BTW, I graduated with a First in 'Film and English Studies' in 2009. In September I'm returning for a Masters in 'International Film'.
I'll be completing that with the view of doing a PhD, during and after which I'll be in a position to both teach other students and continue further study by way of writing, which incorporates getting published on areas you specialise in - which 'research' inherently demands and accomodates. I hope to continue more creative endeavours alongside the stuff that makes my living; I hope to live through the kind of revolution that would abolish the kinds of tensions, snobberies and inequalities I'm discussing here and to which I'm opposed.
It's interesting that for my application for my Masters funding - there are two scholarships available for my chosen course, and I'm up against not just Film Studies students, but Literature, Linguistics and Media students (and that's generous; some universities haven't been granted any scholarships, because they're not as officially highly ranked) - it becomes immediately obvious how broader, systemic deficiencies encourage the kind of careerism that's rampant throughout education and society as a whole; how as early as 14, children are having to think about what they want to do in terms of 'career', alongside education and whatever else 14-year-olds have to deal with. And I hear some people with the audacity to judge the same kids who, bewildered and pressured and without the support network of an educational system that is actually failing them daily, end up serving them burgers at MacDonald's (where else?), hating their bosses, being underpaid and overworked and generally falling into the same old same old broken nuclear family of capitalism...
Anyway, you find yourself writing research proposals with half an eye on what is more likely to get you funding; it becomes immediately more obvious how political agendas, governed by where the money is going to, determine how certain academic schools replicate a certain way of thinking. Capitalism begets careerism, often in spite of the person who becomes the careerist. How many people actually plan at an early age to teach Lacanian theory to 18-year-old fresher students? Not many if any is the answer to that. Most if not all will 'find themselves teaching in academia'. Staying inside academia, the academic risks removing themselves from social reality; not only that, but they'll do so because it is removed from an everyday grind. That's how horrific the economic state of society is, and that's why all kinds of horrible, fucked up snobberies are both established and developing as a result.
Death to capitalism and any of its apologists, I suppose.
