Tough Week

[bookish_nerd]

It's been a tough week. I have this really simple assignment I have to do for my course on Tolkien and Fantasy, which involves coming up with a thesis and sample argumentative paragraph for my essay, and writing a one page summary of an article. As I said, it's a simple assignment, but I just haven't been able to do it. Last Wednesday I spent all

Comments

[zebra_bunny]

Good luck!! :) You'll get it done, don't worry!!

*hugs*

[bookish_nerd]

Thanks! It's done now : ) I guess I just needed to get over my fear of failure and just do it.

[aurillia]

Maybe you need something to inspire you, something other than the good marks, which are more pressure than motivation. I can't say I completely understand how you feel, cause I haven't experienced it myself, but in general, my motivation/inspiration comes from my passions. Is there anything about researching and writing this essay that has grabbed you, or could? I did my Honours thesis on fantasy, because I was passionate about it. Are you? I mean, I think it's important to be, since we're creative artistic thinking people (as opposed to people studying, say, Commerce [ouch! ;)], and our passions (i.e. emotions) are what drives us

[bookish_nerd]

Yeah, I think you're right. I used to feel really passionate about studying literature, but right now my heart's just not in it, so I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I still love stories as much as ever, maybe even more, but the kind of analysis I've been doing in English literature often seems so far removed from the actual stories. I guess my interests have moved in other directions. I'm more interested now in reading about psychology, ideas about culture, and philosophical questions about things like science, religion and the ethics of belief.

It's a bit late now to change my major, so I think I'll just have to make sure I keep up the things I'm really passionate about while I'm finishing my program. Who knows, after I'm done my program and focus on other interests for a while, I might even find that I want to keep on studying literature after all, once I get to grad school and I can focus on a topic that really fascinates me. Thanks for your advice!