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!
It’s been said that no person is an island, but could it be we’re each grains of sand forming a luscious beach? The philosopher, Democritus, of Ancient Greece, suggested that all the world was made up of atoms, tiny particles that Lego®’d themself into semblances of order as rocks, trees, and humans. “The atomists argued… Read more »
The buzz and hubbub of inchoate spring, a season born in fits and starts, between hail and frost, parallels our academic potential. Besides rushing to and fro, tidying and maintaining yard and garden, the season of rebirth is a great time to lean on a metaphysical rake and take stock of that flourishing enterprise we… Read more »
What matters most in life? If you’ve been asked by friends or family “what the matter is,” or been confronted with claims that you possess too much of a scowl for your own good, or that dreaded resting bitch face, you know that matter is more than a physicist’s imaginary landscape of facts, figures, and… Read more »
An April Fool’s joke, honed to perfection and often benefiting from the victim being recently awakened from an overnight slumber, serves for more than mere guffaws. Laughter on this day serves to shine torchlight on the nature of everyday reality; that is, normality’s relatively preposterous underpinnings. Life, like our learning, requires levity to function. Does… Read more »
Ever spin a globe with eyes closed, your trembling index finger hovering expectantly before landing randomly on the sphere? At this moment of halt, the whole world seems available as a next place to travel. Yet, to discover a single location is to in a sense temporarily exclude all others. Distance education is like that… Read more »
A rising tide raises all boats. Except for the leaky ones. And trickle-down economics states that we all benefit when those at the top get rich. Unless we live near toxic runoff from tar-sand projects or major in academic topics not sanctioned for lavish remuneration by the powers that be. Wherever there are causes there… Read more »
Working from home has probably gained cachet by being a preferable alternative to COVID scares and toxic workplace cultures. As distance students, we might then fly into a heavy course load and figure it’d all be free sailing. Just catch the breeze of your inner motivation, right? And no commutes to class in January, booyah!… Read more »
What do we learn by becoming adult students? Humility, maybe, in the face of a labour market culture that values us chiefly on our ability to bring in the big dough—usually for someone else. Probably we all know a few folks who make, uh, phat cash on things that history may judge them negatively for. … Read more »
Academic disciplines are by nature exclusive in their views. The word discipline says it all; disciplinary actions invoke strictures and disciplinary biases reveal a denuded emperor within any thought structure. There are no limits to creativity as the re-forming of reality; learning is as much about unlearning prior beliefs than about gaining information. In the… Read more »
Tom Petty once sang that “love is a long, long, road” (Petty, online). The same is true of herstory, and particularly the herstory of dissent and protest. In Martin Luther’s time, German peasants took literally the Protestant call for worldly authority to bow to scripture and the supremacy of personal relations with the other-worldly. It… Read more »