![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reflections
Nov. 8th, 2006 10:46 amI'm doing a little better after yesterday's jolt, but I've come to loathe academia so much that I don't even want to finish this last course of mine.
Even before this, I'd gotten to the point where I was thinking that the best thing we could do for the world would be to cement up the doors to the universities like something out of Edgar allan Poe.
I'm exaggerating of course -- there a lot of people who learn perfectly good, real-world skills at universities. Not in English, of course, where once you've learned to write coherently as an undergrad, you don't learn anything else practical -- indeed, they first teach you how to write coherently, then work hard to break you of that habit.
At the end of my university career, I feel some shadow of what a person must feel on their deathbed after they've wasted their life. I'm flailing about for some kind of value in the experience, and there's none. I've educated myself enormously over those years, but mostly on my own.
In fact, trying to hold on to my love of reading, to my spiritual strength, and to my sense of beauty in the world has mostly been a struggle against academia.
I'm $14,000 in debt, and I want the last ten years of my life back. If an English degree can get me either of those things, it might be worth it.
But if there's any value to it all, it's this: all my life, I've been struggling against my need to write, because I'm really a practical person at heart and writing is a very impractical career. Since the thought of becoming a professor now makes me nauseous, I should quite trying to hide behind other, potentially more stable professions and go for what I love.
Even before this, I'd gotten to the point where I was thinking that the best thing we could do for the world would be to cement up the doors to the universities like something out of Edgar allan Poe.
I'm exaggerating of course -- there a lot of people who learn perfectly good, real-world skills at universities. Not in English, of course, where once you've learned to write coherently as an undergrad, you don't learn anything else practical -- indeed, they first teach you how to write coherently, then work hard to break you of that habit.
At the end of my university career, I feel some shadow of what a person must feel on their deathbed after they've wasted their life. I'm flailing about for some kind of value in the experience, and there's none. I've educated myself enormously over those years, but mostly on my own.
In fact, trying to hold on to my love of reading, to my spiritual strength, and to my sense of beauty in the world has mostly been a struggle against academia.
I'm $14,000 in debt, and I want the last ten years of my life back. If an English degree can get me either of those things, it might be worth it.
But if there's any value to it all, it's this: all my life, I've been struggling against my need to write, because I'm really a practical person at heart and writing is a very impractical career. Since the thought of becoming a professor now makes me nauseous, I should quite trying to hide behind other, potentially more stable professions and go for what I love.