And another one uploaded
May. 31st, 2012 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI uploaded the latest draft of my National Cinema essay.
It's not that I think it's perfect now, or even good enough. I have talked myself out of believing my central idea, and I'm pretty sure I didn't use enough of the fancy specialist words, but I don't see where to put any more in. I am in fact pretty sure it's going to be rubbish, which is unfortunately my conviction at this stage of the essay process no matter what the final grade, which makes it ever so very more difficult to make essays any better.
But I have now uploaded enough to pass National Cinema. Even if something happens to prevent me having another go at that essay tomorrow, say for instance an excess of work on the other essay I need to make two thirds the length and any good at all, the computer currently has enough work on it to pass the unit.
So now I can relax, eat lunch, and move on to the other dratted thing.
My dissertation research proposal would be quite a lot better if I had any useful ideas about my dissertation.
I don't know where all the hours *went* this semester, because I know I sat there working in the library and at home, but they did not go into anything that is, at this moment, useful.
I mean at the moment there's one paragraph in my proposal that includes the line 'and if I had actually done useful reading I could put some names in here that would make this any good at all'. I can't hand it in with that line in place, but it would be more honest and was quite cathartic to write.
I did lots of reading. It just hasn't turned out to be useful right now.
Also my idea of what I want to write keeps shifting slightly, like zooming in.
I'm currently interested in representations of martial prowess, warfare, and masculinity, plus the rise of the 'strong' woman who takes up arms right alongside men. I know there's a debate in feminism that's something like on the one hand saying women should be allowed to do all the men allow themselves too, and on the other saying that the traditionally masculine values are actually pants and possibly the men should quit doing them. So in a sufficiently complex text you can get an argument where women go to war, and yaay them for being strong, but actually war wrecks everyone, so possibly masculinity-and-warfare needed modifying, not women. I think I can get all of that out of A Good Man Goes to War. Plus there's things about raising children to be soldiers and the ideological underpinnings of the endless war that I'm pretty sure I can tie to Britain's continued recruitment of child soldiers and the war on terror. But I don't know, I haven't done the reading yet, I don't know the arguments, I know they're out there but they're in a really big book stack somewhere and I'm vaguely intimidated. So do I stick that in the conclusion as stuff I hope to find? Or do I stick with general waffle about gender and how I'm going to see different portrayals in different decades?
I have one day and ten hours to decide.
Dratted stupid arrgh timing arrgh grumble.
It's not that I think it's perfect now, or even good enough. I have talked myself out of believing my central idea, and I'm pretty sure I didn't use enough of the fancy specialist words, but I don't see where to put any more in. I am in fact pretty sure it's going to be rubbish, which is unfortunately my conviction at this stage of the essay process no matter what the final grade, which makes it ever so very more difficult to make essays any better.
But I have now uploaded enough to pass National Cinema. Even if something happens to prevent me having another go at that essay tomorrow, say for instance an excess of work on the other essay I need to make two thirds the length and any good at all, the computer currently has enough work on it to pass the unit.
So now I can relax, eat lunch, and move on to the other dratted thing.
My dissertation research proposal would be quite a lot better if I had any useful ideas about my dissertation.
I don't know where all the hours *went* this semester, because I know I sat there working in the library and at home, but they did not go into anything that is, at this moment, useful.
I mean at the moment there's one paragraph in my proposal that includes the line 'and if I had actually done useful reading I could put some names in here that would make this any good at all'. I can't hand it in with that line in place, but it would be more honest and was quite cathartic to write.
I did lots of reading. It just hasn't turned out to be useful right now.
Also my idea of what I want to write keeps shifting slightly, like zooming in.
I'm currently interested in representations of martial prowess, warfare, and masculinity, plus the rise of the 'strong' woman who takes up arms right alongside men. I know there's a debate in feminism that's something like on the one hand saying women should be allowed to do all the men allow themselves too, and on the other saying that the traditionally masculine values are actually pants and possibly the men should quit doing them. So in a sufficiently complex text you can get an argument where women go to war, and yaay them for being strong, but actually war wrecks everyone, so possibly masculinity-and-warfare needed modifying, not women. I think I can get all of that out of A Good Man Goes to War. Plus there's things about raising children to be soldiers and the ideological underpinnings of the endless war that I'm pretty sure I can tie to Britain's continued recruitment of child soldiers and the war on terror. But I don't know, I haven't done the reading yet, I don't know the arguments, I know they're out there but they're in a really big book stack somewhere and I'm vaguely intimidated. So do I stick that in the conclusion as stuff I hope to find? Or do I stick with general waffle about gender and how I'm going to see different portrayals in different decades?
I have one day and ten hours to decide.
Dratted stupid arrgh timing arrgh grumble.
