Nick, this is not life experience,
this is procrastination at the zoo.
- Winston Bishop, New Girl S02E09
One day, probably in 2012 while I was in my last year of my MA studies I overheard a student telling another student about the word procrastinate, except she called it "procrastrinate", and this novel information was received with what seemed to be amusement and perhaps also recognition. I consider this to be one of the most emblematic encounters I have had with student culture and its early 2010s zeitgeist. This is not to say that I consider my fellow students not to work hard - in fact most students probably work harder than I did during my MA - but at this time "procrastination" had become an emblem of academia, a household term, as it were. This was in no small part thanks to the popularity of PhD Comics, which despite being set in the sciences also resonated with the everyday life of students in the humanities. I remember several print-outs from this comic strip taped to the doors of the cubicles designated for MA students, and Facebook was full of links and updates. In a sense, procrastination appeared to be not only accepted but also expected of someone who wished to take part in the life of higher education. To me, at least, an ambitious MA student with hopes of advancing in the system, it seemed that I was obliged to spend time not being productive, and this was adopted into my MA studies quite early on. For me this was quite easy as both some of my friends and myself had often spent time socialising while we ought to have been working on our dissertation. The first term of the MA in particular, the autumn of 2010, we usually had two-hour breaks with short bouts of research thrown in between. We were already good at procrastination, although it was not until 2011, I believe, that we started to fully embrace the concept or to put the precise word to our way of not working. Around this time, when we adopted the culture of procrastination, it seemed as if many people did the same. This is only natural, as most people will probably have experienced that when you learn a new word you find significant, you suddenly start noticing this word all around you, as if the whole world was also having the same discovery.
- Winston Bishop, New Girl S02E09
One day, probably in 2012 while I was in my last year of my MA studies I overheard a student telling another student about the word procrastinate, except she called it "procrastrinate", and this novel information was received with what seemed to be amusement and perhaps also recognition. I consider this to be one of the most emblematic encounters I have had with student culture and its early 2010s zeitgeist. This is not to say that I consider my fellow students not to work hard - in fact most students probably work harder than I did during my MA - but at this time "procrastination" had become an emblem of academia, a household term, as it were. This was in no small part thanks to the popularity of PhD Comics, which despite being set in the sciences also resonated with the everyday life of students in the humanities. I remember several print-outs from this comic strip taped to the doors of the cubicles designated for MA students, and Facebook was full of links and updates. In a sense, procrastination appeared to be not only accepted but also expected of someone who wished to take part in the life of higher education. To me, at least, an ambitious MA student with hopes of advancing in the system, it seemed that I was obliged to spend time not being productive, and this was adopted into my MA studies quite early on. For me this was quite easy as both some of my friends and myself had often spent time socialising while we ought to have been working on our dissertation. The first term of the MA in particular, the autumn of 2010, we usually had two-hour breaks with short bouts of research thrown in between. We were already good at procrastination, although it was not until 2011, I believe, that we started to fully embrace the concept or to put the precise word to our way of not working. Around this time, when we adopted the culture of procrastination, it seemed as if many people did the same. This is only natural, as most people will probably have experienced that when you learn a new word you find significant, you suddenly start noticing this word all around you, as if the whole world was also having the same discovery.
Tomorrow, tomorrow! the crows cry
Woodcut illustration from Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, attributed to Albrecht Dürer
Courtesy of University of Houston
The central place of procrastination in
academia is only natural. Much of the day of an MA or PhD student is
spent in a small room perusing books or writing stuff on a computer.
There is a certain monotony in this that invites escapism of sundry
sorts, and if the day happens to be a bit unstructured, or if the
progress is hampered by things like faulty or quarrelsome technology
or books that are not as helpful as you had hoped, it is easy to fall
into procrastination mode. There are various ways to go about this
procrastination, and it is frightfully easy to find reasons to do so.
In some cases, faux reasoning does not even get a chance to play its
part, as it is also easy to merely descend into ennui while staring
at your computer screen, blindly giving in to postponement and
letting time pass you buy. Other times, you get a helping hand from
fellow procrastinators who pick you up into its fold, and with whom
you pick up others to form what Jorge Cham has termed the Vortex of
Unproductivity.
Courtesy of Jorge Cham
Although it is terribly easy to give in
to the sweet allures of procrastination, there are also ways to avoid
it, or at the very least procrastinate in a way that is not entirely
unproductive. One of the easiest ways to do this if you procrastinate
with others is to turn your bacchanalia of not-working into an
academic discussion of some kind. Most likely it will not be entirely
relevant to your current research, but since it is always good for
academics to root around a bit beyond their immediate concerns, such
a discussion can be a good way to engage critically with something.
If you are procrastinating in your office and left to your own
devices, it can seem slightly more difficult to avoid the clutches of
non-productivity, but only apparently. One of the tools to escape
this is Twitter, either by entering into a discussion with members of
its growing academic community, or by tweeting about your latest
research that you are currently not doing. As a medievalist it is
particularly easy to choose this route, as the medievalist section of
Twitter is full of bright and interesting people and also has an
interested lay audience, both of whom might be receptive to your
reflections on some medieval topic. I for my part spent some of my
procrastination time today tweeting about Saint Remigius, the apostle
of the Franks, whose feast day is October 1st. This led me to
rediscover parts of his legend that are somewhat relevant to my work,
and it also allowed me to track down a few great medieval
illuminations to attach to my tweets. While Remigius is both
temporally and geographically far removed from my own focus on
12th-century Northern European cult of royal saints, he is
nonetheless an important figure in the religious history of
high-medieval France and its mythology of kingship. Remigius
therefore makes for a good point of reference in the construction of
sacred kingship, and my bout of procrastination became surprisingly
akin to actual research.
An even better way - and I would argue
the best way - to be productive while procrastinating is simply to
read. This is not to say that any reading is productive
procrastination, far from it, but for a medievalist - especially -
there is a vast range of literature that can in some ways qualify as
research. Academics are required to read widely in order to increase
their horizon, and for scholars immersing themselves in the worldview
of a culture separated from ours by centuries, it is particularly
important to be aware of the complexity and the cultural heritage of
that period. Furthermore, a medievalist should be interdisciplinary,
so if you are tired of your own part of the field of medieval
studies, it is easy enough to pick up an article or a blogpost that
touches on medieval history but in a way different from your own. And
if this seems too similar to actual work, it's easy enough to find a
medieval text that might be far beyond your immediate research
interest, but that still might give you some interesting knowledge
that you might be able to employ later. Today, for instance, I
indulged in Jerome's highly interesting account of Paul of Thebes.
Since this is one of the oldest saint biographies, and one which
concerns such a central figure in medieval history as Anthony of
Egypt, it is a text with which I was required to be familiar.
Carolinne White's excellent translation combined with its blissful
brevity made it a quick read that also opened up for some reflections
of themes such as the monastic renunciation of the world, or the
various forms of suffering found in Christian martyrdoms. In other
words: what started out as procrastination turned out to be some kind
of productivity, and I came away with a clearer conscience.
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