For the first time in six semesters of college, one of my history professors has asked me to complete an assignment that is often required of college students but that I had not yet encountered; we are to keep a blog and post each week responding to the readings assigned for homework. At first, I was fairly daunted by this task –— my academic training has taught me how to write formally, but has unfortunately given me little practice in the freer style of blog posts. Of course, I then realized that I write in a similar style every week in this column, and it suddenly wasn’t so intimidating of an assignment anymore.
Nonetheless, the assignment of a weekly blog post raised an interesting question in the context of my study of history: How relevant is the role of conversational prose in the study of academic theory and practice? It does seem inevitable in a world of technology and instant publication that such a style of writing would take a foothold, but this does not inherently lend it validity as an academic endeavor. We often assume that academic writing must take the form of a structured paper or book, rather than informal prose in the context of one academic sharing his or her thoughts with colleagues. Perhaps the reason this method is often discounted as inappropriate for true scholarship because any kind of conversational thought is often wrought with convoluted streams of consciousness and ideas to wrestle with. Academic writing is intended to be clear, concise and articulate, in order to convey to the audience exactly what you’re thinking on a particular matter is. It is rarely intended to be a conversation about theory, methods and contexts of your field.
In my experience, however, it is those highly convoluted and complex conversations that have piqued my interest and inspired me the most, even more so than reading formal academic writing. The most I have learned as a history major has not come from textbooks, but from conversations with my professors and with my friends and peers, even those who aren’t necessarily trained in history. These conversations, whether in person, e-mails, text messages or phone calls, can spark new ideas and perspectives that otherwise might not have occurred to me. It was through such conversations, in fact, that I decided to change my major from music to history after my freshman year — without the encouragement and inspiration of a few professors, friends and my parents, I would have been hard pressed to come to that conclusion on my own.
The power of conversation has been confirmed for me once again as I begin the incredibly difficult task of deciding the topic of my senior thesis. I too am victim of the problem that plagues so many humanities majors — I love almost every element of my field, making it particularly difficult to decide on a topic to which I can devote a year and a half of research and writing. Anyone who has written a significant amount on a topic of their choice, or indeed chosen a major to pursue in college, can identify with the difficult task of making sure your choice is one that you can live with for at least four years, if not the rest of your life. What we choose to spend our time studying is an extremely formative choice as we move out into the working world, and we all want to make sure we have chosen wisely.
In my experience, and in the case of many others, the decisions about our majors or our research topics have not been made in a vacuum. It is where those conversations with professors, parents, friends and colleagues become invaluable as we listen to their experiences and consider their thoughts from a wide range of perspectives.
To be sure, we gather information from print sources as we search for the topics that interest and inspire us. But even finding those books could not have been done without the help of professors and friends who knew me well enough to suggest ideas that I might enjoy studying. Perhaps the blog I must keep for my history class will be yet another vehicle of seemingly casual conversation that ultimately leads to bigger ideas to discuss and ponder. Academia has always benefited from informal conversation between interested parties, and it seems only fitting that it should embrace the vehicle of technology to further these conversations.
— Sarah Russell is a senior in history. She can be reached at srusse22@utk.edu.
