/lit/ - Literature

>>2706234

Everything here is 100% factual. It's a true story, folks. Sad but true. Sad but true.

commit to who you are.
cheat your way through grad school.
then cheat your way to a job
you're clearly good at this, you have nothing to worry about.

2/10

>he thinks integrity is an asset in the work force!

nigga you ahead of the game, by the time most people make it to a comfortable salary in their job they aren't even passionate about it anymore

get money, fuck bitches. if you don't like literature, you don't like literature, but that doesn't mean you can't pretend to like it for dat scrilla, there are plenty of gormless wrecks in academia, in fact most of academia is probably clueless

rejoice in your mask, my friend

What shit school did you go to that that worked? Did you ever take a seminar course? Was it just big 30 person courses all the way through with major basic works?

>>2706234
a common piece of advice for grad students is "everybody feels like a fraud, don't worry about it"

but jesus christ OP

the only positive thing I can say is that you can't get away with that shit in grad school so you'll be pretty much forced to actually do your readings. if the looming threat of dropping below a certain GPA, getting kicked out and losing your livelihood is not enough to get you do a couple hours of reading a day then you probably have an actual psychological problem, one that could be helped with medication.

oh, that's decent enough advice. OP, if you honestly cannot force yourself to do the modicum of work your graduate studies require, go to a psychologist or a regular medical doctor and get a prescription for some ADHD meds, tons of kids who don't even have a problem use them as study aids, they're pretty baller as far as I can tell

>>2706277

/thread

I'm not even mad.

I'm impressed. SparksNotes didn't have entries on most of the books that I read in University. Your university is a little behind in the times. All my profs clued in to this sort of game 10 years ago.

You should go on to get a PhD. The only way to get to like something you don't like is to keep on doing it over and over.

>>2706277

Yea, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking starting in grad school I'm actually going to do all the reading and the work.

I mean, if I earn my Ph.D. and actually do the reading, then not having done any reading for my bachelors won't be such a big deal. I won't feel like a fraud or whatever.

It's not too late!

>>2706253

This guy is absolutely correct. My university experience was remarkably similar to OP, and I just carried on faking it through my doctorate, then out into the real world. I ended up as project manager on a team that was building a part of the biggest ship in the world thinking to myself "seriously dude, what the fuck are you doing now?"

Never admit you have no idea, bluff your way through.

Suicide is the only way to redeem yourself for these atrocities.

Sparknotes are good.

If reading a novel takes, say, twenty hours and reading the sparknotes takes one hour, that is nineteen hours freed up. That is invaluable while studying.

Integrity comes later.

>>2706301

>Integrity comes later.

Fapping comes now.

>>2706234
OP, current English grad student here. If you don't have the attention span to read the Iliad, and you're worried about falling into your old habits, don't. As you'll be functioning as a TA, you'll spend loads more time correcting shitty undergrad papers than you'll ever spend doing your readings. In fact, after spending an entire weekend (taking breaks only for meals and sleep) filling in the red bits, you'll be positively ecstatic to take a break for some Homeric poetry.

Either you'll burn out in your first semester or it'll teach you time management and discipline like you wouldn't believe.

>2706277
This guy knows what's up.

Someone who has mastered hundreds and hundreds of book summaries and mastered the history of literature (even if he hasn't read it) would still have an impressive knowledge I think.

Maybe that's what you should go for.

>>2706301

Yeah, but unless OP is going to a shit university, that shouldn't cut it.

Source: I got a BA in English at a mid-tier university.

>>2706301
>20 hours to read a novel
>I am illiterate


OP, learn to read a book in two sittings. You'll find that you'll often read texts for which SparkNotes don't exist. Also, you'll find that your coursework and reading assignments will be notably more pointed than in undergraduate studies--you'll often be reading with a particular theoretical lens specific to the professor's research interests. What I'm getting at is that simple comments about generic symbolism and themes in a text won't cut it.

>>2706308
>correcting shitty undergrad papers

Wow you sound like a shit teacher who creates unnecessary work for himself.

>>2706234

OP is all the students in humanities.

