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Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Who can answer my questions about corpus linguistics intersecting with my study of the scriptures?

Sometimes - rarely - I have a dream that is so nice that when I wake up and realize it's not real, I feel very sad.

I had a dream just now that was nothing concrete, just feelings. But the feeling was that it was okay for me to be this way. It was acceptable.

By this way, I mean something like an incomparably nerdy dork. And I know that nerdiness is the new "cool" - I'm not talking about that kind of nerdiness. I'm talking about the other kind. The one that prevents people from ever getting too close to you. Or that prevents you from being able to concisely articulate your ideas. Or that prevents you from being able to inspire people to do something.

I emailed a BYU professor a short email with a question that's been on my mind for weeks. He happens to be the creator of several extremely important, influential corpora. He emailed me back. The exchange went like this:

Question about x
Terse answer that I didn't understand
Three more questions about x and an apology for not understanding
Terse restatement of first answer with a link, ignoring my questions completely

I guess he's busy. But like...still...

I would like to live in a world where my weird way of thinking and seeing things is valued more. Where I can feel free to be myself.

Sometimes I decide I don't care, and that I can just be myself anyway. And then there are moments like this stupid email exchange where I personalize everything. I'm not stupid; in my head I know that he's just busy, email doesn't transmit tone very well, and it's likely I was asking the question in the wrong way.

But it isn't my head that hurts, is it.

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