Informal Academia and My Antique Village

So I just had an interesting academic experience that I feel the need to reflect on. I am taking a class called “Economic Sociology and Social Inequalities” which I thought would be a packed class because in my experience this is a really key area of sociology and I think the one I have come to find most interesting. Turns out it isn’t for many people because we only have 3 students in the class. Today my other two friends weren’t able to join so it was a one-on-one 3.5 hour block course for me. Honestly, it felt like I was out having coffee with a new friend who knows a lot about a lot of the things I’m interested in. And it was sooo much better than any other kind of class experience I’ve had before. I think one really important factor was that my teacher embraces a different attitude to teaching, in which personal life experiences are allowed to mix with what we’re learning. We discussed all of the new concepts I was supposed to learn with so many issues and examples from our own personal experiences. It turns out my teacher has a similar immigration background and a similar approach to sociology. He said he’s here to solve problems, which is exactly how I would define my own purpose in this pursuit. And he’s some years ahead of me in his own journey, so everything we discussed was so interesting and relevant for me. Now, this makes me think that this probably isn’t an uncommon phenomenon, I believe our lives are very much intertwined with our life choices and career decisions. But in most of my other academic encounters there is a very formal atmosphere. It’s strictly class and you have to consider that when you’re participating in the discussion. I think this makes the whole experience less interesting and the participation becomes more anxiety-inducing compared to a personal conversation you could have with a friend. The fear of making a mistake or being misunderstood and the panic that it creates, the inability to explain yourself. Why do we have this? It’s just so prevalent a situation for students yet we don’t question its existence. Is this truly a good atmosphere for learning? I highly doubt it. I have a horrible social anxiety in public speaking situations and class is, believe it or not, public speaking for me. I had to take mild sedatives to be able to speak freely in class and it worked but guess what? No sedatives for this class and my performance has never been better. Normally, it was agreed that we don’t have to do the whole 3.5 hours but today it just naturally happened that we did take all of that time and it was not a burden at all. At least to me, it wasn’t. I feel like if we somehow turned academic learning into a more personal experience, it would be so much better as an experience in general and it would probably get the innovation going that I believe we need. It also kinda sucks since I’m recently told that in Germany things are quite professional and formal in academia. And considering I’m a woman and 9 out of the 10 professors I have met are men, my academic relationships are bound to have more rules to adhere to, unfortunately. I mean one of my teachers said so himself that women are disadvantaged in terms of socializing with their professors or supervisors because it's “risky”. That is so wrong in so many ways. In this power relationship it’s the man who is higher in the hierarchy and the power to do anything wrong. So why don’t we all act like civilized human beings and not hurt each other? Isn’t that worth a shot? Instead of putting women at a disadvantage they can’t do anything about? And where is gender theory in all this, what if either one is not heterosexual? Such a disturbing perspective in my opinion. Ugh. I would now say that my fields of interest are economic sociology, organizations and work and as far as I have seen it’s a pretty male-dominated area. It’s just harder as a woman to form the networks that could potentially be very beneficial to my academic journey. And I don’t know if there’s anything I can do about it other than pushing my outgoing side to be comfortable in class environments. I have to somehow overcome the structural barriers I face with some aspect of my individuality, exercise my agency. See how much I’ve internalized my class today? lol.

This brings up my own ideas regarding learning. I have problems with academia. That was one reason I started my blog, following Mark Fisher’s lead, I realized that academic writing is so fucking difficult! Paralyzing! You have to have read everything about a topic before saying anything (how is that even possible anymore?) You can’t have an opinion. Whenever I want to say something I don’t have proof for I have to find someone credible from the past (who didn’t have these barriers) that already said it. Fisher says that writing his dissertation was traumatic and destroyed his writing habit so he started a blog to strengthen it again. Such a brilliant idea! Plus, no one ever reads academic articles. I have been pushing and pushing my friends, for whom I am a credible person, and no one reads anything! Even the interesting ones, who is gonna read an empirical article? How are we supposed to disseminate knowledge like this? It makes absolutely no sense to me. So I will do my own thing once I get the credentials that I apparently need to be taken seriously. And the learning part isn’t that bad in academia, there is room for improvement though.

So first of all, I want my ideas and the knowledge I produce to actually reach people, and not just other academics. So I guess a blog is one good way to do that. But I also want to team up with someone (I have someone in mind) to produce social documentaries because I think they can be even more effective, people are so visual and they like everything to be easily consumable so I’ll have different versions of my ideas in different formats so everyone can (and hopefully will) access them.

And then, my even bigger idea! Or dream! Whatever you call it. After camping all summer I realized that I like being isolated from society and all its pressures. And I had the idea of building my own community, the way I want it, together with people who share my values. A community that is in peace with nature and thus human beings as well. So it started as an idea for a camp ground but it escalated. We want to have make a space in nature that will be self-sustainable for one, and that works kinda like a primitive society but we will use technology. I’m not against technology, it’s the way it’s used that’s important. The people who choose to visit or be a part of our community can’t just pay their way in and demand services from other people. They will be expected to contribute in some way to the life there and interact with the social life. As for the education part, I want to invite people who I believe can contribute and who share these values, to share their knowledge with the community. It’ll be on a voluntary basis. And I think the topics will be under 3 main categories: nature (our relationship with nature, and knowledge about nature itself), humanity (social sciences and humanities), and art. And it won’t be class in a building with the hierarchy of teacher and students but rather a more equal environment in nature and with very different forms of learning rather than just lectures. It will depend on the topic and it involve trips, walks, activities, games, discussions, visual or audio content. It can be individual or collective, it can be at any time of day. It will be very flexible and hopefully foster creativity and curiosity. Also, I want to have campfire gatherings at the end of each day where we can sing and dance and drink or smoke or whatever fun activities we want to do. I want to build our own “antique” amphitheater for performances for dance, music or storytelling or whatever. I want to practice psychedelic medicine there as well, with my friends who will hopefully by that time have learned how to do it. I also want to learn how to be a guide for these experiences. Some of my friends say I want to build a commune, others say I want to build my own ancient city. Call it whatever you like, I think it will be amazing! It’s not necessarily a permanent place for anyone, we would be welcome to nomads. You can visit it in certain seasons if you wish but it will be there whenever you need a break from modern life. I want it to be a place open to anyone who wishes for such a life for any period of time. I might not even always be there. But it’ll be a base for me as well, somewhere I can sincerely call home. I obviously have to plan a lot more and take some sort of action towards this goal but I will. For now, I’m dreaming.

I also find this idea intriguing as a social scientist. I could try different forms of governance and exchange and basically just different forms of living and observe the outcomes. It’s as far from any existing system that I can get. It could kind of be like an experiment and I believe it would provide insight into my own pursuit of knowledge.