>spark notes
>plagiarizing
>doesn't wanna work
>good grades, no actual work done
>only slight interest in his subject

this is very typical, OP its okay...
at least you got into grad school and don't have to join the real world

just fake it till you make it

>>2706327
Shit TA actually.

And I don't create unnecessary work for myself, my professor has that well in hand.

I'm jelly OP.

I could never do that though. Not because of "honesty" or "integrity" or empty concepts like that.

I just don't think I'd be able to fake it all the way. Eventually the feeling of not knowing shit would get to me, and I'd collapse under the weight of my own bullshit.

Godspeed to you, though. Don't let 'em see you cry.

>>2706325
pay attention to this post, OP, it's full of pertinent information

Just fake it. Play video games, have fun, enjoy life.

Fake it through a Ph.D. Get a shitty job paying 40k a year teaching literature to jaded students at a community college.

Fake it, play video games, enjoy life.

It's that easy.

>>2706345

And weed.

I'm the guy from >>2706290 and I ended up working on massive big ships because I moved to Holland to score weed more easily. Ended up working for Shell for a few years and cha-ching. Pots of cash, and I knew literally fuck all.

In some ways, it's easier to pull of in the real world than in academia - you just score a win, then move onto another, bigger project and leave your successor to clean up your shit.

>>2706334
>2012
>not having a student instructorship that lets you run your own class

>>2706349


>>>/soc/

>>2706353

>>>/gofuckyourself/

boy, if this isn't /lit/ - the thread, I don't know what it

/lit/ - Just Fake It

>>2706357
>>>/woof!/ :3

You lucky shit, if any papers at my uni have as much as a trace of sparknotes they get destroyed on the spot

>>2706357

Damn son. That hit harder than I expected. You probably have another tab open where you posted a picture of your penis and are waiting for fatties to compliment it.

>>2706362

;_;

>>2706358
Yeah, not that surprising given that most of this board hasn't even read the books they discuss.
And OP keep at it if you can pull it off, I've got no anger towards you as I've pulled off the more minor crime of basing essays off of the only section of a text that I've read several times

>>2706360
that's because you go to what we in academia call a "non shit university"

seriously, I was able to pull that sparknotes bullshit in my year at community college, but as soon as a went to a bigger university the professors fucking NAILED students for it

OP I know how you feel. In my first year at university I thought I'd study the liberal arts and impress everyone with the eloquence and insight I imagined I had. I took History classes, Literature classes... and I think I barely read a single complete paragraph in all my time. I wrote a critical meta-analysis of theories of Authorship within Pale Fire without even reading the goddamned book. And, of course, I did impress everyone. My professors could find as little fault in my work as I found satisfaction: none. So, I scrapped that idea, and I'm hoping to make my way in the sciences instead.

Of course, sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake. Perhaps it would be better to succeed without effort or honesty than to slave away over data and simulations for little to know recognition, unless I happen to stumble across humanity's future home in the Milky Way, or the secret of gravity, or the most far reaching analysis yet of the Big Bang's zero hour. And, even then, my name would come last on the paper, after two dozen doctorate students, professors, and research directors.

Maybe I'd be better off trying to achieve something in another arena, like that guy from Queen who was originally an astrophysicist.

>>2706290

I see what you did there.

>>2706372
shhh, we're trying to convince someone to ruin their life

>>2706345

You can't fake a PhD. I don't know about in the US but here in the UK you have to write 100,000 words on a topic you are continually discussing with a tutor. You can't just sit at the back of the room and pretend to have read a book. You have to show where your ideas are coming from.
It's like writing a dissertation, except the process goes on for three years. And good luck finding sparknotes on random unknown books of criticism.

>>2706234
no problem there, fallout is fucking awesome

>>2706368
>>2706368

How would they know? SparkNotes is just a summary. Do you mean they would nail students who were dumb enough to cite sparknotes as a source or professors would actually accuse students of using sparknotes?

>>2706367

HA - that's just reminded me of something else from my university career (1st Class, BA (Hons) Bristol University, so inb4 shit college).

I always used to write my essays really late, so there were never any good books in the library and I wasn't paying for them, fuck that, and there was no pirating it onto your kindle in those days (unless you were shagging a buccaneer, but that's another story).

