Academic Inferiority. Intellectual Inferiority.

Compensating for your failures is a massive part of life.

I can hold my hands up to many examples of my many failings, yet I have begun to doubt a foundation I would usually fall back on. My grades in school and college have all generally been quite high, and while I never deluded myself into thinking that I was very intelligent, I did believe I could effectively play the academic game. If I felt I was lacking in a certain area I would simply sit down and beat it into myself. In short, when I saw an academic problem I believed that I had the tools to solve it.

I now question this. I am currently surrounded by a host of brilliant people and am beset by what seems to be an academic mountain. I have begun to wonder if I never really had the right equipment to scale such peaks or if my own training was somehow flawed. Perhaps other things have begun to distract me or perhaps I was always destined to struggle in this situation.

More worrying is the possibility that it is not an academic issue, but an intellectual one. At my current point I am determined to employ my past tactics of throwing myself into a certain area to absorb absolutely everything that I can. Should this fail, I will be in serious trouble. So this post is a mantra, a demand, a spark.

I will do my best.

-The English Student

An Assault on the Humanities

The economic tide seems to be turning very sharply away from the humanities.

In various countries in the last few months, a trend of cutting back money going to this area in local culture and universities has become obvious. Governments are clawing back funding and placing it into areas that they deem to be more economically fruitful. These include most notably the sciences and the effort for these countries to create unique selling points through technology. The hope is that these measures will create new jobs and allow these countries to once again flourish.

Well pardon my obvious bias, but this is absolute nonsense. How can anyone possibly make a judgement on what projects and areas will become profitable when they are in their genesis? In fact, massive 'economic worth' has been gained through breakthroughs in the humanities, that bring in academics from all corners of the world, sell books and give more monetary value to a country's culture.

This is a fine argument that many more intelligent than I will be able to properly mount and pursuit. I find myself reluctant to give my full backing to it however, as it engages these governments in their own discourse. That is truly what is at stake here, a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the humanities. People are taught another method of thinking. Whether you agree or not with a certain thinker is almost irrelevant in many academic circles, the important point is how you create an argument to defend your position. Thinking outside formulaic scientific discourse is so important that an assassination of the humanities amounts to a direct attack on our ability to think and articulate new things.

This is not an attack on the humanities, it is an attack on Humanity.

-The English Student

Face Association Game

I like word association games.

They test the mind, force you to think of synonyms and antonyms and increase your overall vocabulary. I have found however, the I have begun to play a face association game that has far less benefits. When I see people walking near me, or down the street I have begun to naturally compare them to other people that I know. A part of me thinks "that is" a certain person even though that is nigh on impossible in my current situation. So in effect, I associate their faces with those that I am familiar with.

Instead of increasing my knowledge as word association does, face association decreases it. People are not so easily typified as words and as such, I am forcing them into certain groups that in reality do not exist. I show a severe lack of creativity and indeed, a fear of new people if I perpetually go to pre-existing knowledge to perceive them.

There is an even worse example of this 'game' that I caught myself playing a few days ago. Two people that I had newly met became associated in my mind with others I knew previously. In the one case, I disliked the person I knew originally and had to force myself not to feel this way about the new person, who incidentally is completely opposite. In the other case I associated this person with someone that I greatly liked and in that way did not give this new person a chance to impress their own benefits on me. Thankfully I have recognised this and taken steps to rectify it.

However, I must be diligent in my avoidance of this face association game.

-The English Student

Re-rooting

Prepare for a tiring ecological metaphor.

At times I cannot help but wonder at my own position within the world. I have my home, routine, friends and family and this is what takes up the vast majority of my time. However, I have begun to wonder to what extent these things actually define me as a person. Effectively, they are the soil that my growing tree has nestled in.

This is not just an aimless conjecture and it is not a re-hashing of the nature/nurture debate. I want to know who I am and this seems to be constantly wrapped up in what I am doing and even more importantly, where I am doing it. I cannot pass through our capital city without making a judgement on a place or remembering a past experience I have had there. I will often bump into friends and associates in the city. I become defined by all of these places.

So this has to be a partial reason for my removal from my capital city to another capital. Being an ancient oak tree, set in the ground and immovable is actually a frightening prospect when you do not choose it. I do not hold any ill will to my previous soil and the prospect of returning there either temporarily or permanently is still a very attractive one.

However, for now I need to be like a potted cactus, taking some of that soil with me and yet being more open to change.

-The English Student

Marketing Failures

I have been watching too much television lately.

As such, I have been exposed to quite a lot of terrible marketing campaigns. On a basic level there are three types of poor advertisements. If an ad is obscure in its message and relation to the product or service it is hardly effective. In addition to this, an advertisement that is dishonest about the true benefits of their product or service must be counter productive. A final irritating advertisement style is one that attempts to annoy a consumer into buying their product.

There is one famous advertisement that employs this last method. It is so loud and brash that it would be impossible to ignore. It revels in how cheap the presentation is and the obnoxious presenter is encouraged to irk the listening in every possible way. Is this truly an effective marketing method? Whenever I see these advertisements I take a silent vow to never give them money and thus punish them for their negative marketing techniques. It cannot be denied that the brand is well known on the back of these ads, just not well respected.

All of this was put into stark contrast when I visited a company that has one of the best marketing departments in the world. They use clever and unique ploys. They do not try to bully the consumer or even try to make outlandish claims about their products. Instead, they generally use humour and guile to convince people that they are deserving of our money and this is the benefit of positive marketing campaigns.

Even if we are being tricked into giving up our money, at least we feel good about it.

-The English Student