Siterep 7

 In terms of creating a new sense of self in academia in my current intersection (cultural studies, performance, and dramatic arts), after the conversation with Rachel Aker, it left me more confused about what direction I am supposed to do internally. "Enduring Skills and the Future of Work", by Chris Smith, for instance, relies on a premise of collaboration and PhD work leads to more opportunity than simply being a professor producing research. But that being said, the examples of that seem to still be forced to come from the student rather than the system that houses us. Producing the soft skills within us is fine, but the us of our time, to teach and to be taught, doesn't reflect how to engage in industry unless it involves report work or conducting research.  

Or in "How to Optimize your Career preparation", the formatting and reformatting the self in Resumes, CVs, and interviews makes me personally exhausting, on top of the issues I am trying to solve from the beginning and ending graduate school. Everything is my responsibility, despite that my "job" is to learn, produce research and teach for "20 hours" of work. As the employee of the university, wouldn't progression towards networking be a bigger concern for them? Not so say that we shouldn't put in initiative to get to where we need and want to be after the degree, but this need to create more room is a market response the university system has not fully addressed yet.

By toast estimates, 1/2 of students who enter a 4 year university will leave with a degree in 6 years, and only half of those students will actually get a job in a field similar or adjacent to their chosen degree. Th university has some but poor response to a changing workforce. Some companies don't want to train you, and those that do don't expect you to come with a degree or for you to stay long. This might be more bias than actuality, but so far, the school expects the students to adapt to the workforce. Not the school changing enough or they're being a solid middle ground between education and industry. A given recent events it seems like this will continue to be the case and my exhaustion will possibly remain.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sitrep 3

 What is performance for? Who is it for? Why do we do this? These questions keep piercing around my brain like cracks giving way under ice on a lake bed. In my neck of the woods, in performance studies that is housed in Communication Studies, there is a acknowledgment of how life, especially the ways we can communicate, rivals the conventions of storytelling and staging is just as applicable. If that is the case, that what we see in front on stage mirrors the front of stages that we all perform in our personal and professional lives, why do we need to show an audience how "real" the real world is? From A Street Car Named Desire  to Belle Reprieve, or the violence in demonstrated in Blasted , the impulse on one hand to demonstrate a certain level of uncomfortable pain to harm also seems connected to the feelings on the other hand to be sat down and bare witness (or be an accomplice at times). There's a general feeling of wanting to reject something that is real in the worl...
Read more

Sitrep 8

 Notions of freedom, and layers of freedom, is something that I found most interesting in Gem of the Ocean. Sandra L. Richards lays out how freedom looks different for 3 of the characters in this play.  " Not only is an emphasis on agency uttered repeatedly but also it is apparent that the constitution of freedom changes depending on the historical context. For the older generation, freedom at one point meant emancipation from slavery; for Solly's sister in the post-Reconstruction South, freedom would entail the absence of racial violence and exploitation; for the newly arrived Citizen, freedom means nondiscriminatory, well-paid employment and psychic equilibrium " (Richards, 159).  This plays onto the title, being a reference to a song that is basically one step removed from being used in an Army ad. And yet Wilson's work here seems to ride a tension between a refutation of an advertainment for a national identity, while also promoting an advertainment towards a pan...
Read more

Siterep 6

 One of the most fascinating things during my reading and watching of the King and I again, was the both the more contemporary readings of aspects from the movie version and the striking similarities and how it was similar to much portrayals of Asian Americans in contemporary media. Many of the TikTok Clips notes the actor, Yul Brynner's charisma and attractiveness. A Russian actor playing a Thai King didn't seem to rob the fantasy for many. An episode of American Horror Story, for instance, comments on his physical appeal. One TikTok I found even noted the problematic ways that the material comments on women, but ultimately they can over look (as a joke) because of Yul Brynner. This strange phenomenon is something I found present in much consumption of Asian male performers in Kpop as of the late 2010s to the present. That these men exude a sexual and magnetic charm that is unrivaled in all of men, but with other Asian men as well. Instead of focusing on the artistry, industr...
Read more