The students, actually. They are the ones who never look up. The campus is not contained, lacking any sort of barrier or boundary delineating where it starts and ends, but rather sprawling into wards and neighborhoods, practically connecting you to the medical campus on the other side of the city. As the university has gobbled acreage and real estate in the name of growth and revitalization, it is heavily trafficked and populated.
With a Starbucks cup in one hand and their phone in the other, they stroll from one destination to the other staring down. They are not paying attention to the damp fallen leaves on the brick walkway or considering the exam they are about to take but instead looking at their phones. Many times, they are not just looking at the screens but interacting in some capacity.
For not looking up, they do a fine job of moving without incident, although they do tend to narrowly miss running into someone else, usually me, and on several occasions nearly walked into oncoming traffic. I wonder what is so engaging that it simply cannot wait until a pause. Perhaps they never stop.
There are many articles written begrudging helicopter parents for the ills of ill-prepared, self-absorbed millennials who wind up underemployed, underpaid upon becoming minted. I beg to differ.
I think this as I walk in the rain on my way to pick up my own Starbucks coffee at the library. A girl stops in the middle of the walkway, pulls out her phone, poses, and snaps a selfie. I imagine her looking down as she walks away, narrating the scene with a caption, "Me and my hoodie in the rain."
Our library is recently renovated and it looks lovely and spacious. Except the space was not created for more print. There are multiple levels of space and new computers, but books were not in mind with this new addition. Ushering in students are two large revolving doors. "Well isn't that a metaphor for higher education?" I remarked to my colleague the first day it was open.
On the way out, with my cup in my hand, boots sloshing through puddles, I had all of the props, it didn't feel like a special moment to be captured and captioned for Instagram or Pinterest. But then again, I am on the cusp of being a millennial, in fact, the scholars who replaced the term "Generation Y" had my birth year in mind.
Parent should not bear the brunt of all of the problems this particular generation faces. We attribute it to them, but when I watch the students with their heads down, that is precisely what we have conditioned them to do.
We tell them to keep their heads down and make inflated GPAs, garner extra-curriculars like Girl Scout badges, and get trophies for showing up. We tell them to keep their heads down as they take one standardized test after a number. Well tell them to keep their heads down with a stream of applications made just for them to create a false digital community that purportedly keeps them connected.
The problem is we don't consider them actual people. They are data points. Standardized test scores. GPAs. SATs and GREs. Student loan account numbers. Their lives and stories constantly published and disseminated for Big Data, willingly offering details of their lives for free so social media and other outlets can collect it, repackage it, and sell the watered down contents back to them.
I'm not above any of it. Look at me. I am blogging as I stand on the soapbox.
I was thinking about looking up because I may have to take it all down soon for professional reasons. That is, cease production, pack it up, lock it down. There isn't anything questionable or profane about anything I publish. Perhaps the most offensive thing on the interwebs about me are retweets of "Shit Academics Say" and my introduction on Google+: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Mostly because it puts my cynicism right out there in your face, not because my friend William Shakespeare is offensive.
It's interesting. Pictures capture everything, in the flesh, in the color. But they are forgivable. We really don't believe the sisters who took naked photos at Angkor Wat deserve to be imprisoned. We will forget and forgive Kylie Jenner for dressing up as an Eskimo this Halloween even though she is old enough to own and operate a Rolls Royce and grew up during a time when cultural appropriation grew increasingly out of vogue. We will let it slide.
But publish something and you might as well call a lottery. It is there forever. It sticks with you. Not many of us consider ourselves prolific authors, yet that is what we do each day.
It made me think about this blog, if it stays, if it goes, but its purpose. Recently, a woman I went to high school with but did not know shared with me her blog (upon request). I was intrigued with what I understood was a person traveling the globe and I appreciated her opening up to me.
I am still looking to connect with others like me. She seemingly fit the bill, holding a doctorate in a health profession with a passion for travel. I hoped to draw inspiration from her story.
After things fell apart and continued to unravel for a while, I thought the only cure would be boarding a plane and never stepping off. But I tempted fate and kept on keeping on with my program, the only anchor I had left, even though it was a bit light.
The pictures without the story would have you believe she was strong-willed, happy, carefree living out of a back pack, giving up her successful career, and rock climbing in third-world countries. Instead her entries were about loss, being lost, letting religion guide her, and shaking off "should." She was just as much of a mess as me. It occurred to me then that the things I thought would put me back together again probably would have held it together no better than glue. We all deal with these things.
In fact, I started to wonder if I was the brave one sitting in solitude with a disagreeable dissertation, facing the very things that frustrated, hurt, angered, impeded me the most.
The one thing that struck me about her blog was that it was all about her. We read it to find out what she is doing and what she is feeling as she does it or reflects on it. But true travel writing is not about the individual, it is about the place.
Maybe I am no different than this woman or the girl in the rain coat snapping a selfie in the rain.
I would love for my blog to be something more than that, a guide of some sorts to "phinishing" a PhD (get it?) without the sparkles and warm fuzzies you have when you start the program, believing you complete it in three years flat along with a couple of certificates to boot.
But unless you are following a blog, that's pretty useless. Furthermore, there are real scholars who published books on the topic, and they actually work. In the print, in the flesh. Of course, I cannot find these titles in my library. . .
Some of the sharing is fun, inspiring even. My recent interest is "studyspo" brought me back in touch with aspects of myself I long abandoned-- The kid who made straight As and loved art supplies. My colleague called me over this morning to gleefully share about the new Japanese highlighters she found, courtesy of a blog about pens and highlighters, and we gushed about our mutual love for studyspo and writing instruments.
Admittedly, my study area looks less
And more research vomited on my carpet (*not my actual home, I decorate much better, thank you.)
(Inspire this.)
Because nothing ever looks like it does on Pinterest and Tumblr: Exhibit A.
In the long run, this really just helps me slatter all of my thoughts up somewhere quickly. It really is all about me. You won't learn how to write a dissertation here or glean any startling insights about higher education.
In essence, this is the anti-blog.
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