I love to bitch about my self inflicted (well .. due to self family) academic torture because the truth is, I am lazy and I hate courseworks with a passion.

But I love knowledge. I think its really unfortunate that the pressures put on us through assessments has (at least for me) taken from the joy of learning :(

So I huff and puff and declare this to be the life I never wanted. And then I get to do 'casual' reading of different aspects in development, like I am doing now for my dissertation, and I get so excited its kind of lame (or super awesome if you're into that kind of thing). Like there's so much I want to do and different directions I want to take my paper, but I'm limited to 10,000 words and have to concentrate and cut down to just some specific areas. At times like these, when I'm feeling really passionate about the issues I want to research on, I feel like I need a PhD to have space to do and write up my research.

And then I get to the actual doing of the work. The deadlines and the assessments and the grading and the criticizing. At times like these (which are more common than the excited-nerd times), I just want to throw all the paper up in the air and say a big fuck you to my degree and just walk away. I wish the system in the UK was like that of America, where you can take a course per term/semester/whatever and like do your degree in 10 years or something. I'd probably hate myself a bit by the end of it .. but at least I'd enjoy the learning without being rushed.

Anyway so that was my 10 minutes of break and now I'm going back to reading. Thought I'd share this excerpt though .. because I'm in that kind of nerdy mood and thought this was powerful, true .. and a bit sad:

‘A proletariat without factories, workshop
and work, and without bosses, in the
muddle of the odd jobs, drowning in
survival and leading an existence like a
path through embers’ (Patrick Chamoiseau) 

Adieu. (because obviously all academic-nerds speak French, eat cheese and drink wine :P man, what a douchy bunch ha!)
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