So our local coordinators & representatives are asking about our opinions regarding what our overall experience has been (so far) while studying at the peculiar institutions we'd originally chosen for our masters course respective pathways...
FIRST SEMESTER: What I've got to say regarding what education feels like (for a short while, anyways), in that oh-so distinctively bucolic part of Scotland, is what follows:
(yeah, Charity Day with Mar)
Honest to FSM, I have to admit I am not necessarily fond of the institutionalized academic sudden eagerness to resemble, at least method-wise, the Spanish Inquisition. HOLD IT! I exaggerate, mayhaps... Nevertheless I shall proceed to develop my hyperbole, just for the fun of stretching our hold of reality (and to scare the newcomers just a little).
The accused, I mean, pupil here is exposed to a series of psychosomatic resistance exercises ("This is the Sparta of your miiind!'') that end up suspending his/her own sense of being worthy of a right to have a spot on this planet. What a way to challenge young humans in terms of proving their own intellectual potential by pulverizing their self-esteems! Yay! Well there it is! Why the fuck not; one must climb down this murky hole of endless desolation and further abandonment of his/her own hopes and dreams until reaching the neon sign that reads "Candy Mountain" (because, by this time, you're hallucinating, Dorothy). And then, when you least expect it, it is finally over, and you get your degree along with extra wipes to kindly remove the trail of blood and tears you've been leaving behind, ever since you entered Market Street from Albany (the paper's also good for filling up the hole where your soul used to be, never you mind).
I am le-kidding (well, sort of). But then again, I'm the abject in this play. I thus speak as one does from outside of his/her element (let us remember that us art students are usually more adjusted to the challenges of producing objects/relations/spaces through which our own conceptualized melodramas can become sort of materialized and further contemplated by other equally keen dorks). That is the reason why I was taken aback, first hand... HOWEVER, I'm sure any other fair-minded and overall prepared pupil will no less than endure those extremely stressful periods of machine-like paper regurgitating, and encyclopedia-reading until reaching the point where even the thought of food becomes irrelevant to your existence. I mean, come on! as if life itself could not tell us more about the theories we revised during class time (which ponder upon life's phenomena as seen through the eyes of magnificent mind-constructs, developed by individuals capable of forging simultaneous clashings of space and time and viceversa, ok) *...* but anyways, I guess I just wish I had SOME spare time to go to Edinburgh and sip a single pint without the hugeongous (yes, I used that word) remainders of my pending workloads seeping in through the cracks of my liquified pyche. But in the end (of your life) going through hell and being able to verbalize your experience to your fellow oneironauts makes you a stronger being, or just a fair enough person, or some other thing you can brag about to your neighbors and Twitter fans.
The accused, I mean, pupil here is exposed to a series of psychosomatic resistance exercises ("This is the Sparta of your miiind!'') that end up suspending his/her own sense of being worthy of a right to have a spot on this planet. What a way to challenge young humans in terms of proving their own intellectual potential by pulverizing their self-esteems! Yay! Well there it is! Why the fuck not; one must climb down this murky hole of endless desolation and further abandonment of his/her own hopes and dreams until reaching the neon sign that reads "Candy Mountain" (because, by this time, you're hallucinating, Dorothy). And then, when you least expect it, it is finally over, and you get your degree along with extra wipes to kindly remove the trail of blood and tears you've been leaving behind, ever since you entered Market Street from Albany (the paper's also good for filling up the hole where your soul used to be, never you mind).
I am le-kidding (well, sort of). But then again, I'm the abject in this play. I thus speak as one does from outside of his/her element (let us remember that us art students are usually more adjusted to the challenges of producing objects/relations/spaces through which our own conceptualized melodramas can become sort of materialized and further contemplated by other equally keen dorks). That is the reason why I was taken aback, first hand... HOWEVER, I'm sure any other fair-minded and overall prepared pupil will no less than endure those extremely stressful periods of machine-like paper regurgitating, and encyclopedia-reading until reaching the point where even the thought of food becomes irrelevant to your existence. I mean, come on! as if life itself could not tell us more about the theories we revised during class time (which ponder upon life's phenomena as seen through the eyes of magnificent mind-constructs, developed by individuals capable of forging simultaneous clashings of space and time and viceversa, ok) *...* but anyways, I guess I just wish I had SOME spare time to go to Edinburgh and sip a single pint without the hugeongous (yes, I used that word) remainders of my pending workloads seeping in through the cracks of my liquified pyche. But in the end (of your life) going through hell and being able to verbalize your experience to your fellow oneironauts makes you a stronger being, or just a fair enough person, or some other thing you can brag about to your neighbors and Twitter fans.
Scotland.
