Bless me blog, for I haven’t
sinned. It's been many weeks since my last confession.
It occurred to me this week that
there are nuns out there living more exciting lives than me at the moment.
Possibly even bottles of bleach.
That’s what studying will do to you.
I’ve been reluctant to tell anyone
that I’ve started studying. There are reasons for keeping this studying
business a secret. Only the inner-most members of my posse are privy to this
and only because I had to fess up as to why I could no longer be found at
coffee bars and, well, bars in general.
The first reason for il segreto is that I’m petrified of
failing (note to self: stop using Italian terms to sugar things up). I know, right
- it’s hardly a novel fear. I figure that if I don’t tell anyone I’m studying, then
if I fail I can just pretend that the whole thing never happened. I have a
feeling that’s the reason why some people elope.
On the other hand, if I do tell everyone I’m studying and then
fail, I’ll actually have to announce that I’ve failed (as if the empty whiskey
bottles out back won’t be enough of a clue). This ‘failure-anxiety’ is only made
worse when people say things like this to me:
‘Oh, you’re gonna cream it’, or ‘mature
students find studying such a breeze’.
Somehow I’ve given off the impression
that I’m the type of person who can ‘cream’ exams. I have no idea how I have
accomplished this considering I have never ‘creamed’ anything in my life.
Studying is funny. Academia is
funny. The academics talk funny
and they want you to study funny stuff. Like Eduardo Kac for instance. He’s an artist who collaborated with
scientists to create a rabbit that has been infused with the lumo stuff that
comes in jellyfish. He said it was to make ‘us’ (‘us’ what? Peasants? Non-scientiest
types? Philistines of art?) aware of the responsibility that comes along with cocking
around with genetically modified things. I just think he wanted a lumo bunny. Who
doesn’t?
Studying is wordy in my very worst wordy
kind of way. It’s verbose and uses all manner of highfalutin language. Thank
fark I’m not studying law. Law-talk is the uber-ness of word wanking. All this word
wanking goes against the natural
order of language, which, I’m pretty sure, was invented to make communication
easier. Ehem. I’ll say that again. To make communication easier. And oh the irony, the course I’m doing is in Communication
Science (screams with laughter).
In ‘real life’, if you want to hold someone’s
attention, you’d better communicate quickly and succinctly and you’d better be pretty
bloody engaging. Not so with
studying. It would seem that you don’t have to be engaging at all.
Academics have complicated ways of
explaining uncomplicated things and use things like theories, perspectives,
approaches and models to explain things that are sometimes just common
sense. Even worse, they slow down
your common sense so much that you become confused by your own common sense.
Bastards. I liken it to when someone asks you to slow down a dance move and
then you no longer know how to do it and it no longer looks like a dance move anymore.
Also, in the land of academia you’re
not allowed to use slang or colloquialisms. This is a tragedy. I think it is
enough of a tragedy that we’re not able to use hand movements to explain
something. (The exception to this,
of course, is using the “inverted comma” hand movement, which should be
globally forbidden.)
Still, word-waking aside, possibly
the worst thing is that they insist on something called “source referencing”. Apparently, it’s not good enough to say
‘oh, I heard it somewhere’. Or, you know, I just know it because I know it. Pa-farking-nickerty
I tell you. I suck at referencing
and it is annoying and boring and then boring some more.
Seth Rogan tweeted last week that
“People buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, to impress
people they don’t like”. I hope
that isn’t what’s happening here with my studying thingy. Bummer, man.*
*Bummer: See how fun it is to write
bummer and what it pity it is that you’re not allowed to use it in papers and stuff
[insert that type of Italian hand movement where
you scratch under your chin].
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