Interdepartmental Dynamics
More and more I find myself hanging with my friends from the philosophy department and just finding myself generally disliking people related to my study of Japanese. Professors I can't say I have much to say in terms of how much I enjoy/don't enjoy their teaching, because I greatly enjoying learning the language and the professors are great, really. Admittedly, I have far more interaction with my philosophy professors, but that's generally because of the nature of the subject. Further, past my interest in the language and my desire to visit the country again, I generally find that I have nothing in common with them.
They almost have an anti-intellectual bent when approaching learning, and they make not caring, and not having knowledge to be a good thing. That is a phenomenon I distinctly remember from highschool, and since I didn't realize that it wasn't ubiquitous, it often made me feel weird, or unpalatable because I was so passionate about things.
Whereas philosophy. Ughhhh, philosophy and physics. I always feel like I've finally come home. Somewhere where I can ask questions and discuss ideas with incredibly bright and equally inquisitive, and often academically accomplished undergrads, postgrads, sessional lecturers, academics from across world, tenured professors, researchers in the field and everyone in between. I'm actually so tempted to do a honours year in philosophy and write a thesis, just because I want to stay in this environment for as long as I can.
I have to admit, though. Sometimes certain people in the philosophy department can be really alienating towards people who don't fit a certain mould. I say fair enough to an extent, because obviously we're going to want to interact more with people who know what they're talking about, and people who they are similar to, but I mean, if one of the tenets of Russelian society is to encourage more different types of people to engage in discourse, then it has failed spectacularly. A better way of facilitating discussion would be to explain concepts that might be taught in phil1001, rather than shutting the questioner down. We're trying to get people who might not necessarily have taken the course to become interested in it for fucks sake. Obviously, whether they actually are interested or whether they are one of the misguided self-help type would be philosophers is up to them, but allowing them to at least have the access to the problem at hand should be mandatory for such a club. Every single meeting, there are always a bunch of awkward and green newcomers who just sort of sit to the side, unable to join in because everyone else is tossing around jargon and talking about concepts that presuppose fundamental concepts that can be understood, if somebody just took the time to explain, rather than belting out your opinions on the matter.
Other than that, I'm finding that, ridiculously enough, in metaphysics at least, only the very loud and confident, type A personalities make it through. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that each and every single metaphysics lecturer I've gotten (History of metaphysics/German idealism lecturer aside-- he's the one I've got a massive fucking obsession on, and I actually am going to ask him out once sem ends. Would take massive girl-balls to do so, yeah. but that's what makes it so exciting) seems to make the tutorials at least, waaay too colloquial. All the quiet, introverted or shy thinkers get left to one side, because their uncertainly raised hand is going to get drowned out by the obnoxious final year philosophy major sitting at the front. And even if they get to talk, there's an environment created where it's fucking nerve wracking to say your thoughts, and everyone is watching you, and suddenly you can't seem to formulate your response at all, and to top it all off, the professor ruthlessly cuts you down. So then you resolve to never speak again, but the tutorial is so focused on the conversation that unless you contribute, you won't get much out of it, and so you just don't come, which inevitably leads to disappointing marks. Yeah, I've been there, and I'm seeing it happen to people now. Funnily enough, I'd never have been able to articulate it back when I did go through these stages, but gosh darnit I still now how much it sucks.
Many people talk about how white, and how male dominated the philosophy department is. Weeeeell yeah, the way people act, who is surprised, exactly? Even someone who acts a different way, from a white culture, say Russian, and holds a different perspective to the mind-body problem, takes a different approach to it completely, because academics in that area of hue he world diverged in area of research. He would be ignored. Not obviously, but what he says won't hold as much weight as say, the Canberra Plan, constructed by a local professor at ANU might.
So yeah. You're kind of shutting down different perspectives here. That's dangerous, but not pervasive in the classroom, thankfully. Just in societies and groups at university that have centre around philosophy.
They almost have an anti-intellectual bent when approaching learning, and they make not caring, and not having knowledge to be a good thing. That is a phenomenon I distinctly remember from highschool, and since I didn't realize that it wasn't ubiquitous, it often made me feel weird, or unpalatable because I was so passionate about things.
Whereas philosophy. Ughhhh, philosophy and physics. I always feel like I've finally come home. Somewhere where I can ask questions and discuss ideas with incredibly bright and equally inquisitive, and often academically accomplished undergrads, postgrads, sessional lecturers, academics from across world, tenured professors, researchers in the field and everyone in between. I'm actually so tempted to do a honours year in philosophy and write a thesis, just because I want to stay in this environment for as long as I can.
I have to admit, though. Sometimes certain people in the philosophy department can be really alienating towards people who don't fit a certain mould. I say fair enough to an extent, because obviously we're going to want to interact more with people who know what they're talking about, and people who they are similar to, but I mean, if one of the tenets of Russelian society is to encourage more different types of people to engage in discourse, then it has failed spectacularly. A better way of facilitating discussion would be to explain concepts that might be taught in phil1001, rather than shutting the questioner down. We're trying to get people who might not necessarily have taken the course to become interested in it for fucks sake. Obviously, whether they actually are interested or whether they are one of the misguided self-help type would be philosophers is up to them, but allowing them to at least have the access to the problem at hand should be mandatory for such a club. Every single meeting, there are always a bunch of awkward and green newcomers who just sort of sit to the side, unable to join in because everyone else is tossing around jargon and talking about concepts that presuppose fundamental concepts that can be understood, if somebody just took the time to explain, rather than belting out your opinions on the matter.
Other than that, I'm finding that, ridiculously enough, in metaphysics at least, only the very loud and confident, type A personalities make it through. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that each and every single metaphysics lecturer I've gotten (History of metaphysics/German idealism lecturer aside-- he's the one I've got a massive fucking obsession on, and I actually am going to ask him out once sem ends. Would take massive girl-balls to do so, yeah. but that's what makes it so exciting) seems to make the tutorials at least, waaay too colloquial. All the quiet, introverted or shy thinkers get left to one side, because their uncertainly raised hand is going to get drowned out by the obnoxious final year philosophy major sitting at the front. And even if they get to talk, there's an environment created where it's fucking nerve wracking to say your thoughts, and everyone is watching you, and suddenly you can't seem to formulate your response at all, and to top it all off, the professor ruthlessly cuts you down. So then you resolve to never speak again, but the tutorial is so focused on the conversation that unless you contribute, you won't get much out of it, and so you just don't come, which inevitably leads to disappointing marks. Yeah, I've been there, and I'm seeing it happen to people now. Funnily enough, I'd never have been able to articulate it back when I did go through these stages, but gosh darnit I still now how much it sucks.
Many people talk about how white, and how male dominated the philosophy department is. Weeeeell yeah, the way people act, who is surprised, exactly? Even someone who acts a different way, from a white culture, say Russian, and holds a different perspective to the mind-body problem, takes a different approach to it completely, because academics in that area of hue he world diverged in area of research. He would be ignored. Not obviously, but what he says won't hold as much weight as say, the Canberra Plan, constructed by a local professor at ANU might.
So yeah. You're kind of shutting down different perspectives here. That's dangerous, but not pervasive in the classroom, thankfully. Just in societies and groups at university that have centre around philosophy.