One of the problems with studying rhetorical theory is that it makes you question everything. I mean EVERYTHING. What is right and wrong? What is up and down? What is black and white? Are there any of these things or everything?

Sounds a little convoluted, doesn’t it? Then, like so many scholars in the social sciences and medicines, you start to apply it to yourself, that intern syndrome — that you have every disease you study about, or are afflicted with every type of psychological diagnosis.

Who am I? Am I virtuous? Am I good? Would Plato or Aristotle or even Quintilian approve of me? Does being a woman preclude that? Are my ideas valid? What are my ideas exactly?

Am I a good student? Should I even be an academic? Do I belong here? Am I too lazy to be a “good” academic, or even too lazy to be a “good” citizen?

Who am I?

I think. And I think. And I think some more. And sometimes I don’t like what I think, but other times I want to share what I think, because there are others doing the very same thing. They are smart, interesting people, and I want to contemplate these thoughts with them.

If Socrates wanted us to examine our lives, we are doing it. In so many ways.