I got an academic incomplete for this project, in order to have more time to post a little more before I graduate. It was more than a little symbolic for me, because I've never taken an academic incomplete (because I've always just wanted to get the shit done, no matter what tax it may have on my mental or physical health, it wouldn't be worth it for finals to continue any more than they had to and I probably still wouldn't work on it until the last minute anyway) and I didn't really need to take one for this... I mean, if I really had wanted to I could have written a shitty paper. But since I am not writing a shitty paper, and instead I am bringing this blog under control, (or rather, attempting to let the blog/myself rear out of control) I decided that an incomplete would be a really good way to give myself into that feeling: that I'm not done, that I haven't said all that I wanted to say, that I haven't even begun to say anything or nothing and that for once, I want to be done when I'm actually DONE, instead of being done at some arbitrary point when my paper/ project/ whatever is due. Because really, this thing is different. What I've done is different, what I'm doing is different, and what I will do will be different than what I've done before in school: you can't really edit a paper after you turn it in. I mean, you can I guess, but who does that? It's not like anyone is going to read it again after that, and honestly I cannot imagine going back to any of the stuff I've written during college and revising it. (Woah. Now that would be some senior project... revising every other English paper you'd ever written. What a horrible thought.) I mean, why do it when you were theoretically done with it? But this medium is a little different. my professor will come on-line, read it, and then it will still sit there, on the internet, for whoever wants to look at it, and for me, whenever I decide I want to write on it again. That's the thing with the immediacy of this kind of publishing... it is happening as I write, as I think, which makes it different than a paper or a book. It has infinite potential.
Today is the first day of finals, and I finished my documentary last night an hour before the screening. That was really the thing that became my culminating triumph of college, the thing that became my huge senior achievement, and this has become something else. Naturally, the first day of finals, all anyone wants to know about anyone is when they're "done." Everyone is walking around tweaked out and crazy, just wanting to get over those last huge hurdles standing between them and the summer, and for me, what seems like a huge black hole of uncertainty — the rest of my life stretches before me, and I've jumped the hugest hurdle. This isn't so much a hurdle as I wanted to have a little more content and contemplative space. But when people have been asking me if I'm done, I've said, "Sorta," and shrugged. It's hard to explain that at this point it looks like I might not ever be done. I don't know if the nature of this medium will allow for that. It is infintitely current and will be on the internet for a long time. Anyway... so how it goes. Even though I said this project turned into something not very academic, I still think it can become something for my intellectual space. I worry that after college I won't have a rich intellectual life, and I'll stop reading and just watch shitty reality TV all day. This way, even if I do end up watching shitty reality tv all day, I can go to the blog and talk about the meaning of reality tv and identity in pop culture, and what it means for a text to identify as real and blah blah blah.
Or not. Or at least, not exactly like that. I'd like for this to be a place where I can talk about things and why they are interesting, but I don't know if I really want to talk about intertextuality, or theory, or any of that mumbo jumbo. One of the reasons I cited to my professor yesterday for having such a hard time getting this thing moving at all is my incredible self-conciousness with academic writing, and how it takes me a really long time to write papers, and that its really hard for me to turn that jargon on and off. It doesn't seem to be that way for a lot of people... judging by the inane but smart-sounding things people often say in class, but its hard for me. I always need analogies I can hold on to, or to equate things with things I know. There's the old self-doubt: feeling like my writing should be better after four years at such a prestegious school. Whatever. I don't want to give up on things entirely, but I'm tired of worrying about seeming stupid. So I'm not going to anymore (even though up to now, I think I haven't been writing about anything particularly well or insightfully). I'm not apologizing. That's the beauty of the blog: even though this is all a public venture, it's still not really something public cause you still have to search for it. And who wants to read mini academic papers every day? Not me. And who wants to write them? Also not me. I will write it how I see it and I will write what I want in whatever way I want and be in play.
Play. Playing is supposed to be fun. So I'm going to make it fun.
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A blog about blogs in general.