Anyway, there was this one book called Look Out, Whitey! Black Power's Gon' Get Your Mama!, by Julius Lester, and it was NEVER, EVER checked out of the library. So I used it in nearly every single essay I wrote (never overdoing it with the same tutor, obviously).

Anyway, it slowly dawned on my drunk and wasted self that a) none of my tutors had ever read it and b) nobody was going to call me on my bullshit or question my source because hey! we no racist!!!

By the end, I was making up quotes and ascribing them to Lester.

>According to Lester [1969:190 The inner quality of beauty is not in fact truth, but your momma, so Keats' ascriptions must be viewed from a different perspective. By questioning Keats ontology, Lester questions our understanding of Keats metrical experiment bla bla bla bla

and the tutor would be all like

>fuck off anon, you're doing my head in with this shit. Have a degree and a scholarship for your Phd

and I was all

>yeah, whatevs. mfw

>>2706372

Out of interest (slight interest), what do you think I did there? Because that's my post, and I can't see what I did have done.

>>2706379
you also can't fake a masters, at least in the US, because it requires the completion of a thesis, which is a book length manuscript you write under the supervision of a mentor. then at the end of your program you have to defend your thesis, and if you can't, you've got to go back and fix it upand defend it again. I've never heard of anyone getting a third chance to defend it but maybe that varies from university to university.

my point is, you can't fake your way through writing a book length manuscript on a text you haven't read, a text which your mentor as well as your thesis committee will be intimately acquainted with themselves.

and actually, the coursework of a M.A. is so much more intense and intimate than it is in undergrad, I can't imagine getting away with bullshitting your way past not reading the texts.

I know most of those feels, OP. I'm an undergrad English major and have gotten sincere praise from just about all my lit professors. While I'm not reading sparknotes and stealing ideas, I feel pretty lukewarm about literature (maybe it's just school in general), and sometimes think the only reason I'm plowing along is that I'm hooked on receiving praise and am too far into the program to change majors. Bad feels, man. Doubly bad because studying English, while rewarding, requires passion to be a springboard to a career.

Honestly, OP, you must have gone to a shitty school. I go to uni in Canada, and there is no way to pull off a decent grade on a paper without reading the work. My university is also really conservative/historicity-minded, so if you cite psychoanalytic or marxist criticism, "juss cuz," don't expect glowing grades. In other words, you have to justify everything, everything has to be coherent and hold together and you have to demonstrate a deep understanding of the text. I fail to imagine how one could continuously bluff that. My advice: if you can't get into/can't afford Ivy League, go to a Canadian school if you want your humanities degree to actually teach you something.

>>2706398
Well at my UK university my MA thesis didn't have to be book length; it was 20,000 words and I didn't have to defend it. But I definitely wouldn't have been able to fake my way through it.

Perhaps I could have faked through some of the modules however. But at PhD level you can't fake anything.

>>2706398
I've not thoroughly read a few texts in my masters program, but I only lightly participated in that day's discussion and didn't do any writing on them.

>>2706406
Which uni? U of T or McGill I'm guessing?

>>2706406
>>2706406

Most masters in literature programs have two options. One is a thesis option and the other is a non-thesis option that requires more coursework.

The thesis option is recommended for those going on to a Ph.D. program.

>>2706410
What the fuck sort of bullshit non-thesis is that?

>>2706395

Oh, I thought you were making a reference to the Titanic. Biggest boat, sinking ship innuendo.

Interpretin' ya post, bitch. Death o' the author n' that, so suck it!

>>2706393
You remind me of this, OP: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

>>2706420
I thought you were talking about "catch me if you can", that movie where leonardo dicaprio goes through a bunch of identities and fakes credentials, bullshitting his way through life while he fleeces everybody

good movie if you haven't seen it, tom hanks is the other male lead, and the film was based on a real dude

>>2706420

Nah, after my PhD in glorious English Literature, I ended up (after some shenanigans) working in an oil company, and eventually worked as the manager of a project related to their FLNG thing, and before that on oil rigs, and people were coming up to me all like "so, Dr. Anon, what do you think of our proposals for the weather control machine?" and I was all like "lol, dunno. fuck, if these guys find out I got my doctorate for writing a load of shit about poetry, they're going to fucking keel-haul me".

