Convocation for... Immaturity?
After convocating from University yesterday I have realized three major things:
1) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy is mentally taxing, difficult and extremely exhausting,
2) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy gives one an excuse to get bombed every weekend, make out with strangers and not have to act weird when you see them in class the next day, and
3) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy is useless.
I am the 5th person in my family to get a B.A. Nuts! I am already beginning to send out application packages for my next degree; masters programs, post-grads and other after degrees seem to be my only option. I do not lament this inescapable reality nor do I feel regret for choosing the program I did. My only stipulation is that our society does not value the educational process for what it was created to achieve. It is a corporation who is in the business of making money and churning out commodities that can be acquired to make more and churn out and trade, buy and sell more commodities.
Those with value are the BSc, BComm, BEd or even BNursing kids. A BA in anything, let alone Philosophy or Classics, is a source of amusement for the former bunch. Yet, oddly enough, it doesn't seem to matter that I am acquainted with the pre-Socratics, share an intimate relationship with Keats and Coleridge, can mull over Nietzsche month after month or use symbolic logic to dismantle arguments or flawed reasoning. All that seems to carry respect is the banal BComm.
My recalcitrance with the hegemonic norms of success and intelligence isn't from a place of malice or jealousy. It is simply from a pensive yet utterly pragmatic state of being, in which I acknowledge my little or no importance to the world of university grads.
Although I will go back and get another degree, perhaps even two, I do not regret for an instant my decision to become affectionately acquainted with, and well versed in, the canon of literature and philosophy I hope one day to become apart. It is the other lot which I pity; for their lack of historical knowledge only insulates them from the long and enriching histories of enlightened society. In the words of my brother in nihilism:
1) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy is mentally taxing, difficult and extremely exhausting,
2) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy gives one an excuse to get bombed every weekend, make out with strangers and not have to act weird when you see them in class the next day, and
3) getting a university degree in English and Philosophy is useless.
I am the 5th person in my family to get a B.A. Nuts! I am already beginning to send out application packages for my next degree; masters programs, post-grads and other after degrees seem to be my only option. I do not lament this inescapable reality nor do I feel regret for choosing the program I did. My only stipulation is that our society does not value the educational process for what it was created to achieve. It is a corporation who is in the business of making money and churning out commodities that can be acquired to make more and churn out and trade, buy and sell more commodities.
Those with value are the BSc, BComm, BEd or even BNursing kids. A BA in anything, let alone Philosophy or Classics, is a source of amusement for the former bunch. Yet, oddly enough, it doesn't seem to matter that I am acquainted with the pre-Socratics, share an intimate relationship with Keats and Coleridge, can mull over Nietzsche month after month or use symbolic logic to dismantle arguments or flawed reasoning. All that seems to carry respect is the banal BComm.
My recalcitrance with the hegemonic norms of success and intelligence isn't from a place of malice or jealousy. It is simply from a pensive yet utterly pragmatic state of being, in which I acknowledge my little or no importance to the world of university grads.
Although I will go back and get another degree, perhaps even two, I do not regret for an instant my decision to become affectionately acquainted with, and well versed in, the canon of literature and philosophy I hope one day to become apart. It is the other lot which I pity; for their lack of historical knowledge only insulates them from the long and enriching histories of enlightened society. In the words of my brother in nihilism:
"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures."
(Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p 481)
posted by Anna @ 2:39 p.m.
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