To begin things, I would like to say that this blog will be a little less reflective, a little more rambley, and a tad bit off canter as composed to my Tips & Tricks blog. I'm thinking of stretching out the two into a travel/place based blog, and a life blog, updates and projects not related to geography or my love of place.
Today's post is brought to you by a sense of anxiety, uncertainty, and being off my anti-depressants for a couple of weeks.
About half way through college, my eyes were opened to the privilege a college education holds. For some reason my tone changed. The fairyland changed to an analysis based world, where magic was explained by facts, figures, and theories. As open as an institution Warren Wilson is, it still abides by the structure of majors, and the curriculum standards of academia. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I would like to point out the place I am so very fond of upon being away from it for so long, still has its detractors, and is not the perfect heavenly paradise I have written it out to be in the past.
One such issue, and this is simply not exclusive to Warren Wilson, is the power dynamic which comes with "higher learning". The attitude of "higher learning" is as follows: A person pays thousands of dollars to go to school to have an experience which is better, and puts them in a "higher" position than the others. This dynamic allows the subject to assume a position which they must argue and defend in front of others. And many times it is implied that this is the only way to further your personal understanding of the world around you, and how it works and relates with the other pieces of the puzzle.
But there is a tone of superiority that comes with this. Along the academic career path, students assume a "subscription" to a, or many, framework(s) on which to build and elaborate arguments. The mold is formed to assume the structure of the privileged who came before, and to hold them in high regard because of their position of power and intelligence. If the college is small enough and open enough, you may be lucky enough, to discuss, disagree with, or dialogue about these positions.
Therein lies my issue. The service to which we pay thousands of dollars to each year, demands respect from its earlier founders, and adoptions of its methods of thinking and doing. Students discourse from the established paradigms within discussions or papers, but when established, it seems as though the professors, fellow students, and culture of the institution label the questioning subject as a misguided dunce.
So often the ideas are new, and the methodologies so "correct", that students will sit with eyes wide open and blindly accept and adopt these new viewpoints because of their "profoundness" and novelty. Then nothing more is said. Very few times, at least in my experience, do professors or fellow students take dissidence seriously. The discussion goes two ways: "You are wrong, and here is why:" or "You are so cute, with your disregard for established traditions, now sit quietly and let others talk."
And to be respectful, and make sure others get a good discussion grade, you obey, and harbor these questions and concerns away for the rest of your college career.
Once the thesis does come to fruition, new methodologies are mixed, ideas are shed or hybridized into new form, one unique to the topic being presented, the one that is important to the student. But the attitudes of the professors and institutions play out:
"Your project is not 'exotic' enough."
"You did not follow established procedures and methods."
"What meaning or perspective does this have outside of your normal, everyday life?"
"Thank you for your time and stage presence. Because we cannot easily categorize your project, please welcome the next speaker."
"You aren't a good writer. Your points are therefore invalid because they are not communicated well."
"You did not focus on the authentic sides of the issue. These are all topics about everyday mundane things, there is nothing revolutionary in here."
These are the thoughts I felt were being communicated to me throughout my thesis. Of course, nobody said these things out loud to me, and certain professors indirectly communicated them more than others, but they were implied in the follow up questions, in the edits, and in the classes. I felt powerless in my "academic" thinking because my ideas did not fit into the typical exotic "other" that everyone else's projects did.
But I took the project to my heart, and led my discovery internally for it. I kept telling myself it was worth it, that all along the lives of everyday people's internal migrations mattered and reflected something much bigger and much more beautiful in this world than we thought.
The story of an Appalachian family packed in a car headed northbound for mill work in Columbus, Ohio was nearly identical to the experience of an Andalusian family on a coach seat in a train car headed east for the industrial powerhouse of Barcelona, Catalonia. Their hopes were very similar, their fears were extremely similar, their music and dances changed and morphed into something just as equally as wonderful as their older rural traditions. They became urban traditions. The two groups of people shifted from one situation to another, and this shows the validity of their stories as a reflection of how we can understand the history of the rural to urban shift in a more complete context.
These groups were not extremely oppressed. They did not have any of the extreme romantic poverty porn laid upon them during their journeys and transitions. Many came to evolve into what we see today, and help us to explain the situation of our post-modern individualistic world today.
I don't care if you know what post-modernism means. Basically, in my context, it means the focus on the value of each individual, no matter their status, actions, and realizing how valuable that individual is because of their unique view of the world via their own individual two eyes. I want to study the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary. In history it shows us how we got where we are now, and where we are going. In sociology it shows us the basic blocks which make up the strata (different levels) of who is where, and how we may change that. In anthropology it shows us how cultures can create something wonderful via the interactions and transitions of everyday lives. And everyone matters in my equation, and we must recognize that. Everyone from the same suburban misfits who equally live outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the founders of the rich and famous all the way to the lowly commuter who works two jobs. Everyone matters.
And that is what I tried to distinguish and exemplify in my thesis. And it didn't go well. My groups of people studied didn't fit within the traditional colonized/oppressed people, nor did they have a huge influence or effect on what we know to this day. But they were there, and when examined, they can lead to so much more.
And maybe it was because of my writing style, or my organization, or my simple attitude that mixing is good, and static is bad. I wanted to dispel the myth that culture is static, but in fact is dynamic and always changing by all forces, being driven by something that links seemingly completely unrelated geographies together across a world half a century ago.
If you made it this far, congratulations. I wasn't trying to get on the 'ranty' side of things, but it seems to have gone that way. I do truly feel for my projects and investments, and when they are not recognized because of an unfair, power imbalanced academic dynamic, I tend to... as a previous housemate would say it... feel some sort of way. Anyways, and yes, I will spell it like that, if you have questions, input, not hate discussion, feel free to comment and or +1 it.
-Nick
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