The good thing about an academic career in literature was that I'd read loads of shit about loads of shit, so I was pretty good at bluffing, and probably the only one who actually knew how to keel-haul anyone, and I was buggered if I was going to tell them the secret.

>>2706433
"Dr. Anon" made me snort.

>>2706433
a>nd probably the only one who actually knew how to keel-haul anyone, and I was buggered if I was going to tell them the secret.

stop being so Britishly comedic, you

OP, I don't know if you're still reading this, but the people who are encouraging you to continue bullshitting do not have your best interests in mind. Either they're simply ignorant of the realities of a graduate program, or they're deliberately lying out of malice because they resent your shitty attitude in undergrad, but either way you can not get away with this shit in a masters program and if you try you will have a very embarrassing confrontation where an esteemed professor looks at you like you're a pile of elephant shit in the shape of a man.

Well, how are you going to get good at literary analysis if you never read literary analysis?

Sparknotes is literary analysis.

Yes, shame on you boo hoo hoo for not reading the original text and trying to mull it over first, but really, the sad situation is that you probably learned more about the book by reading that website than you could have by reading the originals yourself.

Do we learn Physics by banging our heads against Newton's Principia? Or did someone find a clearer way of presenting the information to the modern mind?

Yes, you get points for being able to decipher the Principia all on your own, but you also get (albeit less) points for having the sense to know that you needed further explanation in the first place, and the gumption to go out there and find it yourself.

Your work WILL get you a Bachelor's degree, because those things are a dime a dozen these days. On the other hand, you can expect it to bite you in the ass when you go for your PhD.

>>2706277

Also, learn how to discipline yourself BY yourself, because the oh-so-precious drugs aren't going to always be there for you. I suppose it'll work in a pinch, but that's all that drugs are really for in the first place. Don't use a temporary solution for a permanent problem, lock yourself in a room and force yourself to read.

Remember, ADHD and Autism are effects of the technological age; not genetic defects. You have a 2 minute attention span because everything on TV was 2 minutes long. You think like a computer because you spend so much of your fucking time on a computer. Also, cocks.

If it's a troll, la tee da, this is all just discussion fodder for me anyway, and I actually don't care about whom I'm addressing, so don't get all giggly if it's bullshit in the first place.

/thread

>>2706455
>a bunch of insane rambling nonsense
>/thread

do you have that name because you run your posts through bablefish before hitting submit?

hey op just do what i do, listen to audiobooks while you play world of warcraft, lol

>>2706358
Exactly. Now their fascination with continental philosophy makes sense. Don't actually read books - just fake it, spew a bunch of horseshit and hope nobody notices. Intellectual imposters indeed.

>>2706455
>ADHD and Autism are effects of the technological age
wat

phoney

did he say what uni yet, i don't really care if this is university of phoenix

As far as I can tell that's what you're supposed to do, OP.

>>2706533

Says a guy who has never taken an advanced literature course and probably hasn't even read a literary work beyond what was on his and his friends' high school reading lists. He just read the wiki article on deconstruction and thought, "wow, this is pretty simple."

>>2706533
>>2706533

OP here. That's funny because when I applied to my masters program, I applied as a literary theory specialist. I don't know shit about literary theory.

I actually ordered a bunch of those "A Very Short Introduction" books on Derrida, Foucault, Literary Theory, Post structuralism, and Postmodernism.

I haven't read a single one, though. I've been too lazy and distracted with video games and the internet.

>>2706538
Very convincing. You almost had me for a second.

>>2706553

100% factual.

I actually met him once, and he asked what I was studying, and I said English and he said "I know nothing about that."

>>2706559

Which either reinforces his point or has no effect on it.

Do you guys think it cheapens a book to read the summary first?

I mean, I ordered some SparkNotes books (actual hard copy) and could, potentially, master the summaries of 150 books this summer. Plus, I bought the SparkNotes of Greek literature and poetry classics.

