This song has been stuck in my head for days! It so fits my mood though. “You can be the expert by picking up a book,” it says. And isn’t that the point of the Literature Review for the Dissertation?

We study the thoughts that came before ours, not just to give us context but, to borrow from Bernard of Chartres, to help us see further. My ideas may turn out to be revolutionary but without the context of the researchers before me, my ideas may never gain traction. Or worse, like the Professor in Rescue From Gilligan’s Island, I may be reinventing a wheel that already exists.

But the song. The song says there are stories “everywhere we look, if we look in the right way.” I’ll take that to mean that when I’m sitting at my computer cussing the ProQuest database for not finding me a good reference, maybe I just need to step back and think of a new keyword to try.

Hmmm… which reminds me, I haven’t tried …

FOOTNOTES (this time)
Bernard of Chartres actually said “Like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, we see farther than they.” In 1159 though we often attribute the quote to Isaac Newton.
The only scene I recall from watching “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” as a youth was the Professor in a lab somewhere after the Castaways returned to civilization. He had “invented” a Frisbee and was depressed to find out someone had already marketed it, while he was on the Island. He felt he wasn’t really contributing to society and the Castaways eventually returned to the island… Interestingly, today is a year and two days since the actor playing the Professor died.