Huh

I have become a professional academic because I get excited about reading and then writing and talking about said read (or watched) texts. I'd like to think that I am not without some skills in the field. Yesterday confused me.

I received grades back on the two big papers that I wrote this semester. Granted neither subject (Milton and the Renaissance Essay) are the reason that I have stayed in school so long, but at least for my RenEss paper, I was sort of excited about my topic, which was theoretically tangential to what I do in my particular field. For my Milton paper I chose the topic as something I might like to read, but nothing that I was going be invested in for the larger picture of my research agenda. Why then, did the throw away (and a little bit of a nod to the teacher's interests) topic get a better grade than the far more original, interesting to me one? Why am I a better academic when I care less?

I find it rather disconcerting that I perform better when I care less about my subject.