"Change the lens and you change both the view and the viewer" (Tyson, p. 10)

The conclusion to Chapter one of Lois Tyson's book, Critical Theory Today, helped me finally feel that I'm where I'm supposed to be in this journey. Believe me, I've been having my doubts! She writes, regarding her reading of Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign and Play" during a thunderstorm, "I was just beginning to learn about critical theory, and my reaction to the essay was a burst of tears, not because I was moved by the essay or by the sublime nature of the thunderstorm, but because I couldn't understand what I'd just read. I'd thought, until then, that I was very intelligent" (p. 9). She continues reading my mind and putting me more at ease by stating, "I had no road map. I was lost...We simply don't know how to get there from here" (p. 9).

I started to relax and contemplate what I had just read and then read it again. I haven't been bursting into tears since beginning my PhD studies, but I have felt flustered and lost several times. I've found myself reading passages over and over in certain texts and thinking that I must not be as intelligent as I thought I was. Part of it could be that I'm pushing my brain in new directions while I'm trying to teach, grade papers, plan a conference, read dense text, research, blog, revise an article and a book review. I just have to change my lens a little. One way I've done that is in response to her idea that "Knowledge isn't something we acquire: it's something we are or something we hope to become" (p. 10). I'm slowing down, accomplishing things in smaller increments, and really trying to see how things fit together. I'm trying to build my road map one road at a time. Sometimes I meander down the out of the way scenic paths, and at other times, I speed along the highway, but always wearing my new lenses.