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Gun o' the Pants ([info]gun) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2007-01-19 08:41:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
"HEY, FUK U GUYS! I'M TTLY ACADEMICAL!"
I always like it when I see behaviour reminiscent of idiotic fanfic brats in actual academic circles. Much love to the mice at [info]lol_meme, who brought this to my attention.

[info]brennakimi posts her SOP to the LJ community [info]applyingtograd for feedback from other members. (If you're in the mood for something utterly banal or in any way reminiscent of Billy Madison's anecdote about "The Puppy That Lost It's Way", I suggest you read it and try and take a stab in the dark about what she intends to study.)

However, she does not get the praise and "ZOMG THAT WUS RLY GOOD RITE MOR!" feedback she had been expecting.

Anan_b: I don't like your usage of quotations. Shoot, I just don't like seeing quotations in papers. It makes me think that my students are too lazy to think about how to say what they want in their own words. When I was an undergrad, nearly every professor of mine adhered to that same position. Are these papers published? If so, just put them on your vita and don't worry about stating their names in the SOP. It puts a big ebb to the flow of your writing. Describe your interests rather than list the title of some papers you've written.

Windsweptvoid: Alright, I still have no idea what the point of that star story is... what does it mean? I don't understand how that embodies your goals... apparently it is signifcant to you but you're not telling anyone why... If you want to keep it, you'll really have to find a way to make its relevence obvious.

Bighark: If you want to present yourself as a poor writer, proceed. If you want to look like someone capable of graduate work, write a better SOP.

Naturally, she lets everyone know that all their ideas are kinda ghey, which sets off ANOTHER WANK in which [info]sirgrunwald (who is actually [info]brennakimi's boyf, trufax) informs us that people upset about using "gay" as an insult are idiots, because "political correctness is bullshit".

To complete it all in true entitled fanfic brat style, [info]brennakimi informs us that she's not going to update her WIP, "Hermione Granger and the Summer Makeover" going to take her SOP and find people who are HELPFUL AND NICE AND NOT AT ALL MEAN.


ETA: ONOZ DELETED

D:



But the ever-wonderful [info]julian_black and [info]bartle_by have screencaps for us. Bless their little cotton socks.

The main wank

[info]sirgrunwald shares his thoughts on yaoi

Side-thread

From [info]snarkivist, the main wank with a couple of threads open

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


iwanttobeasleep
2007-01-19 12:55 am UTC (link)
Screw the wank, do college professors really frown upon quoting people in your essays? I was under the impression that since every essay I wrote in high school needed at least two quotes, it would also be encouraged in college. Was I wrong? Why did no one tell me that? *goes off to a corner to freak out about what else she unwittingly might be doing that her teachers frown upon*

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]nekoneko
2007-01-19 12:58 am UTC (link)
My professors encouraged using quotes in papers. I guess it depends on where you go.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sequinedlizard
2007-01-19 12:59 am UTC (link)
Depends on the professors and your discipline. Quotes can be used as crutches far too often. Most professors are fairly clear about their requirements, and despite most appearances, are willing to answer questions. So ask them if they favor quotes, and explain why. They might smirk, but they won't eat you :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]pepperlandgirl4
2007-01-19 01:15 am UTC (link)
Profs frown on it because, as somebody else pointed out, people use them as crutches. Students seem to be mortally afraid (or just flat-out lazy) about using their own words/thoughts, so they find somebody else's, quote them, decide the quotes stand on their own so they don't add an explanation, and barely do any work at all.

You should have seen my students panic when I informed them that they could only have 4 quotes in an 8 page paper...

