I will cheerfully admit to laziness as a grad student, but...

[quislibet]

There's a flame war of sorts on one of the academic lists I read at work; someone wrote in asking for bibliographical guidance, but in an off-putting way: could the scholars of the list help cut through the "silly" amount of scholarship published each year on such-and-such a topic and give the person posting guidance on what from the last twenty years or so was worth reading?

While I can certainly see the problems inherent in such a request, I can't help but remember an incident (perhaps touched upon previously in these pages) from my second year of grad school (or was it my third?). At that time, the graduate students of the department had (and perhaps still have, but I'm out of touch) a certain amount of money at our disposal every year for travel to conferences, making additions to the departmental library, even socializing. In that particular year, we asked that each faculty member take a moment to recommend some key articles relevant to his or her research specialty; we would then pay to obtain and keep at hand copies of those articles for our library.

Well, possibly it would have been better to approach our professors individually, for they are usually only too glad to impart their store of wisdom to eager young minds, at least if you happen to catch them on a good day during posted office hours. But as it happened, the faculty, considering the request in a faculty meeting, chose not to encourage such "laziness." Let those slackerly grad students figure out for themselves what they should or shouldn't read!

So we used the money for a keg party, which was uncontroversial.

Comments

[vicissitude.livejournal.com]

and so, in order to make sure you slacker grad students don't get to avoid wasting lots of time sifting through stuff, your faculty decides to to help. Yes, so keeping scholarship inefficient really contributes to a sense of academic community. I can see wanting to make sure that students have good research skills, but you are a phD student and asking the right questions of the right people to get the information you need is a research skill.

i hope you had a wickid pissa kegga with the money you could have spent on reading material.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

hope you had a wickid pissa kegga

Yah, dood, although I think there was some interpersonal drama, but I don't really rememba.

[jasonlizard.livejournal.com]

Do you ever think there's way too much, "I put my time in, you need to put yours in too." going on in the academic world? I'll cede that there's a certain amount cutting one's own teeth that needs to be done, but really can't they say, "This was one of the best articles I read and it helped form the direction/style/etc. of the research I do today. You should read it. Your life won't be complete without it." rather than, "Sort the wheat from the chaff yourself, kid! Hahahaha!"

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

"I put my time in, you need to put yours in too."

Yeah, there's probably a lot of that.

You should read it. Your life won't be complete without it.

I have heard such advice from individual professors in one-on-one situations. (My own advisor is way into suggesting bibliography.) But somehow our asking them as a group was Bad.

What's vexing is that we weren't even asking them to separate wheat and chaff; just to recommend some particularly good wheat to start with.

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

yeah, you've definitely hit it on the head.