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cloudy_oneAs I'm developing more into the person I want to be I find myself changing my mind about a lot of things. When I was growing up in a world completely about school, it was easy to get caught up in academics and take that for what the world is about. Now, don't get me wrong, that's what I'm good at, it's interesting, but having found myself thinking about the present and the future, most of academics seems frivolous in comparison to application. In addition, I don't feel like modern American academics makes a proper connection to application either. I have a reader at home that I read a bit out of occasionally. We bought it for my English 102 class a few terms ago but of course we didn't read most of the entries. In the portion of the book dedicated to argument, the below comic was featured:
I'm one of those students who bullshits his way through school. Just like Calvin up there, I use big words and lofty ideas to basically convey simple ideas, or sometimes not much of anything at all. That gets me "A"s. In a recent entry by Sam![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ziasummer she mentions how she would rather get a "C" and learn something than get an "A" and not learn anything. We've had talks about it a lot before, so that's nothing new to me. That is something I would like to get into more myself, but at the same time education is so often viewed as a means anymore. "Get through and get a job." I know how to get through; but then it doesn't really count as much more than a checkmark, does it?
I've posted some of my essays in this journal, I think just about all of them are Public as well, so if you're interested, check them out and tell me what you think, honestly. That's the kind of work I usually do in academics, and it's not usually work I feel good about. I can't remember more than a couple times turning in something I felt I put my all into, or even more than average into. I feel a lot better about my work when it comes back with an "A" plastered to it, but that feels superficial to me.
Yesterday in one of my groups there was a woman who was a bit more of what I would like to be, self-sufficient. She went to school to be a mechanic, and got that accomplished. She noticed that there were a lot of portions of vehicles which needed welding done, so she went back to school and got a welding certificate. When she bought a house it needed plumbing work done. She went back to school again and got a plumbing certificate. When she decided she wanted more done with her yard, she went and learned how to do landscaping and got a certificate for that. By the sounds of it she wasn't just collecting credits, but she actually used the knowledge. She's using those skills now to build a couple of homes on some property she owns (with the help of her brother who will fill out most of the rest of the skills) and be able to do upkeep mostly on her own. She wanted to do something and she did it for the sake of learning.
That's something I've noticed about people in trades especially. For those academic classes I take, I don't know more than maybe one or two people who would actually complain if a class was cancelled. In trades, and I work in Welding and hang out at Machining a lot, students show up HOURS early to see if they'd be allowed to get started. Lord knows how often Byron has complained about students not wanting to leave after class. These people are here to genuinely learn something to use in their lives. They sometimes come up with their own projects, they do work on it at home after taking a three-six hour class. That is something which I highly respect. That is not frivolous.
While I am truly interested in subjects like history and some of the other social studies, those seem like little more than hobbies, like reading comic books or watching a TV show religiously. It's neat to tell people that I've read the Aeneid in Latin (at least half of it anyway) but what does that actually matter? It's neat thinking about the past and what some of those things mean, and honestly I do think we have a lot to learn if we'd be willing to apply it (past mistakes are all too easy to ignore) but again it just seems frivolous sometimes. And look at how flooded the world is with people who dedicate themselves to these things. Try getting a job as a historian. You'll be a teacher more than likely, and even those jobs are hard to find anymore, nevermind actually working with museums or something like that. Even in teaching below college level, a place which is always hurting for more teachers, English and social studies teachers are overcrowded. It seems no one wants to teach the more applied (including mathematics) subjects.
I'm not trying to say that academics itself is frivolous, but I do think that it's something our culture has helped push that way. I had a Developmental Psychology instructor once who said that every guy who drives a city bus has a bachelor's degree. His point was that we had to go further than that. I didn't particularly like that instructor, but besides that point we've trivialized academics to the point where it has become more about numbers than about actually learning anything. Even in college it's getting to be more and more about people passing (especially in community college where students are expected to move to university level) than about people learning something.
Just some musings, I mean, it really feels like what I've wanted to put my life into is proving to be unreliable in the way it's set up. That puts the responsibility back on me to make it count for more.
ziasummer she mentions how she would rather get a "C" and learn something than get an "A" and not learn anything. We've had talks about it a lot before, so that's nothing new to me. That is something I would like to get into more myself, but at the same time education is so often viewed as a means anymore. "Get through and get a job." I know how to get through; but then it doesn't really count as much more than a checkmark, does it?I've posted some of my essays in this journal, I think just about all of them are Public as well, so if you're interested, check them out and tell me what you think, honestly. That's the kind of work I usually do in academics, and it's not usually work I feel good about. I can't remember more than a couple times turning in something I felt I put my all into, or even more than average into. I feel a lot better about my work when it comes back with an "A" plastered to it, but that feels superficial to me.
Yesterday in one of my groups there was a woman who was a bit more of what I would like to be, self-sufficient. She went to school to be a mechanic, and got that accomplished. She noticed that there were a lot of portions of vehicles which needed welding done, so she went back to school and got a welding certificate. When she bought a house it needed plumbing work done. She went back to school again and got a plumbing certificate. When she decided she wanted more done with her yard, she went and learned how to do landscaping and got a certificate for that. By the sounds of it she wasn't just collecting credits, but she actually used the knowledge. She's using those skills now to build a couple of homes on some property she owns (with the help of her brother who will fill out most of the rest of the skills) and be able to do upkeep mostly on her own. She wanted to do something and she did it for the sake of learning.
That's something I've noticed about people in trades especially. For those academic classes I take, I don't know more than maybe one or two people who would actually complain if a class was cancelled. In trades, and I work in Welding and hang out at Machining a lot, students show up HOURS early to see if they'd be allowed to get started. Lord knows how often Byron has complained about students not wanting to leave after class. These people are here to genuinely learn something to use in their lives. They sometimes come up with their own projects, they do work on it at home after taking a three-six hour class. That is something which I highly respect. That is not frivolous.
While I am truly interested in subjects like history and some of the other social studies, those seem like little more than hobbies, like reading comic books or watching a TV show religiously. It's neat to tell people that I've read the Aeneid in Latin (at least half of it anyway) but what does that actually matter? It's neat thinking about the past and what some of those things mean, and honestly I do think we have a lot to learn if we'd be willing to apply it (past mistakes are all too easy to ignore) but again it just seems frivolous sometimes. And look at how flooded the world is with people who dedicate themselves to these things. Try getting a job as a historian. You'll be a teacher more than likely, and even those jobs are hard to find anymore, nevermind actually working with museums or something like that. Even in teaching below college level, a place which is always hurting for more teachers, English and social studies teachers are overcrowded. It seems no one wants to teach the more applied (including mathematics) subjects.
I'm not trying to say that academics itself is frivolous, but I do think that it's something our culture has helped push that way. I had a Developmental Psychology instructor once who said that every guy who drives a city bus has a bachelor's degree. His point was that we had to go further than that. I didn't particularly like that instructor, but besides that point we've trivialized academics to the point where it has become more about numbers than about actually learning anything. Even in college it's getting to be more and more about people passing (especially in community college where students are expected to move to university level) than about people learning something.
Just some musings, I mean, it really feels like what I've wanted to put my life into is proving to be unreliable in the way it's set up. That puts the responsibility back on me to make it count for more.