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]ayezur
2007-01-19 04:26 am UTC (link)
That's actually pretty generous. I tend to have the opposite problem; I can never find enough quotes to support my position.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]pepperlandgirl4, 2007-01-19 04:28 am UTC

[info]digigirl132
2007-01-19 04:45 pm UTC (link)
I would have loved your class. I prefer to write out what I want to say in the way I want to say it, rather than use other people's words and work around that. If I can get away with it, I only quote statistics nessisary for my paper's point. Sadly, I'm a junior now. I have to use quotes far more often now. (One of my professors made us use a quote per paragraph in our final paper. It was a 9-10 page paper, too. I just about died trying to find enough quotes that had to do with my subject, and I had to leave out a bunch of awesome ideas because nodoby had ever talked about them before. It made me emo.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]caoilte, 2007-01-20 04:14 pm UTC

dracothelizard
2007-01-19 01:29 am UTC (link)
I was always told to put some quotes in to support my arguement, but I'm an English Lit student, things probably vary per field.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]lottelita
2007-01-19 01:50 am UTC (link)
Well, there's a difference between using quotes as evidence, and using quotes as filler in an introduction or conclusion.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - dracothelizard, 2007-01-19 01:51 am UTC

[info]slavekitty
2007-01-19 01:50 am UTC (link)
Agreement. I was an English major, and we had tons of quotes. The only requirement seemed to be not to drown our papers in quotes.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - dracothelizard, 2007-01-19 01:52 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]some_dude, 2007-01-19 07:09 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]aposiopetic, 2007-01-19 07:53 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]exdee, 2007-01-19 02:52 pm UTC

[info]hallidae
2007-01-19 01:33 am UTC (link)
My PoliSci professor would automatically deduct half a letter grade if you used more than one quote in a paper shorter than six pages.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]anonyrat
2007-01-19 01:47 am UTC (link)
I think they mean quotes in an admissions essay, not in an academic essay. I mean, how the hell are you supposed to support your argument without quoting the text you're talking about?

Um, at least in history/Classics/English, that is.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]apoplexia
2007-01-20 12:28 am UTC (link)
Ah, thank you for clearing this up for me, becuase I was busy wondering about these disciplines where research is frowned upon.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]vigilanterodent
2007-01-19 02:07 am UTC (link)
Depends on the instructor. I had a TA last semester who would cream your ass hard if you didn't quote, and another the semester before that who reviled them.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]onaga
2007-01-19 02:40 am UTC (link)
I have to have lots of quotes in my papers, mainly because I'm supposed to express a familiarity with the body of scholarship available. This can be a problem when I'm supposed to have 10 items on my bibliography and it's an unusual take on an obscure topic.

(I'm a classics student, so previous scholarship is kind of important. XD)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]gunshou
2007-01-19 03:27 am UTC (link)
I discourage quotations in my high school students. Too many of them use it to pad a paper. Quotations can be used to great effect, but only to provide an example or when you just can't think of better words than the author's.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]rachelmap
2007-01-19 03:55 am UTC (link)
Quotations can be used to great effect, but only to provide an example or when you just can't think of better words than the author's.


Or (when you're writing an argumentative essay) you want to state the opposition's opinion in their own words to avoid accusations of setting up a straw man.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]gunshou, 2007-01-19 04:39 am UTC

[info]julian_black
2007-01-19 04:00 am UTC (link)
My professors (in history and anthropology) didn't frown on them unless someone was being lazy and using lots of quotes to pad out a paper.

It's a different matter in a 500-word grad school admissions essay, however. The admissions committee wants to know about your research interests and experiences, and they want to see how well you can state them, given such a limited amount of space. They don't want to see inspiring quotations.

I think the problem with the OP's essay (now bahleeted! Oh noes!) was that she included the titles of papers she had written, and these were in quotes. While the quotes were stylistically correct, including the titles in her essay only bloated the word count and bogged down her already-unfortunate prose. Others pointed out that the titles of those papers belonged in a CV or elsewhere in her application, not in the personal essay, and of course she got shirty about that...

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]froda_baggins
2007-01-19 04:04 am UTC (link)
Well, in film studies I'm often expected to quote from earlier scholarship to either support my argument or to use as an example of what I'm arguing against or building upon with my thesis.

