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!
A 2019 worldwide study finds that the average respondent spends 6 hours and 42 minutes online per day; Canadians in 2021 clocked an average of 4.4 hours per day, up from 3.9 hours the previous year. (Salim, 2019. Somos, 2022). These facts might lead us at AU to ponder how many hours we’ve personally wiled… Read more »
Truth and Reconciliation is the most black and white concept imaginable in our flimsy and ephemeral epoch of tweets and twists and turns as the political correctness wagon lurches ever onward. We all know that what our cultural forefathers (and mothers) condoned and carried out with regard to Indigenous children sent to residential schools was… Read more »
An Aussie had been adrift at sea because he’d lost his wifi and his boat’s electrical capacities; he survived with a dog for months before some helpful Mexican fishers spotted him (Stavely, 2023). Then, before returning home to the land down under, he said goodbye to the dog in Mexico where they’d found each other! … Read more »
Ahem. Try reading aloud this article title to a counsellor and you’ll find, I wager, that contrary to the seriousness of their client’s subject matter and lifelong travails, never can it be said that therapists lack a sense of humor! And if you want, follow it up with a paraphrase of President/WW2 General Dwight D…. Read more »
Karl Marx reveals himself as quite the psychologist when we research him that way; he divides needs and wants as one would computer fonts, some based on the essence of our humanity as creative beings and some, for lack of a better word, as essentially oppressed by nonsensical cultural wing-dings. To Marx, social reality makes… Read more »
“She’s a backbiting gossiper who throws anyone under the bus as soon as they leave the room. Nasty, fussy, impolite—just your type!” With sarcasm and passive aggression it’s easy to denigrate a person and categorize them, rightly, wrongly, or humorously. Such pop psychology can be enacted whenever a conversation veers into being about people rather… Read more »
Debating with others can be fun or infuriating or a bit of both; the important thing, academically, is to keep our minds open to new evidence and ideas. There are few, if any, theories not worth investigating if we’re worth our academic salt. Discourse Theory applies when we consider the rightness and wrongness of various… Read more »
As students we have the privilege of holding ourselves accountable. We define our success not only by the grades and degrees we receive, but at a deeper level in our being. How we assess our progress is a discourse of our own making, with conclusions that only we can truly affirm. By granting ourselves kudos… Read more »
Why are we here; what’s our purpose in life? Often to ask the question is to answer it with inferences about vocations and families, laboured productions and reproductions of life, limb, and womb. Life seems to call for a series of goals and ambitions; is this the way of nature, though? We live amidst many… Read more »
Sally Field was a pint-sized teen actress in the 1960s; she adorably won accolades playing a lovable neophyte surfer named Gidget (the local beach boys dubbed her such because she was a girl and seemed like a midget). Later in the decade she starred as an equally-short (not all typecasting is avoidable) novice nun embarking… Read more »