Maybe it’s the fact that I studied at UMW or maybe it’s the fact I am currently residing in a non-English speaking country, but lately I find myself eagerly wanting to read academic writing.
Case in point: a month ago at a party one of my friends, Erin, was talking about her favorite book series “The Queen’s Thief” by Megan Whalen Turner. She told us that she wrote her 15 page senior thesis paper on it.
I immediately demanded that I read it. It sounded interesting.
Erin looked at me as if I was crazy.
Erin: Why would you want to read my 15 page paper I wrote forever ago?
Sarah: Why wouldn’t I want to read it?
Everyone else: Really? You want to read an academic paper???
Sarah: Yes! It sounds wonderful!
Cue more strange looks all around.
I really don’t know when exactly I morphed into a person eager to read book analyses. Maybe it is due to the fact I graduated college two years ago. Shocking!
Or maybe it’s because I actually feel inspired lately to write my own an academic paper simply because it sounds like fun. Double shock!!
Anyways, Erin told me: If you are going to read my paper, you have to read the books first. Otherwise it will ruin the books.
Challenge accepted.
I dropped $20 on the trilogy and started reading them on my Kindle. Kindles are quite possibly the best invention ever, despite my love affair with real paperback books.
Personally, I am not the biggest fan on the “Queen’s Thief” series because I think Turner has issues with pacing. Sometimes I would be reading and I would feel really bored, other times the action was great and I couldn’t put the books down.
I feel like this was an issue in all three books and the only thing that kept me reading was the fact that I wanted to read Erin’s analysis.
When I finally finished the book series and finally got to read Erin’s paper (despite the fact she kept insisting that I really wouldn’t want to read it) I have to say I felt an enormous sense of satisfaction.
One downside of living in Korea is that I don’t always get to discuss books and literature and various other things with people as in depth as I would with my friends back home. I feel like most of the time here I don’t have time to read and even if I do, most of the Koreans I interact with would be overwhelmed/incapable of speech if I suddenly tried to do a literature/ cultural analysis with them.
I think my intellectual/academic interests are sometimes swept under the rug here, so the opportunity to engage the analytic part of my brain is enticing to me.
Being a huge fiction nerd I never thought I would say that that I thoroughly enjoyed reading academic writing. But enjoyed it I did. I think my time at UMW has rubbed off on me.
What you need is grad school 🙂
haha! I have been thinking about it!!!
SARAH!!! I get those feelings tooo. Also, I want to write a big old research paper especially after reading and researching something I’ve become obsessed about. Legal writing is boring, boring, crap fest, but academic research papers on whatever topic, history, fantasy, indigenous rights/ folklore…that’s magical. ugh. life without UMW is hard.
I don’t get feelings to write long papers about stuff, but I do get feelings to write long works of fiction, usually ill-timed as the same time as the writing for my fake ads. It’s a nice change from talking about “strategy” and “concept” and “360 Campaigns” and everything ad-related. But I do like how advertising makes you really concise. It’s basically a research paper put into people-speak with kick-ass visuals. I miss the days of writing those 10 pages for Fiction. I thought that was hard. lol. But little did I know…