A brief introduction...

...to a blog which, in all honestly, will be a difficult thing to sustain. I've tried to keep a livejournal in the past and have failed miserably, but I am hoping to turn things around here. I have reason to be hopeful, this time I'm writing with something of a purpose. This blog will be a place where I will collect my thoughts regarding just about anything, but especially messages from the books that I am reading - pretty heady stuff, which I typically have a hard time holding onto unless I write them down somewhere.

I also hope to use this blog to chronicle my experiece as a graduate student, just stepping into the final throwes of my formal education, which has always been something which I have considered extremely important, but admitedly, did not fully understand the process. Recently, by getting involved, by observing, and reading, I've come to see how "the game" is played - not all disciplines are created equal.

On that note, from my undergrad, to my masters, and now to my Ph.D., I have been enrolled as a student in criminal justice. One of the toughest lessons I have attempted to grasp is exactly what is CJ's identity as an academic discipline, and how does that influence the work and potential of students who enroll in such a program. I've recently come to tackle these questions head on by reading C. Wright Mills' critique of social science in The Sociological Imagination, and was struck most by this quote, describing 'research technicians' in the social sciences:

They have taken up social research as a career; they have come early to an extreme specialization, and they have acquired an indifference or contempt for 'social philosophy' -which means to them 'writing books out of books' or 'merely speculating.' Listening to their conversations, trying to gague the quality of their curiosity one finds a deadly limitation of mind. The social worlds about which so many scholars feel ignorant do not puzzle them.

I truly do not want to become a 'technician' such as this, but is this not how academics make a living these days? Is this not 'the game?' This is stuff that really interests me, and that hopefully I can understand (read: avoid for myself) as I continue my own education.