The Idealist

I'm starting to order material from schools which should come in by the weekend. This will give me enough time to finish the discourse analysis over spring break. I'll try to get the literature review done by this weekend, and post some excerpts of that.

I hope to finish a good part of these interviews within the next two weeks. I threw out the guidelines for my sample population and just want to gain a general perspective from people still going through the higher ed system. There was never a point in making it representative; most of the people I know are aware of an underlying "cynicism," that comes with being a college student. The point is to just capture a self-consciousness that I think people have; the reason for doing so is something that I won't worry about until I'm done. I just want to have a conversation.

1. What's the reason for higher education? (Seems basic, but these are the fundamentals that need to be articulated before going into the territory of the next few questions).

2. What are the messages of your University? What is its stated purpose?

2. What were some of the promises made to you by your school?

3. How many times did you think of your experiences in relation to these publication materials?

4. How is PR Important?

5. What kind of relationship do you have with the school?

6. What was presented as valuable?

7. How does your aspirations for success compare with the image of success promoted by your school?

8. How are these values and aspirations conceptualized in other schools?

Also, if memories of these questions are difficult to remember, I have public relations material to present as something to react to. Ex., question 5 could also be worded as “What kind of relationship does this school have with its students...?”

With that in mind, it's obvious I have a bias which will shape my focus. I've accepted it, but also have been dealing with the notion that this project isn't groundbreaking or of any particular significance, and it may just turn out to be a 40 page catharsis. Does this invalidate whatever work I hope to cram together in the next five weeks (and the endless editing and reshaping that I've been doing since September?) I'm not sure.

This article came out early last week. It's on Hillary Clinton's senior thesis that she put together at while at Wellesley. It's an interesting piece of text because of how closely a research paper produced during the most idealistic phases of life has been held up to judge her political philosophy. A comment on one of the articles' message boards read:

"At 21 every college student is full of themselves and think they are the best damn thing on the planet. After thirty years experience I suspect her opinions have changed radically."

It's expected that I might disregard this project a few weeks after finishing it; the only reason for completing the research is because it's due. Here, at this university, the thesis isn't taken all that seriously. Some people I've talked to can't remember what they wrote about, much less care about remembering.

This doesn't mean I care about it less at this point. I'm frustrated and want to make it something more than an expression of some self-righteous ego. Rather, I just want to advocate for transparency and accountability, desires which are distant goals because they require drastic changes in the complex university web. That this paper won't make a significant impact is a possibility that is ebbed too deeply in my academic spirit to just shake off, and a large part of this project will be justifying why this is important in the first place.