If I actually studied these this summer, I could bullshit my way through conversations that came up in my masters program.

Should I do it? I plan to improve my reading and attention skills during my grad studies and to read these books in their entirety someday but will reading summaries first cheapen that?

>>2706562

How does it reinforce his point? He just fantasized he could fake his way through a field he knows nothing about, including writing book-length works. He'd get laughed out of an undergraduate seminar (that actually happened to a dude in a class of mine once).

>>2706563

Hey, I just thought of something else. Since I'm a lazy fraud with ADHD, maybe I should start by reading classic short stories.

Surely I could not be such an immature dumb fuck and actual sit and read a short story a day or something. I've read the Yellow Wallpaper and Young Goodman Brown and some of Hemingway's short stories. So there's some classic lit I've actually read.

That's a good idea!!

>>2706566

It's satire. I think you're the only one simple enough to take it seriously.

>>2706562
what the fuck are you even saying?

you understand this isn't ACTUALLY his hobby, right? it's fictional. he didn't actually write two books on literary theory and bamboozle the world of academia.

>>2706540
get this book, OP: http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Theory-Anthology-Blackwell-Anthologies/dp/0631200290

read an essay a day, that shouldn't be too hard.

>>2706566

>fake his way through a field he knows nothing about

There it is.

>He'd get laughed out of an undergraduate seminar

Probably not, though he's obviously exaggerating. Which he should be doing, if he wants a punchline. He's still right that you can horseshit your way through a humanities major more easily than you can in most other fields, and obviously the grand majority of hard science fields, which is what XKCD dude studied.

>>2706575

Yes, I realize that.

>>2706572

I realize that, but that doesn't mean he isn't writing it as a science fanboy wherein his joke is "lol, literary studies, so hilariously subjective hehehe."

>>2706579
I don't think you do, because you said that the fact that he's never done even cursory research into literary criticism might "reinforce" his point. which would only be true if he was pulling the ruse off in real life, not fantasy.

>>2706583

Okay, I am going to make this clear.

He is saying it is easy to bullshit his way through literary theory. He is a math nerd, so go figure he'd make this sort of claim. He's dismissive of subjects less grounded and concrete than his.

Somebody else here says (you?): No way he bullshits his way through literary theory! He knows nothing about it!

To which my reply essentially is: He'd be perfectly okay with admitting to knowing nothing about literary theory and still claim to be able to bullshit his way through literary theory, because that would only further demonstrate how devalued literary theory is as a field.

At no point was it lost on me that xkcd guy is not really big on or into the arts

>>2706581

Yea, that is the joke. But the fact that he's laughing at another field of study doesn't mean that he "fantasized he could fake his way through a field he knows nothing about, including writing book-length works." It's simply an example of "inter-major" squabbling, and if you haven't been at university long enough to recognize this, I think that you're the last person that should be criticizing him.

He also makes fun on biology majors, but could you imagine saying that he wanted to be a biology major? He's a comedian, not a masochist.

Literary theory is basically 100% bullshit - hence the consensus advice given to the OP to "continue faking it, since everyone else is".

Better advice would be to stop living like a child and actually get a job.

>>2706593
That's understating the point.

The author is correct - literary theory really IS bullshit. He's not "exaggerating" or comedic effect. It is literally nonsense.

>>2706593
>He'd be perfectly okay with admitting to knowing nothing about literary theory and still claim to be able to bullshit his way through literary theory, because that would only further demonstrate how devalued literary theory is as a field.

Except he couldn't.

You don't see me making a comic about how I could just throw symbols everywhere and pose as a mathematician, just because the average person wouldn't be able to tell if it was bullshit or real work, and go "lol it's satire."

>>2706607
The difference between so-called "literary theory" and a genuine field of study like mathematics is precisely that you CAN bullshit your way through the former, but not the latter.

>>2706593
either admit you were wrong on the one point or stop dodging the issue and explain yourself.

how does randall monroe knowing jack shit about literature >reinforce, your phrasing, his point that literary theory is an easy subject to bullshit about?

just say it. say "I was wrong, I should have said 'it has no effect on his point' and left it at that." is it really so hard to admit you were wrong in a single instance, or are you going to spend paragraph after paragraph weaseling out of having to address it?

