But let me reiterate: you do NOT — repeat, NOT, NOT, NOT — need a doctorate to do good, thoughtful, and thoroughly solid critical writing about anime and manga.
–Tim on the amrc-l (Anime and Manga Research Circle) mailing list.
OMG, I am sooo glad someone has stated this. And here I was thinking that Owen and his fellow editorial blogging ilk were were just illegitimate poseurs without advanced degrees. I feel like my own writing on Anime and Manga has been vindicated as well, dangos and all. Now I won’t have to spend all that time and money to get a doctorate in order to keep blogging! =p
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What, you mean my PhD on Visual Arts (Unicultural) was of no use??
Last time I checked, universities don’t offer a B.A. (Hons) Anime or B.A. (Hons) Manga, for that matter!
This is interesting, not to mention TJ’s already here for the troll.
First, it’s is agreeable that you do not need a Visual Arts degree to be able to tell the world how you feel of Japanese visual media. Deviations may differ from a simple and stalwart view, to an academic and cultured way of saying how things sucked/raved/caught your attention. All in all, with degree or no, we’re brothers and sisters in arms.
And since that degree was Unicultural, you should know clashing differences, tj.
Heh, my degree is in a subject totally unconnected with any form of media (Just for the record it’s in biological sciences, and hasn’t really helped me in my employment either. Go figure) so my ability to write about books, movies, TV shows and music stems entirely from whatever I picked up at school before age 16…which was, shit, over a decade ago. My editorial and literary credentials amount to exactly squat! ^_^’
Sometimes this puts me at a disadvantage – there are a number of blogs I read where certain terms and sheer intensity of the writing makes me feel out of my depth. I have to go back and re-read some of them – not because they’re badly written but because I honestly don’t ‘get it’ the first time around. I do feel intimidated at times but that’s no more the writer’s fault than it is mine.
Using whatever you learned in your academic career to get your point across is fine. Blogging is purely about personal expression so if that’s the angle you approach it on, go for it. If you go on what I now see as critiquing from the heart rather than the brain, there’s nothing wrong with that either. As Shance said we’re all brothers and sisters in arms, expressing our thoughts in our individual way so yeah…maybe I should’ve made a trolling or lulzy comment instead of a serious one, but whatever. Reading about dangos gives my brain a rest from those intellectual posts I’m so often reading at any rate!
Well blogging is something of your own interest. I guess if anyone says they have to have a degree to blog, then I am going to question, do they have a low self-confidence or something. Still I think blogging allows anyone to have fun, and it can spout into anything.
I have a Bachelors’ of Science (in history, which is basically just reading analytically about real dead people instead of fake dead people). I think the initials are a very good indicator of what to expect from its possessor.
I’m 18. I have no qualifications outside of A-levels. But I think I can write about anime pretty well. And I think around a quarter of the people who read from me would agree.
I don’t need to use what I learned from uni and grad school (I took literature and philosophy throughout), it can even get in the way of getting a point across clearly.
However, I’d be terribly stupid if I ignored it.
Churn out the posts with the tools that you’ve got.
YOU DON’T NEED A DEGREE. YOU JUST NEED A BURNING PASSION.
I agree with Sojourner. You dont need a degree. ‘Nuff said.
More knowledge can’t hurt when it comes to writing, especially if you’re studying English (or at least something in the arts), but it’s obviously not a necessity. I always enjoy giving myself a headache – the good kind of headache – at Super Fani, home of literary theory and other stuff that makes little sense to me, but hell, I’ve read great posts from technology majors and university freshmen. Besides, me and digiboy are still in high school, and when you add CCY and lolikit who both started blogging before getting into college/uni, at least one of us must have written at least one intelligent post that covered something that a lit graduate didn’t think of! :P
I think it’s all about experience. Experience as a writer and editor is always helpful in writing and editing, though ultimately it may not matter where you get that experience – whether writing assignments as an undergrad, or learning by doing – as long as you can write the article you want to write.