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!
Any child can answer a simple closed question. What do dogs do? Bark. What do bees do? Sting. Well, hopefully not, we say, and then we perhaps ponder the potential for a family viewing of a harrowing epic documentary about beekeepers in Macedonia. It’s called Honeyland, and it depicts a family where members of all… Read more »
A great hope of AU studies, to this Fly on the Wall anyway, is that it may give us wings to see beyond the confines of our towns and our our lives, that we may ever circle the globe of ideas with excitement and optimism rather than by bearing the sickly burden of that timeless… Read more »
Being a bit contrarian is in the nature of studying at AU—we’re unique attendees at a unique university. Off-campus, as it were, oxymorons such as adult student pervade our cultural atmosphere. We’ve aged out of youth but aren’t quite willing to be normal, hoi polloi, mass culture consumers of life as labouring for wages and… Read more »
A human sneeze can explode out from our humble maw at 200 miles an hour (Bardi, online). So it’s no surprise that buffets from High River to Honolulu have for decades utilized ubiquitous sneezeguards as a relative failsafe against an impromptu achoo (Smith, online). And just as hunger gnaws at the tummies of mammals worldwide,… Read more »
We’ve all stepped in a puddle of spring rainwater. It’s like a dark and stormy night, and “once upon a time” implies repetition of a series of attendant expectations. An inadvertent puddle splash connotes an oopsie-doodle moment and then, insidiously and almost imperceptibly, water wicks its way up our pantleg inducing uncomfortable sensations as our… Read more »
“There is no subdivision of desire into homosexuality and heterosexuality”, claimed queer theorist Guy Hocquenghem (49). By this view, gayness does not represent a repressed minority within the hegemonic pantheon of tough men with trucks and despicable “no fat chicks” bumper stickers because, ironically, desire itself is queer. Everything else is, well, just an old… Read more »
As a young party animal who moonlighted as an AU student the werewolf battle was real for a younger version of this Fly on the Wall. Would I snarl and shred my way right out of my shot at a higher education degree? Or would I find a better balance between madness and civilized discourse,… Read more »
Delusions of grandeur go with higher education like helium balloons go with funny voices and imagined flight. To rise above the vulgar norms of existence is what AU is all about; we become more than the sum of our parts when inspiration enters our view. Distance education implies a desire on the part of students… Read more »
On Mother’s Day we appreciate those adults who nurtured our howling and screeching primate selves out of the precognitive underbrush of infancy. The splendours of a Mother’s love knows no bounds, to be sure, and to this we can attest when we see or experience the labours required for child-rearing. We all began life with… Read more »
“Going somewhere?” Intoned as a mocking phrase, maybe when an adult has quietly confiscated a teenager’s car keys only to dangle them perspicaciously at a crucial moment, or when a friend appraises the sudden donning of hat and jacket by an erstwhile interlocutor after an especially barbed rejoinder, the notion of going somewhere carries a… Read more »