March Forth

It's spring early. I like that. Though I feel a bit guilty saying so, having just attended a book discussion about global warming.

The discussion was interesting for a number of reasons. One is that it was the first discussion I've been to at UW that A) was predominantly grad students and B) counted me as the only Humanities representative. It was largely agro/soil grad students, with a few from Law. Really interesting to experience, because while everyone (or everyone who spoke up) was in favor of environmental conservation and reform, everyone still reacted very differently to the book.

Which brings me to the other thing that was notable (to me). Though there was a lot of good discussion of perspectives, points, factual basis, etc, I was the only one who seemed interested (or at least, interested enough to bring it up) in the book as a rhetorical object. Reading the book (Soil Not Oil by...someone) (I just got it today and skimmed its 144 pages), I was overwhelmingly drawn to questions of intended audience and argument structure, both of which seemed problematic. As one girl put it, the book seemed written for "the ignorant cheerleader" of environmentalism - lots of facts to back up green views, but no argument that could hope to sway an opposing view. It managed to combine the two problems I see most in student theses - both not arguable AND lacking analysis to support claims.

But no one else cared much about this. Which is fine. It was just a very illuminating disciplinary moment - where people's straightforward, common-language interests in this easy-to-read book were clearly delineated by field. This isn't surprising - just one of those things I knew abstractly until tonight, but now have seen in action.

It was nice - I'm glad I went. Contact with other grad students FTW.

...I had other things to say but now Andy is home and I'm tired of typing. I'm hoping to write more here in general though...I used to write in my Livejournal extensively, almost every day, and I miss both having that outlet to unfold my thoughts and having a record of what I was doing. Today I quite literally had trouble remembering what I did yesterday; combined with the fact that I often feel like I'm wasting my 20s on jumping useless academic hoops and procrastination I'm too stressed to enjoy, it seems like keeping a closer record of how I spend my time and I how feel about it could only help, whether as diagnosis tool or comfort.

Also: wine is delicious. And I really hope tonight's Lost didn't suck.