No Worries, my Pleasure…
You can remember today as they day that I made you a little bit happier and your life, a little bit richer. I don’t need you to thank me out loud. Maybe just a little “Thanks” under the breath or in the head. I’ll feel it. And once you watch this little present, you’ll feel it too.
POW!
While we’re at it, for those who are bored with their lives and can afford the accrued eight minutes of distraction (not including loading time), here’s another little treat.
Peace.
The Motivation to be a Student
I am just now hoping to enter into a new phase as an institutionalised student. I should preface this by saying that for the past four years I have been working as a Lecturer A for Monash University and during that time embarked on the academic journey towards a Masters degree. I have since stepped off that boat. I must admit, the burden that has been lifted off my shoulders was unexpected but totally welcome.
You see, I was only doing the Masters because it was a requirement of my employment. Due to the astoundingly complex nature of the bureaucratic machine that is a university faculty, my topic (one which I was dearly fond of), was transformed into a painful thought cancer that turned my stomach and leached upon my soul. It took me a very long time to realise the amazingly ironic nature of what is meant by the term ‘research’ as opposed to what I naively imagined it to be. At every turn my motivation was squashed by requirements that had no place in my personal research methodology. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the system of institutionalised research does not have its place. I am saying that it doesn’t suit me. It took me some time to realise this because I had bought into the myth that as you progress from undergaduate to postgraduate status, you are able to refine your study focus and become immersed in the field of your choice.
Instead, I was faced with teaching responsibilities that were based on an antagonistic relationship between lecturer and student. Most students, in my experience, have become overcome with apathy. Postmodernism has left a stain so thick and stinking that students mistakenly believe that it is ok to have no belief. The stucture of the Masters and PhD degrees restrict the evolution of ideas. As I progressed through my studies, I was confronted with more and more administrative work. I love(d) teaching and I love to learn but I was unable to do either of these in this environment.
I know well the arguments that would be thrown my way in opposition to all of the gripes that I have expressed and they certainly have their validity. Their value though is largely based on the propagation of the current system. I don’t like this system.
“What are you babbling about you idiot?” you may well ask.
“Didn’t you open by saying you are hoping to be an ‘institutionalised’ student again?”
Right you are. I am going to be a student again. I have applied to go to Tafe to study remedial massage. But, I have always and will always be a student. This has nothing to do with schools and qualifications but raher is based on the continual education that is required to remain conscious (I will define consciousness as the experience of existence). Institutions are a resource. They have libraries and interesting people and physical resources. They do not qualify students; being alive qualifies you as a student. If you are not a student then you have either died or were never born. What I am stuggling to express here is the importance of the point of departure for motivation. I believe it should come from a desire to increase and enhance the experience of existence. It is the only thing that can be undertaken with any sense of certainty. Everything else can change.
Exist Now, Love Funk and Learn Eternally.
Introducing…
Hi. My name is Jerome Moscicki and this is my first contribution to a Blog. I feel wierd because I have spent the last four years excercising marked disdain for the concept and its participants. For reasons unknown, I now feel the urge to express opinions in a public forum that doesn’t lead to the eventual loss of my voice. It was interesting timing then, when Ben told me about this Blog.
I am going to begin with a gripe (undoubtedly the first of many). It’s actually more of a question.
I am a regular commuter on Melbourne’s public transport system. Don’t worry, this isn’t a rant about the inadequacy of the ticketing system or the ignorant and boorish mentality of its enforcers. That will be a drawn out post that I will save for later. The question I wish to ask is the following:
Why are there no bins at tram stops?
I don’t catch buses but I’m pretty sure that bins are scarce there aswell. It seems ludicrous to me that we are pressured into a state of public responsibility about our environment yet we are not provided with the simple convenience that would expediate its practice. This is fundamentally wrong. I can accept no argument about the cost of instalation and maintainance as I’m sure on a yearly basis there are many major expenditures that are useless yet given more priority.
If you are searching for an example you need look no further than the cost of changing the logos on letterhead for Cranbourne when it went from being a council to a city (for the blink of an eye) before being usurped by a larger council.
Nonsense tastes bad.