Sunday, January 24, 2010
College- Liberation
Although college is seen as "the best years of one's life," and a time when liberation and imagination emerge, many of the actions and trends are conformations to society. Expectations and competition consume much of a college student's life. For example, in class we were discussing that one would not converse about poetry or physical chemistry at a party. Even though we are here to learn and liberate our minds, society still has expectations of college students. These expectations become an arm's race of who goes out the most AND the highest grades. Finding one's ideal perfect balance of school and social life at times seems impossible as if it were balancing a chemical equation. Expectations and desire have conflicting ideals in college and one can face each day fulfilling whichever ideal is more appealing without guilt. There are minimal restrictions, and the university feeds off of each other's ideas. This leads to protests and organizations that strive for a liberation of their desires. This may be why people feel college was the "best time of their life" because dreams were pursued and wants were fulfilled. However, the structure of society usually consumes the college student at the conclusion of the four years. College life fades as one reflects on the best years of their life.
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Thanks for posting. But I do not see much of a possible topic for the final paper here. What do you think you might write about in this class? "Achieving the balance" between academics and student life? There might be a way to turn that into a topic, but I think you'd have to take a more critical perspective on the whole idea that the two are equivalent. Perhaps you could use theories of happiness (especially economists who write on the subject) as a way to framing the question....
ReplyDeleteOne way of approaching the topic occurs to me: you could focus on college as a "liminal" space that allows for transformation precisely because of the greater freedom that students experience. What are some of the untapped potentials of that freedom, and how could they be encouraged? After all, learning to improve your tolerance for alcohol is surely not the best use of that freedom, though it can be transformative: it can turn you into an alcoholic, it can kill brain cells, it can help turn you away from academics, etc. The idea of "liberation and limits" might be explored and there might be a topic there. How can students be encouraged to make college a more positively transformative experience than it is for most of them?
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