boys speak in rhythm and girls in code
As I write this thesis, I am realizing more and more that it is way, WAY bigger than an undergraduate thesis should be. Just now, I came to a place that I realized should be the end of the 'sis. I've set up all my ducks in a row and knocked them down; I've made my point and defended it clearly, and it should be done. It's 18,000 words long at the moment, and a conclusion would round it easily out to a nice 20,000 - about 45 pages at 1.5 spacing.
But this is NOT the end. In actuality, the point I've just finished making is only the first of THREE points I have to make altogether (or four, depending on how you look at it). All the points are based on the same data so it's not like it's going to triple the length - but it may very well double it. It's way too much, it's more like a Master's project (yes, a Master's project would be a bit longer than this, but flesing out what I have at this point would be very easy, and cutting it back is ridiculously hard). The trouble is that all my points are so interrelated. I could just cut it off here and it would be a fine paper, but I have so much more to say, so I've got to say it. The trouble with linguistics - I know it's a problem for most academic pursuits, but linguistics is a young, turbulent, and highly psychology-based discipline, and that makes it worse - is that everything is so damn interrelated. You can't pull one block out without knocking the whole damn tower down, if you see what I mean. There's so much to learn, and we don't know fucking ANYTHING - everybody's basically just flailing in the dark still, for serious-serious. Linguistics is a crazy baby of a academic field. And language is a chaotic system. We try to divide it and categorize it and put it in little boxes and make it make sense - this is Phonology, and this is Morphology, and this is Semantics - but it doesn't work because that's not how human brains do things, and human brains are what language is all about.
*sigh* and in the meantime, my thesis is HUGE and i's completely awesome, but it's also totally out of hand. And the really frustrating part is that even WITH it being 3 times too big a project, I still haven't quite solved the problem...I've fitted 9/10s of the pieces into the puzzle, but there's one left dangling and I just don't know what to do with it. You'd think with all this work I would at least have eventually arrived at an illuminating conclusion...
This 'sis, you guys, I tell you what: she is serious business.
***
*Sigh* I haven't updated LJ in forever, and there's things to talk about like boys and housing and summer and fall and jobs and adulthood and stupid evil graduaion deficiencies and choir trips and Leonard Cohen concerts, but it's all such a muddle I simply don't know where to start. Here's the tip of the ranty angsty iceberg for your approval, at least.
Happy Christianity-coopted pagan fertility celebration, y'all.
But this is NOT the end. In actuality, the point I've just finished making is only the first of THREE points I have to make altogether (or four, depending on how you look at it). All the points are based on the same data so it's not like it's going to triple the length - but it may very well double it. It's way too much, it's more like a Master's project (yes, a Master's project would be a bit longer than this, but flesing out what I have at this point would be very easy, and cutting it back is ridiculously hard). The trouble is that all my points are so interrelated. I could just cut it off here and it would be a fine paper, but I have so much more to say, so I've got to say it. The trouble with linguistics - I know it's a problem for most academic pursuits, but linguistics is a young, turbulent, and highly psychology-based discipline, and that makes it worse - is that everything is so damn interrelated. You can't pull one block out without knocking the whole damn tower down, if you see what I mean. There's so much to learn, and we don't know fucking ANYTHING - everybody's basically just flailing in the dark still, for serious-serious. Linguistics is a crazy baby of a academic field. And language is a chaotic system. We try to divide it and categorize it and put it in little boxes and make it make sense - this is Phonology, and this is Morphology, and this is Semantics - but it doesn't work because that's not how human brains do things, and human brains are what language is all about.
*sigh* and in the meantime, my thesis is HUGE and i's completely awesome, but it's also totally out of hand. And the really frustrating part is that even WITH it being 3 times too big a project, I still haven't quite solved the problem...I've fitted 9/10s of the pieces into the puzzle, but there's one left dangling and I just don't know what to do with it. You'd think with all this work I would at least have eventually arrived at an illuminating conclusion...
This 'sis, you guys, I tell you what: she is serious business.
***
*Sigh* I haven't updated LJ in forever, and there's things to talk about like boys and housing and summer and fall and jobs and adulthood and stupid evil graduaion deficiencies and choir trips and Leonard Cohen concerts, but it's all such a muddle I simply don't know where to start. Here's the tip of the ranty angsty iceberg for your approval, at least.
Happy Christianity-coopted pagan fertility celebration, y'all.