Academic struggles

I'd like to describe one very interesting feeling I've been experiencing lately. That of being an ignorant. Some explanation is in order. My field of study has for a long time been Linguistics. I got comfortable with it, felt safe and at home in my classes. Never experienced much difficulty grasping concepts, following the lectures, or doing my assignments. In fact, I was quite successful in all of that. Last semester my professor asked me to be his research assistant to help him prepare a project proposal to National Science Foundation. I've never learnt as much and as fast in one semester than working closely with this professor and his colleague. But it's old news now. It was good old sociolinguistics... Now I can fully understand the feelings of some students in my linguistics classes (especially Pragmatics and Semantics) with the "what the fuck is going on here?!" look on their faces... I think being able to be compassionate is generally a useful attribute that all people should possess so I should be grateful for this opportunity to learn some of it.

Why has it happened that I got so engrossed in one, however broad, field of study that I successfully managed to block the rest of the world from entering my mind? Is it normal that you channel your brain to receive only a limited range of frequencies and ignore the rest? Is it at all possible to absorb this enormous amount of information that seems to flow our way every day? I guess we need to filter it as we'd get brainwashed trying to retain too much.

My anthropology professor gave me a clue on how to solve my predicament. I should use my "linguistic" way of thinking and apply it to study Anthropology. Is it that simple? What about the missing knowledge, names he's throwing at us, half of which I have never heard in my life, terms that we should be able to define and apply, symbols and connections that we're supposed to see? Can I figure it all out? It's all as if enveloped in a thick fog for me, escapes so easily, no clear answers given, makes me feel insecure. I hate feeling there is something I missed, all the time.

You can catch up on some bits on information you missed, you can read, study, even memorize if you like (I don't...), but if you don't start to think about what you're trying to achieve here you'll never get the full picture, full and meaningful comprehension. You need to construct your understanding yourself. As hard as that can be sometimes. Nevertheless, I still feel that I need to reprogram my brain before I start reading these ethnographies again...