I said that there no Annotated Constitution and Traeger Smith informed me that there is, and that there has been for a long time.
I am beginning to believe that there is NOTHING one or another of my commenters don’t know about. That would scare the hell out of the average college professor.
Which is one reason I am no longer a college professor.
I taught in college and I had to take over some graduate classes. Everybody there except me got to grad school by taking down what the professors said and regurgitating it. There are no surprises in class.
It is boring as hell.
No student is going to look something up to hit you with the way my commenters do. No student is going to have a point of view he won’t back away from.
I wasn’t like that, and you will notice that I didn’t make it in Academia.
This blog is entirely different. You KNOW things. You are willing to stick your necks out and be hit back.
I am willing to stick my neck out and I fully expect you to knock me down when I’m wrong or when you disagree. That’s what I ENJOY.
I am an actual intellectual. I am not interested in a producing a bunch of intellectual clones who say predictable things. Old Bob is the dictator of his own little blog, but his little blog is here to hammer out what is right and what is wrong.
Ole Bob has been wrong many times in the past and Ole Bob will be wrong many times in the future.
When I am wrong, it can be embarrassing, but I also know that if you are never wrong, something is wrong with YOU.
If you’re so careful you never say anything stupid, you are not doing any serious thinking or any serious questioning.
Any person who really thinks is going to be wrong a LOT.
So when I’m wrong you tell me so.
People are always warning me against making sweeping statements. They tell me it makes me vulnerable.
Vulnerable to what?
Well, they say, it makes me vulnerable to getting caught making a mistake.
The difference between them and me is that what they call making a terrible mistake is what I call learning.
#1 by Elizabeth on 07/25/2005 - 1:15 pm
I’m a graduate student in History. I’m older than some of my professors. I didn’t get to grad school the conventional way — or at the conventional time.
Some of them, especially the younger ones, criticize me for putting so much of myself into my written work.
I can’t help it. I’ve been reading history for 41 of my 47 years. Along the way, I’ve actually lived some of that history some of my professors have to read about it because it happened before they remember.
#2 by Derek on 07/25/2005 - 2:26 pm
I can empathise with Elizabeth, to a degree. I am going back to school after an 8 year abscence. I am old enough to realize that I know little about the world. I used think that I was always right after my first bout with college. Now I am going to question most everything there.
#3 by Elizabeth on 08/05/2005 - 6:13 pm
Good for you, Derek!