Best academic advice ever

From the graduate student who is serving as an administrator for the NEH Poetry seminar I am attending.  Each of us is writing a long paper (15-20 pages) involving the close reading of two or three poems by a pre-20th century poet as well as some reference to critical sources on those poems or poet.  As it has been a LONG time since many of us have written anything so formal, we are in various stages of freaking out.
Our graduate student had recounted this story to me earlier, and I'm so glad she wrote it down so I could copy and paste it, maintaining her wit:

Dear stalwart band of literary adventurers,


I am writing with an email I hope will be the e-pistolary equivalent of Henry
V's "St. Crispin's Day" speech.  The message is simple: DON'T PANIC ABOUT THE
PAPER.  Also: fun, fun paper FAQs answered below!


Allow me to begin this hortatory masterwork with an anecdote starring my
favorite Shakespearean, Stephen Greenblatt.  Two years ago, I was employed as
an amanuensis to the University's Task Force on the Arts.  One of the topics
discussed by the group was whether or not at least one art-making course should
be required of each undergraduate.  Some people felt that requiring students,
who might not be naturally or historically artistically inclined, to make art
would result in poor art.  Stephen Greenblatt, who was chairing the committee,
said this:


"It is astonishingly difficult to make a significant and lasting contribution to
the study of Shakespeare.  It takes a lifetime of dedicated and relentless study
to do it, and even then, it doesn't always happen.  And yet, we don't hesitate
to have students write papers in their English classes.  We don't hesitate to
have students complete problem sets in physics."


His rhetorical point was made in the service of another issue, but I share it
with you because it seems totally applicable to the paper many of you are
writing for this class.  This paper is an opportunity for you to explore an
author and sit with a couple poems long enough to feel like you've gotten
inside them; it's not a demand that you produce a work of criticism instantly
publishable and from which generations of poetry students will learn.  To take
a sudden and perhaps surprising turn through CS Lewis (a great literary critic,
btw), writing this paper is like prayer: it's supposed to change you, not God
(or, in this case, the academy).

How wonderful to no longer be in graduate school, where our worries WERE about creating something original and brilliant enough always to be instantly publishable and to make an important contribution to our tiny fields.