The Future

Today wasn't a great day. I spent all day questioning my own reading of everything. I must constantly try to orient myself again around the central goal that brings me here to Arizona, getting my degree in Rhetoric and Composition. I have to remind myself that I don't want to end up in academia, so my frustration with academia doesn't bog me down and make me feel at a dead-end. What I'm reading and doing right now seems to be focused around academia. Certainly my research methods class is teaching me how to enter into academic discourse successfully and authentically. But it seems disingenuous to try to be authentic at this point, because I am so new to this, and I don't feel that I need to be able to do it other than to pass the class. And I hate feeling like what I'm doing is for nothing. However, even though I keep telling myself I don't want to end up in academia, I keep finding myself thinking about how children can be better prepared for life and more successful in academia while they are required to be there. (This could very likely be because I like to blame my education for my deficiencies, and I hope that a carefully planned life course would make the road smoother for future generations). Mostly my ideas revolve around ways to make education less rigid and scholarly, with the hope that students will learn better that way, even though it seems counter-intuitive. Maybe I can somehow link my recurring thoughts of education, literacies, digital and social media, and the environment together into some grand idea that will change the world. On the other hand, changing the world seems so unlikely, since today has confirmed for me that I'm ignorant, lazy, and possibly mentally deficient. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day to reexamine these ideas.