Feb 22
About
There is a disconnect between my life… my REAL life… and my academic life. You see, I am a gamer. I’ve been playing games with gusto, a feverish passion, sometimes guilt, and almost always with a critical eye for a long, long time.
I am part of Generation X. I am a slacker. I grew up among Yuppies. I was a child of the 80s. I was raised in Palo Alto. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I FEEL very strongly that I have a duty to help society and the Earth, yet I have no ambition. I’ve never worked for the commercial industry. I am tolerant, optimistic, idealistic. Cynical, pessimistic, misanthropic. I love everyone and hate everyone.
I love games. I love thinking about them and talking about them. I hate reading about them and writing about them. I hate academia’s constant pressure to publish. I love academia’s constant pressure to do research. I like analyzing. I hate the speed at which I am expected to analyze. This year I’ve discovered I love teaching. I hate this unsettling feeling in my stomach. I feel envy seeing others publish and I feel I have a lot to contribute, to add to the conversation, but no drive (and no money). What is going on? Why do I feel like if I don’t publish, I will lose my chance? This question is especially important since I keep telling myself that I won’t even be going into academia after I graduate. Why do I feel the need to be competitive then?
This blog will hopefully help me get things straight and discover who I am, why I am where I am, why I sometimes feel crazy, and why sometimes I feel I am the only sane one in an insane world. At the same time, I hope to chronicle my life, the games I play, and interesting tidbits from colleagues, news sources, or other blogs about games and games research.
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Edit (October 22, 2007): I'm further along in my PhD program now. A lot has happened in the last year or two in terms of interests and finding myself. I've become more socially aware and am part of Educators for Social Justice, a grad student group in the College of Ed here at UW. There's too much shit going on in the world to sit idly by and not do anything about. That goes for in-game worlds, too.
I've also found a renewed sense of purpose, making the PhD program more transparent for other new scholars. I've made the revision process for one of my major papers completely transparent so others can get a sense of what revising for submission looks like, at least for me. Also, I am working on making all of the ethnographic data I collected publicly available. That is a huge, daunting task, but it seems to me, at least in education, people are too protective of their data. Aren't we supposed to be opening it up in the name of service?? As I start work on my dissertation, I plan on uploading drafts and initial analysis, too. If you think I'm doing shit work, let me know. Fuck Screw my fear.
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Edit (November 1, 2007): This is the personal statement I used for the Spencer dissertation fellowship application.
The use of games for learning resonates with me personally. I have a lengthy history with games of all types including both table-top and digital games. My life as a gamer affects the lens through which I see games and through which I interpret learning theories applied to games. I also feel a strong sense of duty and desire to help society, to educate others about social problems and enact social change. These two once disparate interests have become one.
After working for several years for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, designing educational mini-games, I realized that my history as a gamer allowed me to make instructional activities more engaging and effective because I was able to apply many design principles from games to my projects. Yet, once I arrived at the University of Washington to study instructional design, I became more knowledgeable about social issues and concepts about social structures. In an Educators for Social Justice (a student organization in the College of Education) meeting, I realized that online gaming life is a mirror world to offline life and that the same kinds of social issues could be found in this supposed equalizing, democratic space. My ensuing depression and anger—emotions borne of my background as a gamer who cares—is what qualifies me for the work I want to pursue. This is my world. I want to fight for it.
I plan to continue to play to my strengths and focus on new media and learning. I will attempt to write for a general audience as well as for the academy. I want to be sure to reach the gamers I write for and be grounded in authentic public experience. I also want to help the growing games research movement stay critical and relevant as the online world rapidly changes.
Other than writing for the public, I believe one of the best ways to reach many lives is through teacher education. As the technology instructor for UW's Masters In Teaching program, I attempt to teach technology as culture rather than simply process or tool, and I have discovered that I enjoy teaching on a college level.
My journey from gamer to gamer-researcher has been a process of transformation, and I am now set to participate, continually learn, and lead. I think a life as an academic will allow me to serve as best I can.
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June 2nd, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I can’t believe there aren’t any comments yet. This is EXACTLY what’s been bothering me since I started college and thought about furthering my education through the academic system.
OK, so academia’s great because it creates a circle for intellect to output into. But why isn’t academia output-ing into a place where it matters, like into UN-educated circles. Why is Intelligent Design a problem for Evolution? Because it’s not taught through papers, but through a 150 year old theory. I’m apathetic about joining PHD research teams in Bio because I know it will only be important to people that are fighting against me for grants…
my intellectual output is suddenly about money for research. Why? When did man stop wanting to learn for the sake of learning?
