Personal post.
Warnings: emo rambling, meaning-of-life angst
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be an academic. Someone who sits, cloistered in the safe womb of academia, doing work that will benefit the world. At least, that's how it was supposed to be. I'm still excited by the prospect of finding out new things, exploring new ideas, and making new discoveries. However, I feel unsatisfied, limited, and not nurtured in my current academic environment.
Perhaps it's just that I've been here for five years. Wow, has it really been that long? It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was a wide-eyed first-year, excited by the prospects that university had to offer. I suppose I was right to be excited, except that university hasn't offered me the prospects that I wanted. Part of that is my own fault (choosing subjects that I was bad at, getting confused by said subjects and thus not applying myself, changing my mind too many times about what I wanted to do as a second major), but I can't help but feel let-down by the system.
No doubt, I'm a better person today than I was five years ago, but most of that has been from extra-curricular interests. Organising an anti-Mugabe protest was one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done (and I suspect that I'll be organising another one this year to honour our "Independence Day"); it felt wonderful to sing my national anthem in front of a church full of people (who were singing along, actually enunciating the words rather than the usual mumbling of national anthems), recognising all the people who had fought for justice in my homeland (most of whom lost those fights). That's an experience that I can have outside of university. The debates about ethics that I've had over the last few years have not been in the classroom, yet they had a huge impact on how I see the world.
Coming back to the point of this post: what am I supposed to do with my life? I've always maintained that the best fiction writers (JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Alexander McCall Smith) are those that maintain a day-job. It stops them becoming excessively commercialised and selling out to The Man, until all they do is write the same story over and over. I won't mention names, but you can probably guess which writers I'm talking about. I remember reading a postsecret written during the Screenwriter's Strike of '07-'08. It talked about how glad the person was to be on strike so that she/he could finally write something meaningful.
What does one do as a day job outside of academia (because, for those of you who don't know, all three of the "favourite authors" I listed above work(ed) at universities)? I hate working in sales (which effectively discounts half the jobs in the world), I'm s**t at commerce-related things (I failed economics 101. That's not a promising start for a career in banking), dyslexia has effectively excluded me from anything mathematical (or related things, like engineering), and I don't want to take the obvious choice and become a secretary. I think, though, most of all, I don't want to end up like the person who wrote this secret.
Warnings: emo rambling, meaning-of-life angst
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be an academic. Someone who sits, cloistered in the safe womb of academia, doing work that will benefit the world. At least, that's how it was supposed to be. I'm still excited by the prospect of finding out new things, exploring new ideas, and making new discoveries. However, I feel unsatisfied, limited, and not nurtured in my current academic environment.
Perhaps it's just that I've been here for five years. Wow, has it really been that long? It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was a wide-eyed first-year, excited by the prospects that university had to offer. I suppose I was right to be excited, except that university hasn't offered me the prospects that I wanted. Part of that is my own fault (choosing subjects that I was bad at, getting confused by said subjects and thus not applying myself, changing my mind too many times about what I wanted to do as a second major), but I can't help but feel let-down by the system.
No doubt, I'm a better person today than I was five years ago, but most of that has been from extra-curricular interests. Organising an anti-Mugabe protest was one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done (and I suspect that I'll be organising another one this year to honour our "Independence Day"); it felt wonderful to sing my national anthem in front of a church full of people (who were singing along, actually enunciating the words rather than the usual mumbling of national anthems), recognising all the people who had fought for justice in my homeland (most of whom lost those fights). That's an experience that I can have outside of university. The debates about ethics that I've had over the last few years have not been in the classroom, yet they had a huge impact on how I see the world.
Coming back to the point of this post: what am I supposed to do with my life? I've always maintained that the best fiction writers (JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Alexander McCall Smith) are those that maintain a day-job. It stops them becoming excessively commercialised and selling out to The Man, until all they do is write the same story over and over. I won't mention names, but you can probably guess which writers I'm talking about. I remember reading a postsecret written during the Screenwriter's Strike of '07-'08. It talked about how glad the person was to be on strike so that she/he could finally write something meaningful.
What does one do as a day job outside of academia (because, for those of you who don't know, all three of the "favourite authors" I listed above work(ed) at universities)? I hate working in sales (which effectively discounts half the jobs in the world), I'm s**t at commerce-related things (I failed economics 101. That's not a promising start for a career in banking), dyslexia has effectively excluded me from anything mathematical (or related things, like engineering), and I don't want to take the obvious choice and become a secretary. I think, though, most of all, I don't want to end up like the person who wrote this secret.
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