Tuesday, March 17, 2009

MA Exam Part 1

I'm done, spent, wrung out. Faulkner is getting shelved and it'll be another decade before I crack open one of his books for pleasure reading. If anyone mentions Flowers in the Attic to me, I'll probably start blabbing about Sutpen and Quentin and Horace. No, I did not mention V.C. Andrews in my paper. I really kept it on a scholarly level. I just hope it is scholarly enough.

If I start sobbing in my cubicle, it's because my advisor told me it's not done and I have to do more. I'm waiting for his approval before the final, final turn in. And I will be lighting every candle in my house tonight and praying to every academic god I can find reference to that I pass and don't have to deal with Faulkner any more.

Next thing to figure out is how to read all the material for Part 2 of the MA Exam and stay sane.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

Another Never-ending Cycle: Faulkner's Use of the Incest Taboo

Progress Bar from Writertopia

2 comments:

Astra Skadi said...

My thesis was the reason why I stopped going to school (Fondfire warned me that a dissertation would be 10 times worse). What got me through it was that at the end of every day I worked on it, I reflected on the fact I was a little more done and one step closer to not having to deal with it anymore - and even if I didn't finish, I could get a job based on my undergrad degree (which I did anyway even though I finished grad school).

By the way (switching to movies and books for fun), "City of Ember" is indeed out on DVD. And the conversation the other night inspired me to pick up Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. *Now* I know what the "Encyclopedia Galatica" reference is to in Hitchhiker's Guide.

KLCtheBookWorm said...

I'm glad to have gone through it, but if I'm thrown into a time machine, I am definitely changing the topic back to fiction thesis. Or possibly the Dante paper. My lack of enthusiasm made it real hard to get through it.

But this is it as far as English/Creative Writing goes. A Ph.D. wouldn't help my job plus I'd have to move in order to get one, and there's a glut of Liberal Arts degrees in the market.

I don't rule out maybe going back for a bachelor's in Accounting, mainly because the DOI pays for your classes. Though the thought of a nice test with yes or no answers even if you have to show all the steps that got you there is particularly soothing after all this rip the literature apart and critique and if I the reader don't like it it's a fail.

I think somewhere in the committee it finally sunk in that how critics analyze literature and how writers analyze are two totally different methods of working, and I just can't comprehend the critic. I have nothing but admiration for those who can do both. But the minute analysis starts throwing in any of the literary theory crap, my brain goes numb.

I have no idea if I can make that realization work in my favor for the second half.