Unless I'm doing a close reading of one film, in which case I'm pretty much just expected to analyze the film visually.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]jat_sapphire
2007-01-19 05:55 am UTC (link)
There, there, don't freak out.

In the case of that particular SOP, I didn't even read any actual quotes--what she was doing was listing her own pretentious paper titles. They make that paragraph excrutiating to read, and I thought she would have been better off to say something like, "I studied Pakistani women's body image issues, and found that they resembled the issues so often described in American women...." etc. You know, explaining what she had researched and what her conclusions were, rather than trying to batter the readers with HER AMAZING AWESOME COLLECTION OF NOT-REALLY-PUBLISHED work. I thought the guy responding with that line about quotes was not expressing himself very well.

My experience is that my colleagues want me to teach the freshmen in my classes how to use sources well, and bitch unrelentingly that their students cannot use them well enough. I see that the rest of this thread does claim some instructors frown on sourcework, but I do suspect it's not a personality trait so much as a criterion for a particular assignment or a particular (say, introductory) class.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]jat_sapphire
2007-01-19 05:56 am UTC (link)
*excruciating.

*sigh*

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]eilan
2007-01-19 09:18 am UTC (link)
There is a fundamenal difference between a paper/essay and a college SOP. Why would anyone need to use a quote in their descriptio of academic goals?

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]aristaea
2007-01-19 04:39 pm UTC (link)
My professors always frowned on using quotes, but you can get around it by offering paraphrases, which has the added benefit of making it look like you put in more effort than your peers since you had to read and decipher the source.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]lycoris
2007-01-19 05:25 pm UTC (link)
Well, in all the courses I know at my Uni, they demand quotes or at least paraphrases and if you don't, you're likely to get fewer marks. Shame as I LOATHE quoting - I'd much rather ramble for 2,500 words about my own stuffs! *sighs* I wish I was in a place where they didn't like quoting!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]whimsy_chan
2007-01-19 06:26 pm UTC (link)
[insert my professors' thoughts on using quotations in essays here]

Seriously, it all depends on the instructor and your course of study. If no one's ever told you not to use quotations in your essays, then you probably have nothing to worry about.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]doc_lydgate
2007-01-19 07:17 pm UTC (link)
My experience as student and TA has been that it's not about quotes/no quotes, lots/few, but whether or not you use the damned things effectively. If you're using quotes, be sure that:
•Every one is present to actually address the essay's question(s). Could you succinctly and lucidly explain to another person what that quote does in the structure of your essay?
•Your quotes are not redundant (i.e., do you have two quotes that really serve the same purpose in your essay, but you just can't bear to part with one of them 'cause they're just so pretty? If you do, then FAIL).
•Thou shalt not close a paragraph with a quotation that sounds vaguely witty and believe that thou art terribly witty and elegantly landing a point. If you don't have something to say about why this quote is important to your questions and your argument, then what the hell is it doing there in the first place? FAIL.*
On the other hand, if you seem to have a dearth of quotes and this disturbs you, then:
•Well, what sort of essay are you trying to write? Do you have some sort of vague feeling that you ought to have some quotes from major league ball players philosphers or artists to make your case? If so, is the source of that feeling a desire to borrow some validity from figures accepted as "great" without making a case for your stance yourself? Or do you have something to say about why those figures' opinions are important?
•Are you, in fact, writing a research essay or an essay about a book?** 'Cause, if so, and there aren't any quotes around, you're probably not answering your own essay's question. Or at least not the professor's. In most fields, there simply isn't that much academic work to be done that doesn't build concretely on something that's come before.

*Some quotes, it is true, require only a sentence to explain their place in your argument, but, unless your essay is generously padded, this is the exception.
**You might think it would be superfluous to have students ask themselves this. However, you would be wrong. So very, very wrong...

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]heddychaa, 2007-01-19 09:15 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]apoplexia, 2007-01-20 12:34 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]doc_lydgate, 2007-01-20 04:50 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]doc_lydgate, 2007-01-20 04:52 am UTC

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