An unofficial AU advocate at large, Jason never misses a chance to recount the merits of an Athabasca education. Jason’s studies began alone in front of a rustic rural fireplace in December of 2003 and carried on through various brick and mortar college classrooms yet always with Athabasca as part of his journey. In 2014 he completed his BA in Sociology and in 2022 graduated with an MA in Cultural Studies. To this end, his columns seek to explore edifying moments of learning how to learn within the challenging ideological terrain of that great bugaboo facing students everywhere: the real world!
“Electricity comes from other planets” jovially declared the proto-punk songwriter Lou Reed in 1967 (online). Jupiter, a planetary marker of joviality in that it heralds the outer planets (once known commonly as the jovian planets) suggests by its swirling eye that we are in the centre of a great cosmic mystery. Colours, textures, swirls, to… Read more »
Wombs and attendant legal issues being in the news, and, being male since birth, I asked my dear wife about the prepartum process. She’d been a progenitor of one human being many decades ago. Her first recollection of another being being inside her happened, suddenly, on Aberdeen Avenue in Toronto. She was walking past an… Read more »
Looking to the Future at AU while Putting Cultural Conniptions in Perspective Staring down our own spotty academic past, such as when life that got in the way of our best intentions to complete our degree in a brick-and-mortar setting, it’s easy to see how gratifying our return to the role of avid learner has… Read more »
Lake driftwood sometimes floats vertically, all submerged but the tip. Such a protuberance can also be the head of a turtle who, upon hearing footfalls, leaps gracelessly off its basking log and into the safety of lake water. Fleeting from rest to action in a moment, belying their sloth-like reputation, these creatures then camouflage themselves… Read more »
If necessity is the mother of invention, then time management is surely the father of success. Insouciance being the stuff of lazy students, and, we being human and thus prone to that moniker, it can only aid our travails to pay homage to that great beckoning invisible clock that abides over and above our study… Read more »
During library research my friend and I would exclaim, “To the microfiche!” Visions of ourselves as superheroes climbing into their technology, our voices louder than the ex-military librarian preferred, we’d trundle to the back of the room and rifle through metal filing cabinets full of translucent blue plastic pages. The topic that day, and many… Read more »
Whether it’s child labour in Dickensian London—that time of Tiny Tim and coal dust smog—or modern sweatshops seething with repressed bodies and stultified minds, the outcome of the goods and services that propel our consumerist times is far removed from those who actually toil to bring us our pleasure. This we know. Few of our… Read more »
Distance education provides academic intimacy between our daily struggles and pleasures and the reality that all of life is a lecture hall from which we may avert our gaze or take note. When the cultural going gets tough, our academic critical thinking skills spring into action. Theorists and tutors alike provide grist for our mental… Read more »
Have you ever dreamed you saw your reflection in a mirror? What would our imagined other self say that we cannot say for ourselves? The closest moment to contact with the universal nature of being alive might be a momentary gaze into a beloved pet’s eyes. Interactions with animals special to us can teach us… Read more »
While distance education can be the mother of all struggles, it probably can’t compare to the challenge and adventures of motherhood. With that in mind, Mother’s Day is a thing. Expressing gratitude to our mothers is what the day is all about and, being academically inclined, it’s worth considering the context of progeny from a… Read more »