- Little hope of financial rewards.
- Years and years of work perfecting techniques.
- Networking as important as talent.
- Luck more important than talent.
- Ability not necessarily equal to inspiration.
- Inspiration completely necessary, however.
- Too many people already doing it.
Side note: I turned off anonymous posting in the comments. The first just-barely-almost-snipey comment showed up yesterday and I'm not going down that road.
10 comments:
Good for you for putting the kibosh on those anonymous comments. Receiving the first anonymous comment is what prompted me to delete my blog - it was impetuous, but what can I say, I was irritated. Comment moderation is key!
Argh! So we owe the loss of your awesome blog to one dickhead anonymous poster?! If I knew who they were, I'd stick a thumb in their eye.
I say the analogy works, half-assed or not!
That was actually one of the things that shocked me when we started out, as silly as it may be...I definitely had this romanticized notion about what it would look like to read and study and teach forever. Then Lynn started talking about how we have to sell ourselves.
...oh well.
I may end up rejoining the world of the poor academics - I have been inspired by the archive materials I saw yesterday. Plus, I found out today that Klosterneuburg is part of a consortium of central european monasteries putting their materials in electronic format on monasterium.net. For free!
Rachel: You're getting an e-mail. I find this whole "inspired by the archives" business deeply disturbing. :P
Ditto... archives don't inspire, they stink and create dust. The will turn your mind to dust. Forget the archives and hold fast to your freedom! Best to avoid archives alltogether so as to resist their false lure.
the HHStA doesn't stink - and it's really organized, it's kind of disturbing in that way, I suppose, perfectly organized rows and rows of neatly stacked boxes and books. But there was some really nifty stuff there! I'm with Chris on an earlier post - American/English history can be deadly dull. Instead, have to go with monastery charters in German/Latin hodge-podge....
besides, the worst thing about being a historian (an historian?) is reading books and books and books about what things MEAN without ever actually having read the original in the first place. It's so much more interesting to read Dickens, or Luther, or anyone else, than be forced to read ABOUT them.
It's totally "a historian." H is not a vowel.
double digits worth of comments! You have arrived, my friend.
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