David Cong's Lazy Space

So I know I’ve ranted a bunch of times about colleges, but why do I hate it so much? Because of the institutionalization of education. In fact, as I was watching an episode of “Bill Moyer’s Journal”…, and a comment made by a Mr. Ikehara struck me, when made the following quote:

- Every institution goes through three stages — utility, privilege, and abuse. (Chateaubriand)

He also pointed out the “industrialization of institutions”, which has been something I’ve always criticized.

So why am I trying to get my graduate education? To be honest, there’s always been that part of me that wants to think that there’s still a part of the academic institution that actually promotes learning. But before I expound on that, let me tell you how I got here…

Since my slight rebuttal of John’s criticisms for my lack of direction in life, things have changed a bit…

• Getting a college degree:
  1. Korean AA degree from DLI

  Received on August2009.
  

  2. World Languages AA degree from MPC

  Received on January2010.

  3. Liberal Arts BS degree from Excelsior

  Will receive on April2010.

• Work on my personal website and professional website:
  1. Having different themes for different pages in different categories.
     1. Either I can modify themes into templates.

     or

     2. Use a template which calls on the theme’s php files and css.

     Not really an issue anymore. Besides, no one reads this blog anyways!

• Research more on starting a cafe.
  • Budgeting (Have to make expenditures and gains ESTIMATIONS) –have to find out what it is I’ll need to spend on… Equipment, rent/lease, utilities, water, insurance, employee payments, furniture, etc…
  • Find a real estate agent.
  • Write a business plan.

  Giving up on this business thing is perhaps the biggest one on the list, and I scrapped the idea not too long ago.

• Write my movie scripts.
• Look for a job while this is going on. (And then, if I get one, balance my time to do all the above).

So why did I give up the cafe idea? Because this semester, I was in enrolled in a lot of cooking classes. It only reaffirmed one thing: I hate to cook, but love to eat. More so, this semester made me question just what the hell I was still doing here? None of these classes count towards my degree, I’m just doing this stuff for self-improvement. These classes ultimately made me question why I wanted to do this business: It was to be a movie-themed cafe. I just did it for the movies. I didn’t really care for any of the other stuff I was planning. Just the movies. But to do this, I would HAVE to care about that other stuff, and that’s just not me.

Then begs the question, “What defines me?”.

1. I like to eat.

(But it doesn’t mean I can make money off of eating…)

2. I like to watch movies.

(But it’s not like there aren’t enough movie critics out there. Besides, my reviews aren’t that great anyways!)

So what’s left? My remaining interests are:

• history & politics (but more so, the history).
• linguistics & language acquisition.

I don’t read enough books on history and politics, and language is the only thing that seems fit for me. So, I suppose Linguistics it is…