I worry that I'm too much of a softy to survive in a capitalist society. Thursdays are generally bad for this, mainly because this is the night I work -- tutoring high school kids, which I find more fun than it looks written down -- and because it involves me leaving the UBC Bubble Zone; after most school days, when I spend a few hours surrounded by people who take full courseloads, juggle part-time jobs, and commute three hours each day on a bus that only arrives at 6 AM and leaves at 8 PM, I generally feel like a slacker and a relatively unproductive member of society. On Thursdays, I feel like an entirely unproductive member of society, and a leech besides -- I'm worth nowhere near what I'm getting paid, even though the going market rate says I am, and enjoy myself far too much most times. I get paid to talk about math, physics, Chinese history, economics, Greek mythology, and computers. Come to think of it, tutoring looks like it has all the hallmarks of a very viable postgraduate career.
But on leaving the Bubble Zone (residence life has a tendency to be suffocatingly insular), that provides its own moral quandry; having to switch busses at Broadway and Macdonald, I walk by the same panhandler twice each time, once en route there at 7 PM, and once on my way back, at 10 PM. I'll say upfront I have never been able to make peace with myself when confronted with poverty or the poor. Back in the beginning of the school year, when I was blindingly ambitious after having made a faculty change, I went to an orientation for the UBC Trek Programme (a volunteer organisation that works in the Downtown Eastside); among other things, we hashed about the ethics of whether to give money or not to panhandlers. I couldn't decide then, either, but was kind of swayed by the fact that the coordinator of the programme itself said that he deliberately chose not to. Even so, I can't walk by that man every week and not wonder what it must be like to freeze outside for a lot longer than the 20 minutes I do when the B-line's running late.
What gives me actual grief, though, is that I've seen a guy -- a little older than me, probably a university student too -- who has no problem sitting down and chatting with that man, and more than once. I can't break free of a prejudiced mindset, even having read piles and piles of critical theory that explains and destroys that very ideology. It's time for me to get out of here and actually learn something, methinks.
As an interlude, here's a random online quiz that I took today which only paints me in a more pathetic light (all the descriptions are equally depressing, incidentally):
But on leaving the Bubble Zone (residence life has a tendency to be suffocatingly insular), that provides its own moral quandry; having to switch busses at Broadway and Macdonald, I walk by the same panhandler twice each time, once en route there at 7 PM, and once on my way back, at 10 PM. I'll say upfront I have never been able to make peace with myself when confronted with poverty or the poor. Back in the beginning of the school year, when I was blindingly ambitious after having made a faculty change, I went to an orientation for the UBC Trek Programme (a volunteer organisation that works in the Downtown Eastside); among other things, we hashed about the ethics of whether to give money or not to panhandlers. I couldn't decide then, either, but was kind of swayed by the fact that the coordinator of the programme itself said that he deliberately chose not to. Even so, I can't walk by that man every week and not wonder what it must be like to freeze outside for a lot longer than the 20 minutes I do when the B-line's running late.
What gives me actual grief, though, is that I've seen a guy -- a little older than me, probably a university student too -- who has no problem sitting down and chatting with that man, and more than once. I can't break free of a prejudiced mindset, even having read piles and piles of critical theory that explains and destroys that very ideology. It's time for me to get out of here and actually learn something, methinks.
As an interlude, here's a random online quiz that I took today which only paints me in a more pathetic light (all the descriptions are equally depressing, incidentally):
You are blue. You are somewhat innocent, in the fact that your genius only extends to the physical world. You have a false sense of contentness. You are usually the quiet one, the genius. Everyone can count on you to help when they have problems, but you only fall short of being able to solve your own.
What inner color are you?
I was genuinely surprised, by the way, that some people have such severe allergies to big magenta rectangles. That, and how much fun debating Milton with people of conviction can be.
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