Dusk is beginning to edge forwards as the golden shades of Autumnal months slowly blur the fading hues of Summer. I'm looking to choose my second-year modules and explore dissertation options, whilst my brother and his peers look to draft personal statements and compile lists of prospective universities. It's the season of exam results and back-to-school. It's the season of bated breath and tentative preparation for those looking to make and those looking to solidify university applications. It's a question of who I am, and who I need to be to be who I want to be. What defines me? What do I have to offer? What have I achieved? I've long been someone who reverts to defining herself by her grades, but such a definition has a propensity to collapse and is interpretatively variable (an A to one may be a failure whilst to another it is irreducible success). And yet, this season unforgivingly begs the question, who am I?
I am a hundred unread books and 500 devoured books. I am bitter coffee disguised in taste by the sweetness of three sugars and drunken sullenly for the #aesthetic and the caffeine. I am pink loafers worn to death and stubbornly kept for old times' sake. I am overused semi-colons in an essay laboured over to the soundtrack of Interstellar. I am thirty photos taken on a rainy walk to supervisions, catching old buildings and fresh faces. I am an old 1930s typewriter gentrified into the 21st century and used to type notes and quotes, waiting for the adventure of a five page letter. I am breakfast hurriedly eaten on the way to lectures. I am hopping, skipping and bounding into hard sand on an athletics track, eyeing the clock for dinner. I am burnt popcorn at 4am. I am quoting the words to Father of the Bride out of context and subconsciously so. I am leather satchels and old school blazers. I am the dreamy spires of Cambridge, the mounds of reading lists and the forts of library books. I am the words I type and the words I read. I am. I.
Who am I?
Each definition is, and can only ever be, mere translation.
(1) Female: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilised by male gametes. (2) Student: A person who is studying at a university or other place of higher education; a person who takes an interest in a particular subject. (3) Conscientious: Wishing to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly. The first two OED definitions are base words which I would use as core to my identity; the third is a word repetitively used to define me by others throughout my life; all three are trivial translations of the definition of I.
Pictured above is the feedback from my first supervision essay (alongside the un-pictured accompanying feedback to order my bibliography of references in alphabetical order - take note, fresh-faced undergrads). As soon as I returned to my room from that supervision I sent a picture of the essay and its feedback to my family WhatsApp group; "Guys! I somehow managed to define this abstract notion and make some semblance of argument about it! Hallelujah!" The essay was on Geopolitics and the focus scholars emphasised on images, texts and speeches. Could I please explain what on earth 'Geopolitics' was to those of us who don't study Geography and don't read a million and one books? One discussion which arose from the supervision essay feedback was the role of scholars, and this was something I stumbled upon constantly in my study of the human aspects of my first year course, in relation to their studies and published work. Is their role to analyse, to interpret or to suggestively inform?
I think all academia is, fundamentally, a translation. The OED defines academia as 'the environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education and scholarship' and a scholar as a 'student or pupil'. The OED is of course a very base source of definitions, but its simplicity, particularly with respect to the latter, is exceedingly useful for constructing argument. Scholars are students, no matter how decorated or esteemed, of their chosen field in academia. They interpret whatever field they seek to (help) define. Academia is collectively the definition of such a multitude of interpretations. Academia is a fluid substance. It is interpretative but it is not definitive*. Academia by its very nature seeks to challenge and explore.
If I cannot define Geopolitics, such a recognition warranting supervisory applaud, how can I be expected to define myself?
- "To define is to limit." - Unknown
- "I am no bird; and no net ensures me: I am a free human being with an independent will." - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
- "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - Oscar Wilde
See also: I wrote a blog post two years ago on validations of intellect the night before my AS results here.
*I am focusing more upon the arts in this discussion, as this is largely the area of Academia that I am more interested in.
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