others!) an awful lot of awkward moments.

Deeper implications of this simple social rule abound. One very important aspect of research is translating it to an audience–whether that audience is a friend, fellow-scholar, college seminar, or grant committee (n.b. especially the latter–more on which later). If you’re talking to someone about what you do, you can make it vastly more interesting and useful for them by figuring out early what level they’re listening at and what perspective they bring to the discussion. Gauge what your listener responds to, look for that slightly tense expression that indicates you’ve gone out of their depth; speak with passion, but don’t be afraid to talk in very general terms; know when to stop talking.

Wait, by all means, for those people whose ready intellect, broad knowledge base, and boundless curiosity will allow them, regardless of their profession and education level, to engage with you at length about your topic, but, in the meantime, settle for pitching your research where (if you’ll permit an aberrant sports metaphor) your listener can catch. We researchers get a bad name, I find, largely from assuming that everyone wants to hear about what we’re doing, all the time, complete with specialist lingo. They don’t. It’s a hard lesson, but learn it early.

With that in mind, let me know who my readers are. I want to pitch this blog to the right level, which is infinitely easier if I know who you are. Also, I pretty much live for reader comments. No point lying about that.

I promise next time I’ll talk a lot more about Ww and odes, so stay tuned.