Jane Bast Update

Jane Bast has finished her graduate school applications and written a reflection on writing personal statements and will be writing more Chronicle "First Person" columns on applying to graduate school in the humanities. Those who followed the debate on Invisible Adjunct will find this latest column not all that surprising. Bast says:

I returned to my apartment and looked at my statement. Bill was right. It did seem naïvely idealistic. Too much like Dead Poets Society, and not enough like Discipline and Punish. As I sat down at my desk to begin again, I tried to channel my inner Foucault so that I could think about my work and my abilities with the appropriate critical distance.

Discipline, indeed.