I'm a graduate student . . . a teaching assistant, to be precise. At SFA, teaching assistants are very fortunate in that we get private offices, even if those offices are tiny, airless, 10' x 10' cubes with no windows. Tomorrow I have no classes. Tuesdays and Thursdays are set aside for work, but I have trouble, sometimes, getting real work done. One of the things I need to do is work on my lesson plans for the Freshman Comp class I'm teaching, but in order to do that I need to be on the computer.
The computer is a vortex that drains my productivity in a way that Emerson and Thoreau would have disdained . . . in a way that I disdain. If I can't master myself before the machine, then I'll do something that the Transcendentalists may have approved: I'll go sit under a tree and study.
To be honest, I have my doubts about whether the Transcendentalists would have approved of graduate school. We're expected to contribute to the scholarly conversation, which they would have surely approved, but most of our time is spent in absorbing and commenting on the ideas of others, and synthesizing other scholars' opinions of great writers. I think Emerson would have furrowed his brow at us.
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