new academic intentions

01 Sep 2020

I know, in life, you don’t have to justify yourself to others. But I have this habit of writing blog posts to justify what I decide to study.

I did it on September 23th of 2018. I was back then waiting to start my Technique intensive en informatique at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, from which I graduated last June. I explained in my old blog post why I was starting this program for 4 reasons :

1. Because my natural strengths were the one needed to succeed in computer science, namely my logical mind and my creativity. I also hoped that my communication skills would help me stand out from the crowd. I would say that my assumptions were right.
2. Because I wanted to be useful. In 2018, I had no practical skills whatsoever (living the intellectual and artistic life more than anything), and I had just given up on my illusion that to study in International relations would allow me to change the world. I’m about to start an internship in a nonprofit organization and I hope it will help me feel useful like I wanted to be.
3. Because it looks like a key-element to “the nomadic lifestyle”. I was a vanlifer in 2018, but I have sold my van in 2019. I guess it could have been true, but right now I am more interested in settling down so, meh.
4. Because computer science can only get more and more important in the future. I still believe this to be true, and I am happy to now be able to understand more easily (and critically) the technological stakes of tomorrow.

Looking back, I am very grateful to have started and completed this program. In the end, I’ve learned much more than what I expected from this year and a half at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal. Because I got involved in the student life, I learned that I had some great leadership ability and that I really wanted my career to be cause-oriented, or in other words, that I hadn’t really given up on the idea of wanting to change the world through my work.

What wasn’t written in the post, but that I used to tell myself and my friends often, is that I was studying in computer science to get a “well-paid job” in order to afterward be able to study in whatever field I want for fun without getting in debts. And that was a core motivator. But I almost fail in my own trap.

Even though “I am good at computer science” and that the field is actually challenging in some really interesting ways, this is not my calling. But I almost changed my plans to try to train to become an engineer (probably out of some ego aspirations). Like I was technically a student of the bachelor degree in Software engeneering of l’École des technologies supérieures this fall, but I cancelled my classes last minute.

And so here I am writing this text about my new academic intentions. Yesterday, I paid the administration fees of my dear Université du Québec à Montréal (that I honestly missed despite my harsh critics of my experience there), hoping to start a new certificate this winter.

Like mentioned in my exploration of critical pedagogy, I want to do a Baccalauréat en éducation par cumul de certificats at l’UQAM. But like, now, it’s official. I shall start with the Certificat pour formateurs en milieu de travail, then hopefully do the Certificat en intervention éducative en milieu familial et communautaire and maybe conclude with the one in Animation culturelle.

And now let me justify myself, for posterity.

I kind of always said that I wanted to be a cegep or university teacher, because I like to teach but I’m not especially fond of children. I have been doing some tutoring in French and literature since 2016 and I enjoyed every minute of it. As a student, I also always was the one helping my comrades who had trouble understanding what was seen in class. When I quit university in 2018, my first reflex was to create a website called Apprendre comme du monde because I couldn’t bear the idea of stopping to learn and wanted to investigate how to “fix the learning process” since I realized that, in some way, we weren’t really learning at university.

So that last paragraph is there to prove to myself that I am genuinely interested in education. Because the running gag around my person is that I’m always “changing career path”. Even if, deep down, I know there is nothing wrong with that in the first place, I still feel the need to explain that I am not studying around “by pure confusion about what I want to do in life” even if it might look like this. So what about this new path I’m taking?

My mom sometimes seems desperate at the idea that my studies do not lead to a clear title (“programmer”, “lawyer”, “doctor”), and this new path is just like that. I won’t become a teacher just because I’m studying education, and I’m fine with it. The people I know who studies or have studied to become teacher in elementary or high school usually complained about their programs, and with my unfamiliarity with youngsters, I wasn’t interested a minute by that. Me studying in education is part of a greater investigation of mine.

If nothing changes, in the next three years, I will look at pedagogy and education in the workplace, in the family, and in the community. Exact, everywhere but in school. I feel like I’ve got a good idea of what it looks in school, having been a student for so long.

So this peculiar situation will hopefully help me do three things :

1. It will help me compare methods used in those different environments, and hopefully there will be some interesting ones that could serve as model for a new way to do “institutional education”.
2. It will help me understand education outside of school, as simple as that. In my opinion, it is fundamental for my investigation because I think every member of society should be a life-long learner, and that learning should take place in every sphere of life. It is also fundamental, because I don’t think we will be able to reform the education system in a timely fashion that will truly allow to prepare the next generations to a world of climate change and where everything is to be rethink and rebuild. Therefore, we should probably invest efforts in opportunities to teach outside the borders of schools.
3. It will help me have some hands-on experience of those learning contexts since the certificates I am planning to do usually have internships, and I think that without them, I would have struggled to get out of my comfort zone (because I am an intellectual book nerd). Nonetheless, praxis is key and theory without praxis is pointless.

Therefore, I am very excited to start my new academic life. I am happy if someone reads that and feel inspired by my unconventional approach. But, in the end, I wrote this little piece to be able to come back to it, to help me remain grounded in moments of doubts. I don’t know if my mom will see the point of all of this, but I’m sure that Paolo Freire would be proud of me.

EDIT 18/12/2020: Well, of course I have changed my plan already. Currently enroled in the Certificat en animation culturelle and not planning to do the the two others. I took one class from the Certificat pour formateurs en milieu de travail this semester as an independant student and I didn’t enjoy it much so I thought it’d be better to reconsiderate.