I haven't dyed my hair black (a $300 visit to the salon taught me that lesson already), nor have I taken to sporting inch-thick eyeliner. No, my rebellion is outside of the realm of the cosmetic, and instead, consists of me spouting complaints in class about the absurdity that is the game of academia.
In recent news, I said, out loud, (oh what have I done?) "isn't rhetoric supposed to enact social change? It just seems like a pissing contest between people who try to out scholar each other."
Needless to say, my professor was not impressed. There goes that PhD recommendation.
Despite my extreme embarrassment when putting my discontent into words for all of academia to hear, I've still, for the past six months, stubbornly insisted that I was right, that academia was simply a hoop-jumping, vocab-spouting, game of pretention. I felt that I had every right to be disillusioned with the institution.
And so, here I find myself, writing this very piece from the institution.
To a certain extent, I'm right (and humble too!). There is a fair number of hoops to jump through in higher ed, especially when you're a grad student who's new to the game. In writing my masters thesis, I have found that before I can bridge the gap between academia and popular culture, I have to demonstrate my ability to play that game, to talk the academic talk, to name drop the right scholars.
It's frustrating. It often feels purposeless. It makes me question if my degree will actually allow me to help people, to cause positive change in the world.
I know, a person in her twenties who wants to change the world. Bet nobody has thought of that before.
Ironically, it was a scholar who helped me understand the flaws in my thinking (an ecocritic named Ian Marshall who just happens to be my dad--what are the chances?). His piece titled The Dark Cliffy Spot: Ten Years After allowed me to see that my persistent need to be forward-thinking, to fear that maybe my degree won't help people in a practical or concrete way, is perhaps a surefire way to be miserable both in and outside of the academy.
Allow me to explain.
The "dark, cliffy spot" is a site--a dark and cliffy site, if you can believe it--at an environmental center in my hometown. My father originally gave a rather underwhelming area that name, only to discover that someone else had found an even darker, even cliffier spot, and thus this new site won the title. As such, he went to the new site to reflect.
And that rather reminds me of academia, the end.
Just kidding. Allow me to explain further.
In his "10 years after" reflection, Marshall (I'm just gonna follow genre conventions and call him by his last name even though that's kinda sorta weird, okay?) notes that the dark, cliffy spot is so beautiful, so awe-inspiring, that it forces those who look at it to say "wow," to look outside of themselves for a moment.
Marshall elaborates with the observation that "when you're saying 'wow,' you are not dwelling on internal strife or monologue. You are talking to the world, responding to something outside of the self, so it's not just your breath moving outward." He goes on to tie in the idea that even though nature is a great place to reflect inwards, it's the external forces--the site itself, as well as the people with which you create memories at the site--that make that experience meaningful. In a sense, these external forces encourage their onlookers to be fully in the immediate, simply taking in an experience.
I am not a nature writer, though I'm not without a great deal of self-reflection. In my case, my "dark, cliffy spot" is not so beautiful. It's full of difficult climbs without a promise of an end. It's darker than I'm used to, and I must use more strength than I originally deemed myself able. Looking inwards, I wonder what I'm doing, grappling with discomfort and the unknown.
And yet. Looking outwards, I can see the academia perhaps does achieve some sort of purpose. By participating in difficult conversations about cultural appropriation, or accessibility in the institution, I am, in a sense, talking to the world. I am part of a conversation that is bigger than myself. Through learning about various feminist theories and histories, I can not only reflect on my own struggles as a woman, but I can begin to understand how I might help women whose backgrounds and histories are vastly different from my own. I'm doing this work with other human beings who I have come to respect and admire. And that's pretty cool.
I might not often find myself in landscapes that evoke the same kind of immediate awe as Marshall's dark, cliffy spot, but applying that same recognition of the power of wow allows me to realize just how lucky I am to be here, now. At a time in which most people are fighting for their education, I am awed by the chances I have been given, the people these chances have allowed me to meet. I realize that academia has allowed me to live in a place that I love. I see the mountains and continue to be awed by their quiet, sublime beauty.
Usually, awe require work. A beautiful view requires an intense hike to get there. Meaningful change in academia requires some difficult readings, some theories that seem impractical. But looking to the power of wow, I understand just how beautiful it is to be part of something bigger, to create my own dark, cliffy spot.
