Re: Research Bros
Sep. 19th, 2023 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI'm usually not the sort of person who writes stories as therapy. Usually I write stories because I think they're interesting.
The story I'm writing about Calip and Tauro in Tears of the Kingdom is very healing, though. Perhaps you'd think that what goes on inside higher education shouldn't be the source of trauma, but it's not always healthy to see what actually happens on the factory floor.
I think, to explain this, it's useful to draw a distinction between primary education, secondary education, and higher education. In the first two, to a certain extent, the goal is to help children and young people meet and overcome challenges while they gradually acquire a better understanding of what it means to be a human in this world. Meanwhile, in higher education, the goal is to fund, conduct, publish, and disseminate research, with the purpose of "teaching" being to train fellow professionals. In other words, the goal of primary+secondary education is to help young people open gates, while the purpose of higher education is to be the gatekeeper. And this makes sense, right? You'd like the people designing nuclear reactors and playing with giant electromagnetic particle accelerators to have the appropriate training, for example.
(This is not to say that people who don't go to college don't have valuable specialized skills, or that everyone who completes college or a graduate program is actually well-trained and competent. The system has many problems! But you get the general idea.)
Still, I think there's often a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion in higher education that can be difficult to deal with, especially over time. And for me at least, it's good to sit down and think about why I wanted to do this in the first place, and how it could be better. Essentially, it's healing to reframe my workplace trauma as a love story, and hopefully I can bring that sense of positive energy back to my career.
The story I'm writing about Calip and Tauro in Tears of the Kingdom is very healing, though. Perhaps you'd think that what goes on inside higher education shouldn't be the source of trauma, but it's not always healthy to see what actually happens on the factory floor.
I think, to explain this, it's useful to draw a distinction between primary education, secondary education, and higher education. In the first two, to a certain extent, the goal is to help children and young people meet and overcome challenges while they gradually acquire a better understanding of what it means to be a human in this world. Meanwhile, in higher education, the goal is to fund, conduct, publish, and disseminate research, with the purpose of "teaching" being to train fellow professionals. In other words, the goal of primary+secondary education is to help young people open gates, while the purpose of higher education is to be the gatekeeper. And this makes sense, right? You'd like the people designing nuclear reactors and playing with giant electromagnetic particle accelerators to have the appropriate training, for example.
(This is not to say that people who don't go to college don't have valuable specialized skills, or that everyone who completes college or a graduate program is actually well-trained and competent. The system has many problems! But you get the general idea.)
Still, I think there's often a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion in higher education that can be difficult to deal with, especially over time. And for me at least, it's good to sit down and think about why I wanted to do this in the first place, and how it could be better. Essentially, it's healing to reframe my workplace trauma as a love story, and hopefully I can bring that sense of positive energy back to my career.
