Sunday Morning Subtle But Obvious Organized Self Abuse Swim Club

I have a lot of memories, I seem to not be able to shut up the monkey mind, I over analyze. I now get to do all that while learning to type.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Alls fair in academia or is it?


So, the internet. You know it’s really a pretty serious class issue. The people who have unobstructed access are the people who have disposable income or who are willing to sacrifice necessities for access. Then, you have to live in an upscale enough area to have web service access. Not so much an issue in this country were the microwave towers wave, but very critical in other countries.

So I’m thinking of this as I sit in the comfort of my living room, brewing a cup of tea and prepping my peanut butter toast, waiting for class registration to start. I have a class that is offered only in one spot per semester. I have built my entire schedule around getting in that class. I am doing everything in my power to be one of the people who gets one of those seats in that very limited class space.
I want to edge out the others, I have the system available to me, a white woman in America, who came from the disappearing middle class to potentially oust other people who don’t have the resources to be sitting at their computers at precisely 8:00 am already logged in to the school system.

Here’s my justification, I have worked my butt off in my current english class with this same teacher. I have 0 absences, I participate like crazy, I’m interested in the subject, I turn in everything on time. I sit there and watch these people who just really don’t care much one way or the other take the spaces away from other people who might care a lot.
BUT here’s the down side. Maybe a couple of those kids are being turned on for the first time and maybe my actions (which are not really shenanigans but feel creaky) are possibly going to prevent the illumination of some other human when the chances are exceedingly good that I would run across this literature somewhere down the line anyway. And I am using my class status as someone who, while poor, has family connections to the middle class to back me, to try to get an academic edge.
Right or wrong?
Well, regardless, I’m using my edge, just as I’m trying to use all my edges nowadays. I am not going to play the class guilt game when it comes to getting what I need. I already paid a really heavy price for my class guilt as a child and I’m feeling like, account paid.

EDIT: So it worked and I got all my classes just as I wanted them, despite having a glitch where for a few minutes I couldn't remember how to actually register, which blurb to click on and such.
Intro to Psych
Literature of the Non-western world
Foundations of Algebra
Classical Piano
13 credit hours, which is one more than I had this semester, but a more compact schedule, none of this sitting around on Tuesdays for an hour and a half waiting for lab to start, especially with the new no smoking policy, fehhh.
Just go to school, chew that Goddawful nicotine gum and grit my teeth alot.

3 Comments:

At 11/09/2005 7:58 PM, Blogger Watson Woodworth said...

As a villified straight white male who really likes queercore shows, I'm not sure I even want to justify myself anymore. Socially I have absolutely nothing to loose presently.
And really, why feel sorry for someone less connected. I'm not as connected as others but I don't want somebody to feel sorry for me because of it.
I'm not singing the praises of being heartless or anything, It's good to have compassion and empathy, but you DID do the work and I'm glad that you're closer to your goal.
Have you tried that nicotine thing that looks like a big cigarette holder?

 
At 11/09/2005 10:17 PM, Blogger Stella Magdalen said...

Ha maybe I could fool them with that thing enough so they'd never know if I was smoking or having a nicotine puff, and end up leaving me alone. heh heh heh.
Karl Lafong and I talk about liberal guilt a lot. We've both decided we're over it.
Now trying to knock down real injustice, that's a horse of a different colour.

 
At 11/10/2005 8:47 AM, Blogger Stella Magdalen said...

After thinking and thinking about this, I've decided I have to qualify my above statement just a little.

It seems that some reasons that karl LaFong and I feel we can consider ourselves exempt now from the liberal guilt, is that we have both been brought down way low in life and dragged through the fire. Then have subsequently rebuilt ourselves of those tempered materials. So we tend to agree that the essence of liberal guilt has been flamed away in those experiences.

 

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