...confused!

I have to write an essay about a reading in one of my course books. The main problem with this is I am having great difficulty understanding the reading. To me, it is like being presented with a rather exquisite, expensive knitted scarf! The object seems to be to finely examine the scarf, looking for dropped stitches, bad joins and other possible mistakes. However, because this scarf has been knitted by a professional, I don’t expect to find any holes – and if I did spot one, I would assume it was meant to be there!

We are expected to unpick the scarf, stitch by stitch, row by row – then use it to reconstruct it in a different form. Now I am sure some clever people will at some point during this process have a nice firm ball of ideas, they will seek out other balls of wool of different colours and textures, and weave this into their work, and they will transform their scarf into – oh I don’t know – a pair of magnificent gloves.

Me? Well I’ve looked and looked at the scarf several times and all I can come up with is: “Oh! It’s a scarf!” As I clumsily attempt to unpick the words I find myself with a seemingly infinite ravel of knots and tangles and general wooliness.

I predict one of two things: At some point during the next week or so I will cut up my tangled rubbish, remove all the knots and throw them in the bin (these will prove to be all the vital, salient points), then I will tie up what’s left in all the wrong order, and I will end up with a wonky tea-cosy – OR – I will make it into a giant pom-pom, where my main point is hidden deep within a mass of general fluffiness. Either way, I pity my poor tutor!

Why do I put myself through this torture??

Right! Diversion over… back to reading about sodding metaphors.