>>2706234
When and why did you decide to become useless?

That's no even rhetorical. There's a point in your life when you went "I could go into English or do something else", yet you choose English precisely because you knew it would be bull.

What the fuck was that?

>>2706614
Who gives a shit about randall monroe's life story?

The comic strip is funny because it is TRUE.

Anything beyond that is overthinking it.

>>2706612

Except you can't, we've been over this. If you're not going to No Man-Child Left Behind University, your professors are going to ask you to explain yourself if you're shitting out drivel. You'll be lucky to squeeze through top-level undergraduate literature seminars, and you'll be dead in the water the first day of grad school.

>>2706604

I've not gotten into it that much so I wouldn't know, but I'm not going to dismiss the hard work graduate students put into it solely because it's more accessible to non-lit-types who happen to be good at bullshitting. There's a place for it and there's a value in having people comitting their lives to it, even if it seems infinitely more frivolous than other majors.

>>2706614

Dude, what the fuck is your problem?

Here. Imagine this scenario, and see if you can see the logic playing out.

Randall Monroe: Literary theory is such bullshit, I could easily bullshit my way through several papers and no one would be the wiser!
People who neither here nor there about it: Okay, that's your point.
You: Bullshit on your bullshit, Monroe! You know nothing about literary theory!
Randall Monroe: I knoooooow! Exactly!

>>2706614
Hey moron - The whole strip is based on how long he can BLUFF people who claim to be subject-matter experts. "Bluff" means he has no knowledge of the subject himself - he is BLUFFING. For fuck's sake, do you have Asperger's or something?

If you have an mp3 player, consider the New Yorker's fiction podcast. It's free and there are dozens of short stories with some light analysis mixed in. It isn't going to replace getting into the habit of reading books, but it's a pretty effortless way to gauge your tastes in literature. It's certainly better than running head-long into the freaking Iliad and then trying the (bluh) Joy Luck Club.

OP think of it like this, you were smart enough to defraud your way through your degree. If the strategy continues to work in grad school, then keep it up. If it doesn't, change your ways. Reading really isn't that hard or bad at all and far less tedious than the bullshit you'd be doing at an office, or more likely working in food or retail.

If this doesn't work go back and major in finance to aid the eventual implosion of capitalism.

>>2706597
>mimesis
>catharsis
>plato
>aristotle
>100% bullshit
go read something other than 4chan or genre, you pathetic twit.

>>2706630
>>2706626
holy shit how dense are you motherfuckers that you don't get this yet

real life randall monroe not knowing jack shit about literature can not possibly reinforce his point that theoretical xkcd comic guy randall monroe who knows jack shit about literature could bullshit his way to acclaim in the field of literary theory. it can be irrelevant to the point, and in my opinion it is, the point stands on its own. but there is no possible way that it can actually improve that argument or really alter it in any way

are you getting this yet, or are you just going to keep repeating "BUT THE POINT OF THE COMIC IS THAT HE DOESNT KNOW THE SUBJECT MATTER BUT IS SUCCESSFUL ANYWAY IT IS VERY DEEP SATIRE AND I DON'T EXPECT YOU TO UNDERSTAND"

>>2706637
I have a PHD in philosophy, asshat.

>>2706637
All you have to do is seize on some social dimension of the work the author demonstrates and place it in a historical context. Bonus points if the author did not intend to portray it that way. Leave a few vague insinuations along the lines of "dats racist/sexist". Next, cite people who've said more or less the same thing. Congrats, you're now a lit theorists.

>>2706639
Wow, quite the stubborn little moron, aren't ya?

>>2706639

If your point is that he doesn't know enough to even make the claim that he can bullshit his way through literary theory, yeah, that isn't lost on me. I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying that he'd use the fact that he knows nothing about literary theory as evidence of the field's bullshittery. I'm not evaluating his argument, I'm just telling you how he would use it.

>>2706615
>>2706615

Because I thought.... *sniffle*..... I thought I would become well read :(

I thought I'd major in English and read all the classics and really like it and become someone who had real the classics and such.

