Even erudite flies get smashed now and then for sounding too ‘school smart’. As one of many AU students not immersed in an academic social sphere, Jason’s ‘Fly on the Wall’ column seeks to aid and abet the success of others in his cohort. We won’t always be understood when we speak of what we are learning in school but we can rest assured that our education still has value.
His lighthearted approach to sociological philosophy stems from conducting field research at bush parties and working his day job reforesting the mountains of BC. Born in the city of Vancouver and raised on a farm in the Fraser Valley and an orchard in the Okanagan, he attained a diploma in Horticulture in the Creston Valley and then returned to school as a Sociology major. Today’s he’s an AU Master’s of Integrated Studies student who spends his spare time enjoying nature walks, snorkeling and reading whatever philosophical and sociological tracts capture his fancy.
Jason is fascinated with the micro-sociological thoughts and interactions that frame and demarcate our experience of daily life as well as the philosophical realm considering essential questions about what it is to be a human. It’s dense brush but Jason seeks answers where murkiness holds sway.
A Few Theoretical Influences: Louis Althusser, Isaac Asimov, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Aime Cesaire, Carol Clover, John Cummings, Kurt Cobain, Jacques Derrida, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Hobbes, Agnes Martin, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Max Weber
This is not a COVID article. Computer algorithms may spot a key word, like teachers who spot head lice on children, but this article isn’t about words. And it’s not about parasites, per se. Remember when a phrase like gut fauna might have turned tummies? Well, truth is, it is the representative weeds, er, wee… Read more »
Ever switch majors? Unlike New Year’s resolutions, our academic major ought to be a fully personal choice that we will live with for the rest of our lives. To be resolute about a lifestyle change (yawn) or a brain improvement (read a non-course related book each month?), implies an impossible certainty, however. We are already… Read more »
Did you ever write an AU assignment on a tablet? Me neither! While touch screen keypads might be suitable for kibitzing with family and friends and dolling our faces up with filters ranging from Capuchin Monkey to Octogenarian Granny, nothing beats the tactile nature of a physical keyboard. Traditional keypads contain ample space for flourishes… Read more »
December holidays can be a wondrous and positive time. Also, holiday cheer can be an oxymoron. Participants are implored to be joyful and to keep the Christmas spirit while still being themselves. And, well, it’s not so easy to feel festive all the time. Likewise, we’re asked to remember the reason for the season (family,… Read more »
Imagine yourself as driftwood, bobbing and floating and carried along by an inexorable current of education. One moment on the surface as though with an invisible propeller, the next under the surface like a shipwreck waiting to sink and be found. Our study lives are framed by our ability to lose and find ourselves in… Read more »
Silence, and especially the meditative space required to really absorb and digest course material, is a core commonality to education the world over. Every culture has some form of teaching, from indigenous elders to Maoist re-education camps. We distance students ask our minds to re-create a sense of classroom presence every time we cross the… Read more »
Space can be on a page, between our thoughts, when no one’s around, or in between planets. Ideas connect our minds between moments just as words connect our selves with others. Space makes things what they are. In outer space there’s the planet Mars, that blank canvas of potential and mystery for human history long… Read more »
The sound of a door locking behind us can be unsettling, especially in an automobile. It’s as though moments of potential are, at least symbolically, closed off to us. One commentator describes the process: “it’s an emasculating scenario when going to dinner with friends: riding in their backseat to the restaurant. When one attempts to… Read more »
As we remember those who fought and died in past wars, we could easily feel like all of this carnage happened in far away places and times, in landscapes sequestered into monastic cells of historical periods where the rest of our life need not tread. Or at least not for more than the morning of… Read more »
The individuation of education need not be a lonely or isolating experience. Distance learning need not imply distance from reality. We get to write our own themes, develop our own mantras, and largely learn at our own pace. AU is like life itself that way. If you reduce life to your annual tax forms or… Read more »