Wednesday, February 10, 2010

May a Bookworm Strike Your References!

I do not consider myself an academic, despite my love for learning. I go out of my way to learn anything I can, mostly through study and observation in real life situations. If I want to learn about bugs, I'll go out and watch some. If I want to learn about music, I'll listen and write a bit of it. If I want to study language, I will listen, read, learn ones I am unfamiliar with, and see what patterns and assertions I can produce from it.

I do not consider myself an academic because I focus much more on the field studies than I ever could cross-referencing in books. I believe I should have little interest in what other people have learned in their research until after I perform my own. This is easier for me since I do not generally study dangerous topics. If I were mixing chemicals or studying the territorial habits of hyenas, it would be another situation all together.

While both of those things are awesome, I don't think they'd help me with what I do. I write about everything I see in some way. The disputes of hyenas matter little compared to the way that humans settle disputes. Intellectual debates, politics, and feuds for emotional embrace are resolved quite differently between the species I'd imagine. I couldn't care less how hyenas do it.

I don't consider myself an academic because there are bad habits associated with academia, like quoting and referencing people that are assumed to have been read by anyone else. Especially when used a linchpin for an argument, a conversation should never boil down to "See figure 1." When talking to someone not in the field you discuss, it is like referencing a list of prices for printer ink in 1998 without having the list handy. No one knows what's going on, and 'facts' can be made up at will. Not to say that fabrication of the truth is a common occurrence, or even one to be associated with academia, but parallels can be drawn.

The real problem I have with academia is the attitude associated with it. The professional, clinical, non-biased approach is the way to go with many things, and I dig that. I hate the usual undercurrents of self righteousness and demeaning insults. They are not there for all academic figures, but in many cases they spring up whenever a differing opinion is brought to light with whomever you are talking to. I don't mind admitting defeat when I'm defeated, but I'll be damned if someone will point at a book with a smug, shit eating grin and try to claim victory when they did not earn it. Anyone can read books, given that they've the ability to process written word into the proper morphemes in the mind-brain. Anyone can squirrel themselves away in a library and claim knowledge beyond comprehension.

There's more to an intellectual debate than referencing people that have done it better than you did. This is why I hate academia.

1 comment:

Lee said...

I hate how we have to worry about quoting people and making sure we don't "plagerize" someone elses "work". I mean, it's one thing if you copy and paste an entire article and claim it as your own but we even have to credit when we summarize and reword things. It confuses me. I avoid MLA format and APA. I like using Chicago style. It seems more natural. Referencing is difficult for me. If I have more than two sources my brain is fried from the get go.