Take Your Bags and Shove 'em

Now that things have come to a stop, however briefly, I'd like to take the opportunity to express my dislike for the term 'unpacking'. I've only started hearing this term used to describe taking apart and analyzing an idea or text since I started grad school.


Whenever I hear it, I think of people on airplanes with rolling luggage, removing items one by one to reveal whatever looked suspicious on the x-ray.









I think of something roughly and rudely rammed into a too-small container.



Worst of all, I think of...of business school. Is that what I'm doing with myself now? Am I in business school? This type of jargon makes me fear that I am.

High school was all about juxtaposing and
simulacra. University was about context and worldview, meta- and post-.

Information studies borrows from other fields or makes due with combined words: access, informatics, and closure. Unpacking seems to have been borrowed from linguistics?

Dear teach,
examine, explain, analyze, interpret or pick apart, but don't unpack because I won't be joining you.