Nooo, it's not about criticizing The Netherlands, but I really need to vent about my studies.
Today I came here with a certain mindset and an idea what to write about, which happens rather rarely. I have to get it out of my head before I get over the rage that I have inside to express it emotionally because that's the point, right? I make it sound like it's a big deal, but not really. Just a small aspect I realized I don't really like about my studies. So, just for clearing the air, I am majoring in Antropology and Cultural Studies. I find them to be quite thightly related subjects, but one difference (for me) is that I feel Anthropology is more practical. For an example, usually anthropologist do field work and research and combine these two, it has a lot to do with one's own experience or someone else's experience, which is a rather unique way of approaching a subject because mostly things are based on the common sense/knowledge of the majority or scientific facts and what not. So, Cultural Studies, on the other hand, is pretty exclusively theoretical and it is just reading, reading, reading even more, analyzing the texts, making assumptions, generalizing ideas and ideologies and just picking on very tiny details, which is the thing that actually triggered me today. I get the whole idea of analyzing texts. But. It gets on my nerves when we are pushed to find a meaning in... well, anything and everything. Give me a break. If some of you are not familiar with analyzing academic (and/or cultural) texts, let me tell you, it is o-ver-ly and really unnecessarily complicated. Basically, you have a text from an appraised scholar/academic/writer/philosopher or someone else highly recognized. And that text is like, let's say 35 pages long, it detabes and discusses on seemingly complex ideas, which actually hide like 1-2, maybe 3 very-VERY simple ideas or concepts. But for some reason they had to make it unbelievably complicated and long to understand to... what... sound smarter? I don't think that would define someone smart. Smart, for me, is someone who is able to explain complex concepts and ideas very simply and who makes them understandable and accessible to a bigger variety of people. I mean, yeah, don't get me wrong, for sure you are educated and intelligent in your field if you understand academic and scientific words without having to google them and if you're able to use them in your writings, but man, making the text more difficult just because you can?... Nah. I am just tired of these things being sooOOoOoo complicateeeeeed. Alright, I've shifted a bit from my focus now. Let's catch the idea what I started my previous paragraph with. So, in Cultural Studies the seminars are usually as follows: we read a bunch of texts/articles/books and we are already asked to do that from a certain perspective, as in 'so the topic for this week will be postcolonialism'. Therefore, I am already asked to read my texts through an assigned view, which totally removes the freedom and creativity from my mind to read the texts and understand them on my own or my own way or it just removes my mind from focusing on anything else interesting that I might otherwise be able to find. What else makes me crazy is the fact that most of the time the texts are super repetitive. Besides this, during the seminars we are analyzing some passages from the readings and try to dwell deeply into their meanings. Or sometimes we just try to create a meaning from them. Which is the most, I'm sorry, stupid thing in my opinion. It makes this thing so artifical and abstract and I'm not sure if that's necessary. There's a good meme about it there: 9gag.com/gag/aYgeXgO/the-door-is-red. Or, if you're too lazy to open/didn't understand then here's a brief overview: In a class a teacher introduces a sentence from Shakespeare: ''The door is red.'' and claims that the author expresses his anger by this sentence (red=anger). So, the student, probably questioning this, decides to study science and other stuff to be able to wake Shakespeare up from his grave and ask him what did he actually mean by this sentence. The author implied there was no hidden meaning and he just portrayed a door to be red. And that's exactly what I feel we do during the lectures. So, ladies and gentleman, this is how I realized I don't like a part of my studies/one of my majors and now I am stuck with it for another year and a half. I feel like the literature that is compulsory kind of pushes me away instead of making me excited to read it. Thus, it's so much harder to read it because there is some kind of a pressure about how I should have to read or understand it. That there is always something to analyze, that I already actually have acquired a biased view on it before I have even tackled the text because we are supposed to have that view in order to 'understand the text'. We are supposed to think of it something before we know the text. And that to me is just killing the mood for reading, killing my imagination, creativity and will by not letting it wander around and make of it whatever it wants to make. No, we have to make of it what is assigned to us. Eventually we just have a generalized opinion about the texts and that is supposedly 'the right one' for 'this subject'. But what about just giving us texts and letting us figure out what is important from there or where would we individually categorize it or how would we tackle it or how is it related to the course? What about letting people have their on personal, intimate, private opinions on texts that are not directed nor guided anyhow. That everyone could make whatever sense of it they wanted. And if they decide to share, discuss, debate (about) it, magical; if not, let it be. So, yeah, sometimes you realize half way through your studies that it might not be exactly what you wanted or how you wanted it to be. So, naturally, I will try to bare the other half of my study programme and just accept it the way it is. But that's just life. That's all folks, got it out of my system now. See y'all laterz, alligatorz.
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Autor(Vegan)jäätisegurmaanist reisisell. Kuna mu süda kuulub nii mitmetele kohtadele ja inimestele korraga, siis ka see blogi ei keskendu ainult ühele teemale. Tundub sobimatu. Archives
March 2020
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