Although its thursday, today felt like my first real day of uni. As i walked down grafton road towards the business school, i couldn't help but feel a tremor of excitement at the prospect of a new course and a new school year.
And my god, what an eye opening 3 hours its been. Walking out of the tutorial room in an almost catatonic state, i have been overwhelmed by the nature of the information i have been given today and the revelations i have made. I went into class today with the preconceived notion that the difference between postgrad and stage 3 was the same as that of bewteen stage 2 and 1. That postgrad was just about learning my subjects on an even more detailed and specific level. Boy was i wrong. It seems that unbeknownst to me, for the past 3 years i have been spoon fed information in easily manageable packages and told to regurgitate in a form as seen fit by the institution. There was a high level of rigidity within my courses, the knowledge spectrum was very black and white, there was always a right and wrong answer.
If my mind was a parakeet, then undergrad was the cage that served to 'protect' and 'nurture' its growth. Postgrad in contrast, is the hand that opens the cage door and releases my mind from captivity, allowing it to soar into the boundless depths of creativity and critical thinking. Today, i was introduced to a new way of thinking, and that is to question the way that we think. It seems that we have all been brainwashed by the institution into sheeps and sent blissfully unaware on our way to the slaughterhouse. We forget to question the status quo, the way this institution is run, the way society is run. We are so entrenched in our disciplines and methodologies that we become trapped in our particular way of thinking. It never occurs to us to take a different approach to an issue other than the one we've been taught. Well what my first day of postgrad has taught me is that we must recognise that there is more than one approach to solving a problem. That we must think outside the box. That maybe we dont have it all figured out. I know you're probably thinking "well, duh! that's common sense" but the fact is often when we're trying to solve a problem, we forget to think outside the box. We fail to question our thought processes and the methods that we employ, and we fail to recognise that there is more than one way of doing things.
This is the beauty of an interdisciplinary science. Instead of being mired in the specific details of a hard science where we are very likely to lose context, an interdisciplinary approach allows us to see the wider picture, drawing on aspects from both social sciences and natural sciences It allows us to appreciate the viewpoints of professionals in other disciplines and acknowledge that their contribution is just as critical to the success of finding a solution to a problem, or coming up with a policy. These are the things that i have been afraid to say during tutorial, because everyone else seems to come from a much wealthier background of experiences than me and so i will say it here. There was one exchange student from Denmark in particular. She was rather pretty and seemed a little older than me. Her articulation and the clarity of her thoughts and the ease with which she was able to communicate them truly astounded me. It seemed like she had such an informed opinion and a true grasp on the concepts that were conveyed today whereas i just sat there clueless and afraid to speak out. It has made me realise just how inexperienced i am at my field, let alone life. It seems that after 3 years, i still do not have knowledge, only a bunch of out of context information on concepts and methodologies that i cant even apply to real life situations. It's made me realise how much learning i have to catch up on, how much i have to radicalise my way of thinking, and how much new experiences i need to subject myself to in order to become someone that can function properly in the real world.
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