This system is ridiculous…
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for commenting!
I’m not sure I follow the ID thing… it is a problem for evolution because ID is taught through a 150 year old theory? Or that evolution is taught through a 150 year old theory which has let it be challenged by ID? I assume the latter since that sounds about right in terms of Darwin…
Anyway, yeah… one of the hugest problems with academia, as far as I can tell, is the tenure system where profs gain prestige through publishing in elite journals inaccessible to the general public. This is why I want to write parallel papers on my research… one for the journals and one for this blog. Also, I think it is a shame that not enough profs (well… at an R1 institution, anyway) care more than superficially about their students.
June 6th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
The ID thing is basically about the need for parallel paper release. I like to think that if the public had more access to the papers written documenting trait mutation and selection, they wouldn’t fall prey to the “but you’re saying we’re all really chimps” idea. In the current educational system, people are being taught the theory straight from the 150 year old theory (not that it’s wrong, just “primitive”), without many of the refinements that hone the argument, mostly found in papers stored inside the dusty libraries of the academic system.
Without widespread public access to academic journals the non-academic world is forced into a knowledge gap years behind the actual research.
I wholeheartedly applaud your intentions, I just wish I had the heart to beat the system from within like you. I intend instead to perhaps do research in the private sector, or with an international program. Good luck in academia.
August 3rd, 2006 at 6:58 am
Hi, Mark!
I was doing a web search on writing literature reviews, somehow ended up at the GaSWorks site, and navigated to your blog. I’m glad that I took a momentary detour from lit reviews. I feel ya, man…about academia..particularly on two points: 1) “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I FEEL very strongly that I have a duty to help society and the Earth, yet I have no ambition” and 2) “I hate academia’s constant pressure to publish. I love academia’s constant pressure to do research.”
So…is the blog working for you? Perhaps I should fire up one to help me through my series of existential questions. :-)
Oh, and I love reading your blog!
Joan (aka Null Generation slacker)
August 3rd, 2006 at 7:10 am
I don’t write to the blog as much as I probably should. But what the hell does that mean? Should for what? I mean, partly it’s a feeling that I should be updating it at least once a day so that I get more hits… but why do I want hits? I dunno.
Paradoxically, there are too many academics that one has to be competitive to get their voice out, and yet there are too few academics who just want to sit down and talk about shit. But the weird thing is that when you sit down and talk about stuff with almost any academic, the conversation is lively and full of ideas. But we’ve constrained ourselves in the career track sense to be counter to those types of conversations… wtf?
Anyway, to answer your question… yes! Start a blog or a personal journal or something. The blog is a way for me to force myself to chronicle my life. Like I said, I don’t use it as much as I probably should, but ideally it would be a place to reflect on the events that are happening. Look at them with a different lens and realize how crazy they are…
February 6th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I came across your About page after entering “hate academia” in Google. I’m pretty much at the same point; I’m a gamer as well, and, aside from that, I just miss the things about my life that I was able to enjoy before I started working on my PhD. During the last year, I’ve just started drifting away from my studies for whatever reason. I’m sick of it. Gaming for me was not so much something that I necessarily preferred over academics, but an escape into which I lost myself.
I am, by the way, a member of what I was considered one of the top few guilds in the world during the race for Kel’Thuzad. Somehow I managed to balance that with my studies at the University of Chicago, but now I’m seriously starting to question my reasons for being here. I may give up my WoW account, though. I’m also engaged, and this and many other things have made me even more sick of academia.
Anyway, it was good to see that I’m not the only person feeling these sort of things. Reading your About page, I almost felt as though I was reading my own.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:10 am
I’m a gamer (in the pencil and paper sense) and I like what you said about academia. I’ve had awards and more money for research than I could ask for but at the end of the day I just hate it.
I hate the constant pressure to publish and the hypocrisy we use to bridge the gap between the actual work of learning, thinking, talking, writing, and teaching and the largely arteficial business of publishing on the right stuff in the right places.
Bleh. I’m glad to be done with it.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Hey Mark,
Reading over some State of Play 09 emails and stumbled onto your blog and this page. I feel ya as well about academia. The publishing stuff…hrm. The PhD is daunting, but worth sticking out regardless of where you want to go. I had 2 failed PhD attempts (adding about 2yrs to my program) but finally completed the degree on the third try this spring. I’m in a strange space because I absolutely love teaching at the collegiate level, but certainly do not want to go into the tenure grind at an R1 institution!