Thesis Approved

30 October 2008

I got final approval on my MFA thesis from my faculty advisor this morning. In celebration, here is one of my favorite clips on the perils of being a closet academic. (Note: this video contains strong language and adult themes–that is, if you can understand what is being said!)

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Posted in Essays, Humor, MFA, Poetry | Tagged , , | Comments (13)

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  • eduardo c. corral

    congrats! marvin was one of my teachers at iowa.

  • Robert

    Thanks! I feel very privileged to have worked with him.

  • http://artpredator.wordpress.com art predator

    wow, gotta say for this working class gal stuck in ventucky i didn’t find the vid too funny

    congrats robert–i look forward to hearing more about your thesis as it evolves!

  • Robert

    Must be a British thing.

  • Robert

    Actually, maybe it’s not just a British thing. What’s painfully funny to me in this clip is the think-tank aspirant pretending to be something he is not. The slang-spewing bar patron is the straight man. He becomes increasingly angry as the mockney academic’s facade falls apart. But to me, the clip is not about him.

    Perhaps because it is set in a different culture to my own, it underscores how adamantly groups in general police their own borders against impostors. If this were simply a jab at one sociopolical group, I could see how, transposing it into any number of American contexts, I might find it upsetting. But to me, it is not about any one group–but about the painful nature of being chameleonic.

    Both my wife and I grew up in poor, rough towns–her in a small town north of London, me on the U.S.-Mexico border. We were both raised by schoolteachers, and went to university. I divided my time in high school between slam-dancing at punk shows and maintaining college-prep grades. The sense of dichotomy continues today, between technology and art–each with its respective jargon. Poets rarely understand computer-science-speak, and technologists don’t care much for craft talk. The exasperated “What?!” of the barstool bruiser is a caricature of the kinds of responses I’ve received all my life. And that painful sense of being caught between worlds is only funny to me because it is so well-observed, and true.

  • http://www.virtuallady.net shar

    chameleonic, indeed. and you do it so well. i’ve never been very good at it, but i think it’s because i am socially awkward in general. as an egghead intellectual from a family of very conservative, very successful biz owners — it took me forever to find my voice and use it. meanwhile, my family has never understood how i became a singer/writer/human rights activist or where they went wrong… bravo to you
    darlin’!

  • http://www.pagehalffull.com/humanyms Pearl

    I found it funny myself. I saw the think tank man as trying to navigate two identities, his old one and his new one. The material can’t be tugged to overlap.

  • Robert

    My informal survey shows English and Canadian viewers find it funny; some Americans are confused. This may well be a litmus test on attitudes toward class in different cultures. The things you discover when you put up something you see as singular in front of a global audience!

  • Robert

    Thanks, Shar. Bravo back atcha for finding your voice. :)

  • http://shootingpoets.blogspot.com/ Nick

    Congrats, Robert!

  • Robert

    Thanks, Nick! :)

  • http://blog.rightreading.com xensen

    Congratulations! Have fun with the thesis — don’t make it be work.

  • Robert

    Thanks, Tom. It’s so true–the moment it becomes “work” the muse throws his rucksack over his shoulder and hops the next train out of town!