Holding Your Breath

(STUDENT LIFE)

- Words, Ben Madden.

During August of last year, in the middle of my Honours course, I began the process of applying to various universities in the United Kingdom to do my PhD there. In October of this year, I will commence my doctorate at York with a partial tuition waver, generous living stipend and a job on the editorial team of an academic journal. Success, as measured by anyone’s standards.

I can imagine, though, how crushing it would be to fall short in this process.  For the record, I was rejected by one university, and another at which I was offered a place was unable to offer funding. The sheer effort involved in piecing together an application, coupled with the strong chance that it will be unsuccessful, is enough to shake anyone’s karmic view of the universe.

Karma, perhaps, is the wrong concept to invoke here. Karma implies that we get what we deserve, and I defy anyone to even define “deserving” or “undeserving” in the context of academia today. Hard work is not solely a viable criterion – we all know savants who manage to breeze through university at the top of the class with a minimum of effort. That, to be honest, is the state that I aspire to, though it isn’t often something I achieve. On the other hand, should we consider the earnest strivers (with whom we’re all acquainted) more deserving? That doesn’t quite seem just either. The process of applying to study overseas throws all of these questions into sharp relief; even more so in the absence of any clear idea of what kind of competition one faces. I find myself somewhere between these two extremes; talent has often enough compensated for my indolence, but I can’t help but wonder where that talent might lead if the indolence were eradicated.

Ambivalences of this kind have no place in any application for postgraduate study. Applications for funding are, on the whole, particularly brutal. Academic merit on its own is never enough. Instead, funding bodies are in search of global future leaders. Because, as we all know – and you must tow this line at any cost – the adventure of insight that is a university education is only worthwhile if it allows you to “contribute to humanity”, in a manner circumscribed by the left-liberal ideology that animates the admissions process, the funding bodies, and the institution as a whole. The document I ended up submitting was earnest, factual, and ultimately insufficient; it didn’t win me any funding. What is more, it seemed to systematically sidestep every aspect of my personality that makes me recognisable to myself.

Why should this matter? Well, I suspect that most of us who go on to achieve academic success of any kind are motivated by the same deep-seated quest for something resembling parental approval. This may seem like a sweeping conclusion to arrive at based on scant evidence, but it’s hardly a novel thought. I think this something common to all human accomplishments; they arise from a sense of psychological necessity. The greater the accomplishment, I imagine, the deeper the need that animates it.

If only our institutions of higher learning were prepared to do more than pay lip service to their commitment to self-expression and self-development, then the imbrications of personal history and ambition would not be such a taboo topic. And then, finally, we might move beyond the liberal fantasy that blind commitment to mankind should motivate all of our actions, and strip away much of the hypocrisy and self-promotion that mar academia today.