March 30, 2011

• A Lengthy Rambling Discussion of Cultural Studies classes and Bad Decisions

  I have a Cultural Studies class every Wednesday morning from 9am to noon.

  This semester it's my only morning class, and although I have both been a student in, as well as taught, earlier classes, this class is a constant struggle for me. It's not necessarily the morning thing, although more often than not I sit in that class half sleepy and wishing to be anywhere...everywhere else. No, I just dislike that class. I dislike my Cultural Studies class because it (I am humanizing the class which, really, you should take to mean the professors and other students in it) is pretentious and ivory tower-ish and, for lack of a better term, academic. This wasn't meant to be my major reason for writing, but it's related so bear with me. I am, ostensibly, a part of academia. I'm what many would call a life long student (though I have no intention of being a student for more time than it takes to conduct a year of research and write a dissertation in a reasonable amount of time). I am increasingly annoyed and put off by the arenas of academia that purposely appropriate and manipulate language, and selectively cultivate a culture of exclusivity. Intense dislike. But, it is what it is. All aspects of human life is permeated by categorization, and until we evolve and are able to compute life in a less hierarchical, organizational way, such is life.

  But that gets to the real reason I'm here writing. Writing, after all, is a means of expression and escape, and what I need to escape right now is academia. Today in class our 'theme' was everyday life. That sounds a bit misleading, maybe. But we talked about everyday life in relation to academic things, like the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (other mentions of the day include Plato and Descartes). Purely academic. But all I could think about, in my drowsy I-hate-this-class haze was about everyday life. I am tempted to say real life but that's a misrepresentation. What is real is, decidedly, relative (pardon my academic face showing). What I mean is that I was thinking about life outside of a classroom of people talking about everyday life. I do not intend to romanticize everyday life. Someone somewhere is perhaps dreaming of a life of tuition remission and free meal plans and a cozy cube like dormitory space which one can make one's own and not to worry about the utility bill because the university foots the bill. I think what I'm talking about, thinking about, is my life outside of academia. Another kind of everyday life.

  This is increasingly on my mind.When I was an undergraduate I used to say things like "real life is creeping in." I'd realize that despite my little bubble of friends and campus activity, a large part of my life was what was going on in the world with my family and personal life. That was everyday life. That was real. Now as I'm older, I realize that for me, that is, more often than not, the only thing that is real to me. I can make that distinction because the personal aspects of my life are often the parts that affect everything else. I cannot be distracted from my personal, everyday life. The truth is my personal has always, and will probably always distract from whatever else I'm doing. And that 'whatever else I'm doing' never quite feels like my everyday life. This is problematic, because as it stands most of what I'm engaged in lately is school. For all intents and purposes that is my everyday life. But that explains why I can easily spend more time on the phone with my mother or my sister or a potential mate, than do important things like...reading five articles for my cultural studies class. It can, in some ways, all be boiled down to prioritization and decision making skills and all that. A smart student, a graduate student no less, knows how and when to do the important graduate student like things in order to succeed. Any decisions to the contrary are bad decisions, misplaced prioritizations etc.

  The truth is, many (maybe all) the mistakes I've made in life I've known fully that I was making them. The impetus for making them, usually, was the conscious decision to say "eff it" to whichever overarching hierarchy or controlling figure in my life at the time. I may have regretted the outcome, the ill-timed-ness, the people who were hurt as a result, the resulting effects on future opportunities or what have you. But at the end of the day, a decision is often made as a result of a specific sort of prioritization in mind. But I digress.

  Everyday life, the personal, is increasingly on my mind because it is the one thing, of all the things I've done in life, that I haven't really ever devoted myself fully to. Not really. Not ever. It's been thought about, adjusted marginally as I've gone along. I've dated. I've lived with siblings. I've mediated conflicts. Been involved in conflicts. But as much as I inspect my inner self, I have not really ever lived an everyday life consistently conscious of my personal interactions. I guess it's a bit difficult to do that, seeing as how other things that are important come up. Making a living, for instance. But 'living' is important there. I want to do what that means. Holistically. And honestly, to bring it back to my increasing dislike of academia, I think at the stage of life I'm in school is preventing me from living a fulfilling everyday life.

  Now, it could be my drowsy haze. It could be my ridiculous semester of four classes and two jobs and a not so recent failed relationship (and other menfolk lingering and sniffing and prodding and entreating and generally being confusing) that has me rambling on so. Maybe. Either way, summer time can't come soon enough.

   

  • 12:57 pm
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