And then I kept getting distracted and SparkNoting and not reading. And then I'd tell myself, "Next semester I'm reading for real!" And then I never would and now I've just graduated and didn't read shit.

So, now I'm telling myself I'll study for real in grad school and don't want to waste the summer.

I think I'm too much of an immature fucktard with ADHD to just start reading the western canon from Iliad on, though.

So, I need to either sit and study these SparkNotes books I bought and just become an outright pseudo intellectual fraud.

Or I need to train my mind to sit and read. I even bought a damn stopwatch for this. I really did. I bought a stopwatch and told myself I'm going to sit and read for 30 minutes a day and not get up until the stopwatch says 30:00. Then I'll slowly increase it.

I even bought subscriptions to the New Yorker and the Economist to make me start reading. I've gotten three issues each and have only read 1 New Yorker so far.

I try to improve myself but just end up drinking alcohol and playing video games and sitting around like a foreveralone dumbass.

>>2706648
Literature is a hobby, not an occupation. Instead of wasting years of your working life in grad school, start applying for a job now.

>>2706648
Therapy maybe, but that's expensive. ADHD is somewhat rarer than the psychiatrists of the 90s thought it was. If you are out of shape or spend a lot of time clicking around on the internet, you may need to start exercising. Try that. Therapy might be cheaper if your school offers mental health services. There's really no way to trick yourself into it. You could try getting a job too!

>>2706647

I wouldn't even go so far as to think that this strip is a genuine indication of his feelings toward literary criticism. He's wrote those strips for an audience to laugh at, not to make some sort of statement.

People that major in X take jabs at people majoring in Y all the time. If the physicists were serious when they said that biology was a pseudo-science, they'd be quick to see the error of their thinking the next time they took a pill of any sort.

But go ahead guys, keep the fighting going.

>>2706644
>describes a slap-dash paper (written by the likes of OP)
>paper is a diluted and simplistic amalgamation of past trends/ideas
>paper provides no insight, fails to enrich your understanding of the work/literature/world
>thinks this is literary theory

you're a dim-witted buffoon who can see no further than his foreskin. do you think that because i can find sine or solve calculus that makes me a representative of the field of mathematics? gratuitously, fuck you.

>>2706657
Hey, if it works for Judith Butler, it works for me.

op,

habits take time. learning takes time. right now your brain is wired to get those quick dopamine release from vidya, internet etc. you have to rewire. limit yourself to 1-2 hr of electronics a day. once a week to a day completely without out. this will be hard because you are addicted. now start reading, and take notes. this will be slow. eventually you will get better. when fall rolls around hopefully you will have the foundation where you can immerse yourself completely.

Talk to people. Ask professors relevant questions (I'm struggling to understand..) if you ask a lot they won't care if you don't know. seriously just work through the readings. This will be hard but you can train yourself. make sure to utilize every resource including peers, and internet forums (not for answers, but to explore your questions.)

good luck, I'm in the same boat as you though much more mediocre. graduating in the fall with humanities degree, no direction in life. but I know how to fix that, and so now do you

>>2706665
oh this includes unplugging the tv/ throwing out the alcohol. Self control isn't an off switch, you gotta train yourself to discipline.

>>2706657

Sin*

And people don't usually "solve calculus", they apply it to a specific problem.

>>2706669
>>2706669


I've actually disconnected the cable and satellite and can't watch TV anymore.

And I downloaded a program called Leechblock for firefox which blocks out the internet after an allotted amount of time.

It even lets itself be password protected so you can't uninstall it without the password. So, I set it to let me surf the internet no more than 1 hour a day and I changed the password to something really long I've written on a notecard. I plan to put the notecard in a difficult-to-get-to place.

Alls I have to do is press enter on leechblock and its set to go. I was enjoying my last moments of unrestricted internet. I've been on 4chan, mostly /b/, for something like 7 hours now, though.

Just hit enter! Just hit enter you adhd bastard! whaaa

>moving to another country to have easier access to a commonly available drug

do you even lift? Damn, son.

OP, stick with it. It's better than being actually well read but wanting to kill yourself because you are an unemployed failure.