New semester, new anxieties

Ah, Starmaster and your guide. How I neglect thee.

It's been a busy month since I started back up with school. Too much of that is too boring to mention here other than to say, I'm back--pendulum-wise--to feeling overwhelmed again. Starting my third year, it seems as though I should know more, be more engaged, doing more scholarly things: but I usually feel just as green as ever.

I'm making steps, however, to fight to become more mature in the field. I've started a new blog called Sonic Rhetorics. It will be an semi-academic space set up to get me thinking more seriously about my interests in the field. I've already done what I can to make it public with academics who have similar interests as me (via twitter)--and doing so requires that the writing and ideas expressed there need to adhere to a certain level of quality. It's a risky move, though. Putting myself out there outside of the carefully structured and gate-kept avenues of the "typical" academic avenues of conference talks and published journal articles can, in some respects, be akin to letting the whole professional community look have a look in your messy room. So, it takes me like three days to compose a blog-post (not the best use of my time, considering everything else required I should be doing).

But, I think it's a good exercise. My current plan is to go less public (no more public announcements via twitter #), but to still try to write like I AM being watched carefully. Also, it might be a good idea to start thinking about which conferences I'd like to submit to this year and also which journals and presses I should start reading more intently.

In other news, it's been an amazing end-of-the-summer/beginning of Fall music season. Still on the bill: Tonight I get to see Sufjan Stevens after emailing the venue every week since the tickets sold out in 5 minutes the night I was in Logan at our Family Reunion. In October: Avett Brothers, Blitzen Trapper, and WILCO!