Dadaisms

So here it is, my new blog..again. I’m hoping that having my name as an address is going to help me write more! We’ll see if it works out.

Since my last post I have graduated Summa Cum Laude (after much nail-biting and pleading emails to the Dean about the requirements…curse “Writing for the Media”) and been awarded the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship. I’m really excited about it all - the 24 scholars for 2008 are all meeting for the first time on Friday. We have a 5 day conference in Stellenbosch. I haven’t got the itinerary yet, so I’m not entirely sure what sort of initiation rituals there may be. I have a mental image from “The de Villier’s Code” involving Rhodes’ waxen penis. Shudder.

Tomorrow I’m heading off to Durban Campus to chat to the Media lecturer there. I don’t particularly want to leave PMB, as the department there is brilliant. However, I’m really enthusiastic about possibly studying Gender Studies, Cultural Studies and Website design - a combination that sadly isn’t offered in PMB.

On a non-study related note, my best friend Rob is coming back to SA after having been living in England for 2 years!

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Right, so I haven’t blogged in ages. That’s not my fault though. Well technically it IS my fault, but I’m not talking technically here. The 3rd year combination of Media Studies, English and Classics is not particularly conducive to that idea of “free time” (what is this thing “relaxation” that people speak of?!). Nonetheless, I present another of my random thoughts - this time on the wonderful phenomenon that is SRC Elections on Pietermaritzburg Campus.

Yesterday on campus was “election day” for the new SRC (who the old SRC was is anyone’s guess). What this meant was that the campus lawns were covered in arrows pointing to the “polling booths”, discarded flyers and pamphlets, and candidates surrounded by their recruiting minions. It was impossible for one to quietly sit in the shade of a tree and sip one’s Cranberry juice and read short stories - annoying whistling and “hey hey bru”-’s, followed by shouting and raucous laughing, were relatively minor distractions. I was approached no less than 3 times in the space of 30 minutes by different candidates to try and gain my vote. For each I posed the following:

• What effort has your candidate made to make him-/herself known to me before now?

• What does your candidate promise to do for MY departments?

• How do I know that I can trust your candidate if there has been NO information supplied until now?

• Why should I vote for someone I don’t even know?

• Is there equal representation?

I find it bizarre that someone can approach a complete stranger and ask them to vote for a virtual non-entity. Surely it’s common sense that if you want the votes, you need to begin canvassing to a variety of students BEFORE the actual day of election? I also find it unethical to simply vote for the sake of voting - it’s a toss up in the end, I suppose, of exercising your right to vote and having a say, or keeping silent when you don’t vote.

However, in all honesty, the SRC doesn’t seem to DO anything, so whether or not I vote isn’t a particular issue for me.

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When I left high school I was under the impression that all the petty attitudes would be left behind. That those immature and irritating boys and girls who didn’t pay attention and who just scraped a matric would decide to pursue more fruitful ventures without the need to go to a tertiary institution.

I was wrong.

Perhaps it’s just my class in particular. But I sit in lectures day after day, trying to be a good student and listen to the lecturer, yet I always manage to get distracted by the constant sniggering and whispering and giggling that drifts from the back of the room. It completely boggles me: surely if you’re paying a small fortune to go to University you’ll actually pay attention to make sure you get your money’s worth? Surely if you were going to talk and miss the entire lecture you would opt to miss coming to University that day at all? Surely lecturers should be allowed to lob light/slightly heavy objects at the nearest chattering “student”?

I understand that University life is about freedom and relaxing before hitting the “real world”. But come now, there’s a time and a place for everything. Leave the chattering and socialising for after the lecture. It’s highly distracting - for both the nerds in the front and the lecturer - to have a constant stream of inaudible blah-ing from the far extremities of the room.

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I often wonder how “people” - our parents, advisers, educators - expect us to know what we want to do with our lives. I wonder how “adults” (even though we now technically fall into that mysterious realm) expect us to know where we want to be in the next 5 years. I wonder how they expect us to be so certain of what career we want to follow. And I wonder how they can say “you can do anything you put your mind to”.

When you leave high school - at the age of 17/18 - you are expected to choose, if you want to study, what University you want to go to, and what Degree you want to pursue. The majority of the time, your choices are limited by finance. So you land up choosing the most affordable option. Great. When you get to University, you are presented with sheets of paper with module names that obscurely hint to what the course really involves. So you choose either those modules that sound mildly interesting or those modules that your best friend (either from high school or the new one that you clung to in the registration line only an hour before) is doing.

During the course of that first year, you chop and change so many times from module to module that you become unsure of what you want to land up having at the end of 3 years. In my case, I went from studying Politics to studying Law, to studying English and Ethics, back to studying Law, and eventually - entirely be default - to studying Media and English. I was lucky - I managed to find Majors that I actually enjoy. Others are not so lucky - they continue to be stuck in the quagmire of intellectual sludge that they are immersed in, yet are simultaneously drowning in cluelessness.

At the age of 20/21, now in 3rd year, many of my peers don’t know what they want to do next year. Yet suddenly, next year is THE year - it’s the year that you can start working full time. Fulfill the rite of passage. Become a grown up. Ditch the student life. Become *gulp* independent.

However, some of us want to do Honours. Yet here again we see that vicious cycle repeating itself : expect to know what you want to do. In a flash of deja vu, our options are again limited by the institution we attend and the undergrad degree we have pursued.

What happens after Honours? How do we know “what’s out there”?? Suddenly, after now 15+ years of education and shelter, we’re being thrust onto the pinboard of society, left to fend for ourselves with - technically speaking - no knowledge of what to expect. Am I the only one that is just SLIGHTLY intimidated?

Of course, we could just continue to study forever…

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