My professor said this today; he was referring to the "comps project" (or senior thesis) that we religion majors are expected to complete this term. He also said that we had 0.5% of our lives to write this paper. I don't know if this was comforting. One girl ran out of the classroom crying.
I myself haven't internalized how difficult this is going to be. I was re-visiting my proposal for the first time since I wrote it in October (apparently I'm writing about the ineffable?), and I discovered many amusing found poems* that were written in India while I was putting together my foundational ideas for this project. Because I'm not yet as worried as I probably should be, I'm going to copy them below.
#1 From: The Craft of Research, Chapter 1 (some punctuation altered)
Readers and their common problems
Writers and their common problems
Motivate the question.
That word "problem," though
Has a very special meaning:
Space Flight
War and Peace
(Re)Creating Yourself
...
Freedom might be frustrating.
#2 From: The Encyclopedia of Religion, "Theological Positions and Virtues"
Our millennial nostalgia
is looking a little dog-eared
we seek a sense of coherence
a common center
but we produce little more than
bland tolerance--
please
disclose something of the mystery.
#3 From: Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist (this kind of alludes to how ridiculous my project is going to end up being...)
the painted picture of a cake
could not help being literary--
the dharmic drama of the universe
reinterprets the moon.
skin, flesh, bones, and marrow
entwine as vines
and the painted picture of a cake
with secret words
is matchlessly poetic.
*For those who do not know about found poetry, it is written by looking at a source (such as a page from a book) and selectively re-arranging phrases to make a poem. It is highly entertaining--one of my favorite procrastination techniques.
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