I have to write and publish 300 words on a historical article regarding diplomacy by tomorrow. It's not assessed, I'm not paid for it and most importantly I'm more interested in the history of ant secretions than diplomacy. Or the giant weird black ladybirds we kept on getting until the cold hit. In fact the history of virtually anything else except diplomacy. I have a book by Richard J Evans (who I respect - he's a good writer) but I disagree with him in his attacks on postmodernism. His argument is that the best way to argue with people is on their sources, where they're getting their facts from. I feel like he's dictating to me on what I can argue with people about. Why can't I just say 'Look, I've had a hard day, I'm a union rep defending poorly paid people from bullying and cuts. Diplomacy was never relevant and it isn't now. Shut up. Read your own article and write your own reviews. I've got better things to read. It's called _______' [Insert favourite book title].
But I have to be diplomatic. I'm paying these people good money to teach me things. The other problem is that (and this is a technical issue) we have to analyse the sources of the article. My good friend (who shall remain nameless) photocopied the article so I'm almost eternally grateful as it saved an estimated 5 hours of work trawling round this and there looking for the damn thing. Anyway, the bibliography and references weren't photocopied. So I have an article which I'm not interested in, with the actual information I need unavailable.
Where are those black ladybirds?
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