Terminal illness of the academic
You'll have to pardon the lack of writing. I've been ill - physically. So ill, in fact, I thought I was next-near dying for a stint. And beyond that, I was just a mess. Nerves and anxiety and stress...but that isn't your problem.
However, other than that -- other than pathetic complaints on the situations of life at current, I have nothing more to proffer here. No inspiration, no insight into deeper things or even deeper meanings. Not even anything vaguely useful on the academic front.
I've heard it said once, Poor liberal studies major. I thought it was funny. Then.
Now, it's one week into the damn thing, and already I'm exhuasted. Tired out of academia. Sick to death of being nothing more than just another "academic" on a roster list. A number or a last name on a sheet in a class of sixty, where no one else gives so much as a damn why I am there. A student. Shuffled off the face of the planet, essentially shoved into a hole called class -- and forgotten about by the larger population. The real world, they don't acknowledge us. Not yet. Not until we have a BA and an MA and a damn PhD to prove to them we're actually worth just what they've heard us say we must be. Fresh from the university zoo.
But I am worth it, despite their goals and stipulations and hierarchies of soceity. Despite their new-age cast system. I am still human. I am still alive. I am still worth, at least, the cost of living. Am I not?
Disillusioned - that's a good word for it. Maybe it's because I've gotten past the point of wanting to just research life. Because I spent a year seeing the world -- now I'm tired, fed up, ill to my stomach of just pretending to experience it; pretending to be a part of it. Pretending to be a citizen of this country, this city, this life. Just playing house in a dormitory room with fake freedom and forced religion and false felicity.
I want, more than this - more than anything - to be alive.
Something between these walls and these buildings and this degree, stifles life. Something about the worthwhile-ness of it or the assumed weight of it, or the prescribed importance of it bears down like some thick, heavy breath. Like a millstone about my neck. After having a tantilizing taste of life, after having ideas of how to live; it's too damn easy to be disillusioned.
A lifelong student. What worse could I do with my life, what worse could I invest in myself. What other ruin could I prescribe to myself. But to research and never do. But to teach and never know. But to find inspiration, but never passion. But to live and never be alive.
But to study, and never find. To be a student, and never myself.
-RK
However, other than that -- other than pathetic complaints on the situations of life at current, I have nothing more to proffer here. No inspiration, no insight into deeper things or even deeper meanings. Not even anything vaguely useful on the academic front.
I've heard it said once, Poor liberal studies major. I thought it was funny. Then.
Now, it's one week into the damn thing, and already I'm exhuasted. Tired out of academia. Sick to death of being nothing more than just another "academic" on a roster list. A number or a last name on a sheet in a class of sixty, where no one else gives so much as a damn why I am there. A student. Shuffled off the face of the planet, essentially shoved into a hole called class -- and forgotten about by the larger population. The real world, they don't acknowledge us. Not yet. Not until we have a BA and an MA and a damn PhD to prove to them we're actually worth just what they've heard us say we must be. Fresh from the university zoo.
But I am worth it, despite their goals and stipulations and hierarchies of soceity. Despite their new-age cast system. I am still human. I am still alive. I am still worth, at least, the cost of living. Am I not?
Disillusioned - that's a good word for it. Maybe it's because I've gotten past the point of wanting to just research life. Because I spent a year seeing the world -- now I'm tired, fed up, ill to my stomach of just pretending to experience it; pretending to be a part of it. Pretending to be a citizen of this country, this city, this life. Just playing house in a dormitory room with fake freedom and forced religion and false felicity.
I want, more than this - more than anything - to be alive.
Something between these walls and these buildings and this degree, stifles life. Something about the worthwhile-ness of it or the assumed weight of it, or the prescribed importance of it bears down like some thick, heavy breath. Like a millstone about my neck. After having a tantilizing taste of life, after having ideas of how to live; it's too damn easy to be disillusioned.
A lifelong student. What worse could I do with my life, what worse could I invest in myself. What other ruin could I prescribe to myself. But to research and never do. But to teach and never know. But to find inspiration, but never passion. But to live and never be alive.
But to study, and never find. To be a student, and never myself.
-RK
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