An unofficial AU advocate at large, Jason never misses a chance to recount the merits of an Athabasca education. Jason’s studies began alone in front of a rustic rural fireplace in December of 2003 and carried on through various brick and mortar college classrooms yet always with Athabasca as part of his journey. In 2014 he completed his BA in Sociology and in 2022 graduated with an MA in Cultural Studies. To this end, his columns seek to explore edifying moments of learning how to learn within the challenging ideological terrain of that great bugaboo facing students everywhere: the real world!
The popularity of the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown reveals vistas of societal curiosity about how outsiders come to be revered as catalysts for collective social action. Yet, wherever a big celebrity story abides, the smaller everyday life realm appears. To that end, we might ponder a famous Dylan lyric within a 21st… Read more »
To untangle the detritus of culture in our time, Interdisciplinary Studies affects a useful posture. At Athabasca, for instance, at the Master’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies “you will learn to think holistically, critically, and reflectively. You will find the connections and points of overlap between specialized and generalized knowledge.” AU’s Interdisciplinary program is called MAIS,… Read more »
Riven with palpable emotions and stricken with tremors, an actor falls to his knees on the high school stage. “Why, WHY, did you have to destroy the world!?!” he wails, in tones at once plaintive, anguished and horrified. The backdrop, an expansive city skyline painted by the art students and loomed over by an ominous… Read more »
Dusk brings an orange glow to the African savannah. Amidst the gloaming interplay of sultry slender shadows and reclining shafts of dull light, diurnal animals bed down for the night. Giraffes meander off over the horizon, their long necks seeming to sink like the masts of ships as they pass out of sight. Lion cubs,… Read more »
Picture it. Chicago, 1871, the windy night of Sunday, October 8th.. A little old lady named Catherine O’Leary was milking her cow. In the process of servicing the beast, the cow kicked over a lit oil lantern. Chicago at the time was a booming Midwest town largely of disorganized wooden shanties; soon a fire was… Read more »
“That’s a bit of a bougy getup you’re wearing!” This catchphrase, bougy, has gained currency lately to dress down a person’s perceived pretense. At first blush its meaning is clear: the term bougy conveys a certain decadence and formality—privilege combined with trite aphorisms about opportunity, innovation, and networking (not the type that leads to terrorist… Read more »
As we all found out last week when a person not long out of high school decided to climb a shed and take a few pot-shots at the US ex-President, the hazards of mentally disturbed people “going postal” are perpetually with us. And we ought to not be too politically correct to say so. Instead,… Read more »
Lurking in back of seasonal revelry, like a cat cowering behind a Christmas tree, waits the ghost of tomorrow. Shortly a new year will be upon us, and we each will embark, like pilgrims, into the unknown. What drives us on, what demons or angels, what winds of adversity or breezes of contentment will we… Read more »
Surrounded—hemmed in by textbooks, papers, and screens—studying can feel a bit claustrophobic. But feeling trapped can always be worse and eminently more physical. A remedy to study fatigue is just a quick trip to the current event annals to provide, if not solace, perspective. Take the recent murder trial of an American named Sarah Boone. … Read more »
A panoply of social types make up our world; ranging from social butterflies to shy lemurs, we each encounter, and perhaps embody, a variety of selves in a variety of situations. But what impels us to act in certain ways in certain circumstances? And, speaking especially of the motivational mishaps endemic to a chosen lifestyle… Read more »