The views were fantastic. The food was... edible, almost (when drunk maybe). Some teachers were keen and helpful, others terrible... TERRIBLE (as human beings tend to be from time to time when acquiring enough artificial prestige to assume they're all so mentally infalible, especially when addressing topics that are in fact unattainable from inside of the egocentric schemata that so-well characterizes the "Western" kind of thought). You need to be humble and practice the elasticity of your ego in order to truly understand things outside from yourself (which reflect those inside of you) THEN maybe you can presume to talk about Magic Realism. BOG!
I found it particularly ironic how we studied the limiting incoherences within the cultural discourses that contextually frame certain peoples' way of abstracting reality, and further stuffing it into excruciatingly rational-categorical boxes (which constructs their distinctive regard towards others) ESPECIALLY IN THE UK. But then again our essays were marked under those same standards, which only reaffirmed (as the essence of the performative is explained by Judith Butler, meaning, construction by reiteration) the inescapably faulty squareness of the mind we were on the one hand so keenly criticizing... Odd. I found that to be a bit paradoxical (to put it in a nice way), but maybe I'm confused and wrong and did not learn get the gist of it all :P I guess we'll never know.
At least I find that back where I'm from, in Latin America (well, specifically Mexico) I can relatively manage to pull through, in spite of all the luminiscent nonsense that keeps us from questioning the processess by which the current systematic flow of powerworks inboththepsychoanalitic&economicchannelsofinterpretationreproducingitselfinthefuelthatistheexcessofhumangreedandslothblablablablaIliketurtless (SEE WHAT ST ANDREWS DID TO ME? I NEED REHAB FAST) But then again, that actually reflects how us post-colonial creeps get to live our days, such a weirdly-functional mess we're in, under the imposing capitalist foot of our adorable northern-border neighbors. Lovely.
Hahahahaha lolz, nay.
I think what I enjoyed the most of my experience (apart from learning shitloads of theories) was just LIFE, as shared with the ghetto gang (that sounds dodgy, but I'm talking about the Fife Park intl. student community, FWI). We all truly kept each other afloat during deadly-deadline periods (everyone had his/her own respective crises): we became a hardcore wartime family bunch. Heavy Hemingway-but-in-Rwanda kind of shit: As I've written before, the music room was our precious haven from the world, and we rocked that motherfucker when everybody else was already asleep (even the guard let us stay in for a bit more, he saw how important it was to us). But apart from that we also aced at coexisting with pure empathy: Some cooked (or burned food, depending on the house and its ''malfunctioning oven situation") for the rest. Some kept the coffee pouring during critical hours in the night (I love you for that, Juana). Some studied together destroying living rooms and drinking ethanol-tea. Some escaped to visit others at curious times... Some climbed through kitchen windows to wake up fellow classmates, when alarms failed and exams were needed to be taken (you're welcome, house 15). Some gathered behind the bushes to share songs and weird dances in spite of the cold and the erudite pressures of the approaching next day... just 'cause we were awesome to each other, and that made us pull through in the end.
See? the good overflowed as well. I can therefore proudly announce that I made myself a bunch of brothers and sisters with whom I plan on counting for, for future gatherings of all sorts and colors, since they're so fucking amazing: besides, the world needs these kinds of humans. MORE PLEASE!
I don't take anything back. I keep it all exactly as it went down. That's my perfect kind of narrative.
Hahahahaha lolz, nay.
I think what I enjoyed the most of my experience (apart from learning shitloads of theories) was just LIFE, as shared with the ghetto gang (that sounds dodgy, but I'm talking about the Fife Park intl. student community, FWI). We all truly kept each other afloat during deadly-deadline periods (everyone had his/her own respective crises): we became a hardcore wartime family bunch. Heavy Hemingway-but-in-Rwanda kind of shit: As I've written before, the music room was our precious haven from the world, and we rocked that motherfucker when everybody else was already asleep (even the guard let us stay in for a bit more, he saw how important it was to us). But apart from that we also aced at coexisting with pure empathy: Some cooked (or burned food, depending on the house and its ''malfunctioning oven situation") for the rest. Some kept the coffee pouring during critical hours in the night (I love you for that, Juana). Some studied together destroying living rooms and drinking ethanol-tea. Some escaped to visit others at curious times... Some climbed through kitchen windows to wake up fellow classmates, when alarms failed and exams were needed to be taken (you're welcome, house 15). Some gathered behind the bushes to share songs and weird dances in spite of the cold and the erudite pressures of the approaching next day... just 'cause we were awesome to each other, and that made us pull through in the end.
See? the good overflowed as well. I can therefore proudly announce that I made myself a bunch of brothers and sisters with whom I plan on counting for, for future gatherings of all sorts and colors, since they're so fucking amazing: besides, the world needs these kinds of humans. MORE PLEASE!
I don't take anything back. I keep it all exactly as it went down. That's my perfect kind of narrative.
*St. A*
(Next is Santiago, oh gawd).
(Next is Santiago, oh gawd).
