I am a piss poor arts student with an interest in LITERATURE – remember the written word???? Before it got viciously hijacked by your liberal vales and blessed economy????
And as such, I know nothing, and will never know anything that will further humanity, and that negates my right to want change within my society.
Don't tell me I'm being over dramatic. Don't pat me on the head, and don't patronise me. I have had enough. I am sick of the way I am treated, I am sick of justifying myself and I am sick of being told I'm over reacting. This is MY LIFE, I think I'm allowed to be upset about it.
All I wanted was to study WORDS, stories, legends, to unearth meaning in them and to maybe, one day, share that with people. I wanted debate and discussion. God help me, I WANT TO THINK.
Why does no one want to do this anymore? We spend our money on trends, we worry about how we look more than we worry about what we think. Newspapers are becoming tabloids, and I know more about the KARDASHIANS, of all fucking families, than I do about the Literary Canon.
I suspect this is all a giant conspiracy to dumb us down so that we don't notice that our civil rights are being impinged upon. And if you're wondering what this has to do with Literature, then I'll remind you that words formed our world and our understanding of it. You probably know more about Shakespeare than you think, and he definitely has a more positive influence on society than The Hills. Yet the number of times I've heard people dismiss Shakespeare, Chaucer, Keats, Byron, Rimbaud is beyond counting. “It's too hard and it's outdated.” you say.
TOO HARD?!?!?!!?!?
Psscht. It's only hard because you are LAZY. It's only hard because Literature doesn't have a right or wrong answer – it requires you to form an opinion and make your own mind up.
God forbid, in the world we live in, that we should think for ourselves. Why bother, when we have gossip magazines to tell us what to think.
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I'm going to move into a library and never come out again.
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And another thing. My university has cut out half the English and History courses for next year – and you don't do “English” or “History”. You do “Arts”. I am so upset about this (I cried twice about it), because I have been looking forward to doing upper level Literature for YEARS and now they've scrapped it. I'll be doing all this general stuff, and I'm sure it'll be thrilling, really, because the staff at UNSW are FANTASTIC, but I wanted to learn about more than that, I was told that I'd be able to specialise, that there'd be more innovation. Except apparently that doesn't get students in lecture theatres. Its so fucking depressing, that there are three media courses on economics, countless business courses and just FOUR English subjects next semester. Sod the John Howard years – I don't give a shit about how wonderful his economy was (and look, was it really that grand if we've just had a recession?), devaluing education was the dumbest and most destructive thing he ever did.
3 comments:
I'm in a library right now. And don't want to leave it. Well, I say library. They're about to change the word to 'bookshed.'
Not an overreaction at all. It'll only seem like it to some people because you're using intelligence to rail against dumbing down. So naturally a lot of people won't see it as reasonable, lacking as they do the nouse to grasp what it is you're saying.
I am so sorry that they did that to your major! I don't think schools should be allowed to do that (I know architect majors who were switched to 3D art majors...what are they supposed to do with that when they want to build and design houses?). If you have really good professors, can you ask to do independent studies with them where you choose your own course of learning? I hope this gets fixed for you. I completely understand why you are so upset and you have every right to be. :(
xoxo
Amanda
Have a look at ANU for next year.
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