Reining in undergraduate paper topics

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Sorry I haven't been around lately, I've been working on a conference abstract and trying not to have it come straight from my dissertation. A surprisingly hard task.

Anyway, one of my colleagues received a paper this semester entitled something like "A Guide to .... [something an undergraduate can't possibly be an expert in.]" It made me wonder, what the heck is it with undergraduate paper topics?

At one of the schools where I used to work, every senior had to do an undergraduate thesis, a serious, rigorous research project, etc., etc. And the topics were just awful. Nearly every one had to do with material culture or nebulous cultural topics. (We did not have anything like the kind of library you need to research such subjects.) Nearly every one had problems with its thesis statement. I later found out that the students spent nearly half the semester developing a thesis statement. Good heavens, by that time you've invested so much time in the subject you're going to squeeze a thesis out of it however you can.

It was around this time I developed a theory about undergraduate research papers, which is that almost all their problems can be solved by 1) encouraging them to think small and 2) making sure their thesis statement asks a single question. By following these guidelines I have been able to get entire classes to hand in thesis statements that didn't have to be rewritten.

I continue to wonder why so many undergraduate research projects are hampered by vast topics and vague, 7-part thesis statements. As someone still fairly new to the profession, I'm willing to believe there's a good reason. I'd just like to know what it is before I sit down to read another senior thesis that claims to be the definitive work on ancient women or Greek science. Pin It

Benefits of grad school

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This recent NYT article (on lawyers’ need for training post-law school) fits in with something I’ve been thinking about: what enduring benefits does grad school confer on humanities profs, beyond a credential required for employment?

Grad school made my Latin and Greek much better, of course; writing a dissertation helped my research skills. But I have to wonder if grad schools go about this in the most useful way, since I've only once taught an author from one of my grad school seminars. I've also found writing a publishable article an absolutely foreign experience, despite having written and defended a dissertation.

Maybe going 'back to the basics' is a common reaction to adversity, but it's been odd how often in the five years since I started my career that I've returned to authors, teaching methods or writing tips I encountered in my undergrad classes. I know grad school must have been more than 8+ years of waiting to mature and practicing translation skills, but I'm finding it hard to identify specifics right now.

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Hello Greek, I've missed you

I have an article that's almost ready to go (they always are, aren't they?), except for some Greek texts that need to be formatted in some particularly picky and annoying ways. I was reading one over just now, expecting to continue to be bored and annoyed, but instead the sound of the Greek gave me my first bit of Classics-related joy in several days.

I thought, "I've missed you, Greek."

I have thought before that the sense of professional disconnection I sometimes experience relates to spending 90% of my time teaching a language I have little intellectual interest in, namely Latin. That seems harsh, and I tend to speak hyperbolically about these things. I'm happy that Latin has paid my bills for the last half-decade. When I hear something interesting about Latin I think, "oh, that's nice," whereas I love the sound of Greek, its mysterious and fluid sound-changes, and its literature whose original and profoundly situational performance contexts we can often only guess at.

I guess I have Steve Jobs to thank, as corny as that is. I used to spend the entire early morning preparing for my Latin class, and then I read something he said, about if this was the last day of your life, would you want to spend it the way you were planning to do?

And I thought, I'm done neglecting my first and best-loved foreign language in favor of what (right now) pays the bills.

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