There are many difficult things about writing a dissertation – too many temptations, too many books to read, too many people to talk to – but for me it’s often impossible to sit down and move my fingers. I ran into a professor friend this morning at breakfast (someone I used to speak with a lot and someone whose thinking I really admire) and we ended up arguing about the problems in American education for over an hour (he claims that I’m an educational conservative, wanting to bring back the strict study of grammar and pour knowledge into the students’ brains). I justify these conversations by thinking them directly related to my work, but really, I realized that I often prefer talking about pedagogy to writing about it. Bronson Alcott confides something similar to his journal in 1834: “My ideas, at present, are better than my style, and for many ideas, distinct and vivid in my own mind, I have no signs. This, more than anything else, is, I believe, the cause of my failure.” Alcott decided that if his writing failed, he would walk the country and converse with schoolteachers across America. Perhaps I should find a new pair of walkin’ shoes....