Graduate School as the Parlor

Browsing the 601 blogs tonight, I see not only the notes about what we are reading in the class, but other texts and subtexts. Laurie and Terri both introduced the question of dipping into conversations in the graduate program or in conferences or other spaces of the academic community. Laurie framed her response in relation to the Feminism and War Conference and David Bartholomae's essay "Inventing the University." As I read their (your!) posts, I couldn't help but think about the well-worn quotation from Kenneth Burke about the "parlor." I think it fits what happens with one's entrance into any new discourse community, but I think it is especially helpful for meditating on what happens upon entering graduate school.

"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."

Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (110-11)

Note the idea of getting to a conversation "late" with others not able to "retrace for you all the steps that had gone before." Sound familiar? Note the listening until the "tenor" of an argument is caught before dipping your "oar" in and making your voice heard. I think that what might be a further issues to plumb is how to put your oar into the water. We need Kelly Rawson here to give us some lessons in paddling a canoe (Kelly, are you still out there ??). But it's a real question: how to you put your oar in the water, how to move ahead, how do you move with the current (or fight against it)?

Some might shout "Just do IT." The Nike ad. Lace up and start running. What about stretching? What about warmup, though, the preparation-oriented person might ask?

OK, I've got a lot of mixed metaphors here. Sitting in a parlor, rowing, running, bear with me, OK? What we ask you to do in this program is damn hard: juggling three and sometimes four classes, teaching, professional development, service. Time management advice abounds, but there is a lot going on these first few months (and years, right?). There is doing the work (teaching, scholarship, classes service, etc), then there is also doing the emotional work of doing the work. That is yet a whole other layer. Then there is the layer of preparing for the future while also doing everything that needs to get done in the immediate sense.

I hear you. At the same time, many of us will tell you how lucky you are to have this time to read and think because you won't have it as a junior faculty member with new courses to teach and pressures to publish and direct writing programs or do other dept. and university work. Meanwhile, you may wonder what it means to have time to read and think because you may not feel you have enough time to read and think and absorb and make sense of the readings.

I return to the parlor, though. You come in later and you often leave later. Part of getting in and engaging the conversation is accepting the condition of being somewhat late to it and not always on even footing.

Anyway, my two cents worth on a Saturday night....