<< Computer Lab, Underground | Main | Assisted Learning >> September 17, 2006 >> An Endless March of Citation Fitting back into university life feels a bit surreal at times - and not just because my first order of business back at school happened to be surrealism. Everyone in my program is either academically hapless and floated in on the buoyancy of Xtreme work experience, or they are fucking smart and make me feel like a philistine donkey. Grad school, as one of my contemporaries pointed out, is a world apart from the undergrad situation: "Here, everyone already has lives. They're married or have girlfriends or whatever. Nobody hangs out because they already have their friends; they have stuff at home to do. In undergrad, nobody knows what they want or who they are. Everyone's new, and they all just drink and fuck while waiting for it to come to them." I have been conducting tests involving nonsensical robot diagrams in an attempt to locate the cool people in my program. If they can appreciate the fact that a robot with chainsaw arms does, indeed, belong alongside a brainstorming list of "what being a grad student means to YOU," then I have hope for them. If they chastise me for ruining our group's chances at impressing the prof, they are tools. Of course, if the professor happens to like robots with chainsaw arms, the aforementioned tools are all sunshine and smiles at their good fortune at being placed in a group alongside a robot-drawing idiot savant. A lot of people appear to be altogether too serious about their academic standing at this particular juncture. And if I hear one more girl talk about how she intends to critically examine representations of the female body in [insert media here], I will freak out. I mean, how much more North American gender research do we need, people? After a year away from academia, the endless march of citation and theory seems less and less relevant to anything going on in the world, anywhere. Surrealism is the natural conjuncture of dream and waking life: grad school seems like a bloody collision of smarts and elitist irrelevance in a dark room where nobody can hear the thud of impact. Posted by Chris at 06:45 PM >> Commentations (5)
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
"Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."
July 2007
June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 |
