Prompt: How does what you are learning relate to your career plans? What have you discovered about your preferences for type of work and work environment? What aspects of your career plans has this internship confirmed, and which (if any) has it made you question?
One of the problems I have been having while editing the Digital Resource posts is that while reviewing the resources to make sure the description provided by the Kit Marlowe Project is accurate, I keep getting distracted by the resource itself. While looking at the Perseus Project I managed to spend three hours on the site, so caught up in the plethora of various architectural plans in the “Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser” that I forgot to actually find the copyright information I was actually searching for. After committing to the English major, my plan was to follow this train of academic interest until the tracks run out: get a doctorate. Spending time on the Kit Marlowe Project like this, having the time to pursue lines of interest and research just to see how accessible the research is, has been so invigorating. I know that the academic requirements in a doctoral program include some serious research and that is absolutely thrilling to me.
This past month working on the Digital Resources section has really solidified how much this style of learning works for me. Having long stretches of time to just poke around at an interest and stick with it, to just fall down the rabbit hole has been an ideal environment for productivity and inspiration. I really like the research aspect of academia, and I think working on the Kit Marlowe Project (and the current project I am working on for Ren Lit) has just made that fact obvious to me. I definitely think my plan of getting a doctorate and ideally pursuing a career as a professor has a more solid foundation now. I am less tentative of if that’s a good idea for me know that I’ve spent some time watching myself engage with this subject matter.