Entitlement

This is not going to be a rant about the youth of today, many of whom behave in an entitled manner nonetheless. Rather, it is, of course, a wee bit of introspection. I've been observing in myself a little bit lately the same entitlement of which I usually accuse my undergrads of demonstrating. You know what I mean--the idea that you deserve everything you want no matter what, and that life shouldn't be hard or boring for you, ever.

I don't think that I feel this way about most things in life, but I have noticed that I tend to feel that way about my career and my intellectual pursuits. When a small roadblock comes my way, my gut reaction is to feel terribly put upon and to want to give up and do something else.

For example, I recently had an idea for working on Emerson for my dissertation project. My advisor thought it was a good idea, but he cautioned me against entering into it lightly, because there's a TON of scholarship on Emerson already. Thus it's likely that what I want to say has already been covered by someone else. Figuring out whether this idea is tenable would involve a long day or so in the library of looking at all of the scholarly literature on Emerson to get a sense of the field of work, and then deciding what holes, if any, I could fill by my particular approach. I suppose that in itself doesn't sound like a lot of work, but it comes in the midst of a long reading list for comps and the need to do the same for a few of the other religious figures I'm considering for the topic, which feels like a lot of work.

My immediate reaction to this was to feel despair and frustration. In part because the method I want to use to explore Emerson would look at him in a new light in comparison to other historical figures, BUT it wouldn't necessarily tell us something new about Emerson (possibly). This sort of disqualifies it for a history dissertation. Or it does to my advisor. In addition, I am lazy and I want it to be easy to find a way in which to make an intellectual contribution. I sometimes just feel angry that it seems like a lot of the really interesting and inspiring figures have been covered ad nauseam. But, I picked a field (U.S. religion) that is hardly young, so I will have to fight to gain perspective on it. Even it all makes me want to hide from responsibility by watching TV for hours.

I'm going to fight through for now, but I just felt like owning up to the fact that I can be immature sometimes. It keeps a person honest, you know?