This is an impersonal history of my time at Simon Fraser University (SFU) from the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2005. It sometimes is not very impersonal, and somewhat personal. I did the third and fourth year of my undergraduate degree at SFU. My memory is shaky, especially for certain semesters, so some facts are probably incorrect. I looked at some transcripts that I have, which were attached to an old email from my parents for when I had applied to do my Masters, so the course information is correct.
When I first started going to SFU, I unfortunately felt that I must not be as academic as the other students because I did two years at Kwantlen University College, and other students went directly to SFU after high school. I had thought I might be unable to participate in class discussions like a real SFU student could. Of course I was grossly mistaken, and I sincerely wish I learned that way of thinking is damaging at a younger age.
My first semester on the mountain (SFU is on a mountain) was in the fall of 2003. It was my third year of university, I was 19, and I took four courses. Each course was 4 credits, and there were 60 required credits in total for third and fourth year, which made me required to take 15 courses. I took four courses every semester at SFU, except for the spring of 2004, when I took three.
The four courses of the fall of 2003 were the Sociology of Art Forms, Classical Sociological Thought, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, and Public Policy. A strong theme of this semester was being assigned hundreds of pages to read per week, being enthusiastic to dive into the readings like an academic would, and not completing them. I think I slowly but surely started reading the required literature, and by my last semester, read about 70% of assigned readings in full.
For the Sociology of Art Forms class, we were assessed with two essays, a “mid-term” 10-page essay, and a “final” 20-page essay. That was the professor’s method of assessment for all his classes that I took with him (and I took three in total, the other two were in the spring 2004 semester). The class was less about a sociology of art forms, and more about how Hegel viewed the arts (the book we read was called “Hegel on the Arts”. I think this upset some students, but I was infinitely more interested in how Hegel viewed to arts than I was about any sort of textbook with statistics and norms. The contents of the course stay with me to this day, and I still use them when I think about art (admittedly, I don’t think about art too often). My 10-page paper was an analysis of the song “Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist” by the Weakerthans (from the 1997 album “Fallow”). I did a crap job of it, but I really enjoyed doing it. I think if I had the opportunity to resubmit the paper, it could have been something great. My 20-page paper was an argument that video games (or interactive media) are a type of art. My main (or best) argument was about the video game Metroid Prime, because all those RPGs I liked were really like lots of text with cool stories. Metroid Prime had an interesting interactive way of telling a story, and showing a world. I could not bring myself to write a paper on a conventional subject.
In my Classical Sociological Thought class, we read Durkheim, Marx and Weber. I skimmed Durkheim pretty well (we read the Division of Labour in full, which was apparently Durkheim’s doctoral dissertation). I enjoyed Marx, but I think that was mainly because we only did the easier texts like the German Ideologies. I don’t think I ever cracked that Weber book, but I may have. The first day of class the professor played the Bad Religion song “American Jesus” (off of 1993’s “Recipe for Hate”), and before that during a self-introduction, I mentioned that I had seen Bad Religion three days in a row the previous week (their show at the Curling Club in Victoria was especially great). This did not really make for a great connection between us, and I honestly felt a little awkward about having a love of Bad Religion in common with my professor. The professor was really good at seeing through bullshit, which was a problem.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences blew my mind, as did the professor. We read all these different texts that were to typify various ways of thinking such as Positivism and Phenomenology. Postmodernism was the worst, because I didn’t get it. I didn’t get Phenomenology, but it was the best. I think I thought I did get it, but when trying to explain it, it was fairly obvious I did not really. For this class, we had to write two page essays on each paradigm (I have a sneaking suspicion that “paradigm“ is the wrong word) and then do an analysis with that paradigm on Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”. I did a presentation in my (at the time) happy go lucky way of doing presentations, and I hope it made the topic (Marcuse on progression I believe) interesting.
The Public Policy class was taught by a “leftie” (his words). It was my first time to meet a leftie that wasn’t some sort of cynical anti-establishment whatever person. He was a man with lots of experience working in Ottawa, and working on various government policies that are meant to help the disadvantaged, or whoever. It wasn’t all just about posing I suppose. He seemed like a genuinely good person. I remember very little about the actual content of the course, but I do remember learning about childcare in Quebec, and various pension programs.
In my second semester (the spring of 2004) I took Classical Marxist Thought, the Global Division of Labour, the Sociology of Knowledge. I had realized I could only take three courses this semester, and still graduate “on time”. I was deeply interested in Marxist thought and Phenomenology, and was looking forward to dive deep into both.
The Marxist course and the Global Division of Labour course were by the Art Forms professor from my previous semester. I changed stores at my part time job this semester (a big box electronics store’s music/video games section), and I was working about 30 hours a week for most of the semester. That led me to sleep in, cut classes, and ultimately not try very hard. This was regrettable. We read Capital Vol. 1 in the Marxist class. We started reading it incredibly slowly. The professor thought understanding the history of the commodity (the topic of the first long chapter) was especially important. I thank the professor for that, because it really did provide a solid basis for understanding the book, as well as Marxist thought in general. I’m not too concerned that my grasp on the valorization process isn’t as good as it could be. I remember diagrams on the blackboard distinguishing mercantilism from capitalism, and having this awakening about how capital is key to capitalism. It seems so obvious in hindsight. I sadly do not remember what my 10-page or 20-page papers were about. I know that while I tried somewhat hard on the 20-page paper, I received a very poor grade on it. I remember not being happy about that. I assume I had a sudden inspiration of creativity that took me in a direction that was best not to go in.
I forgot the majority of the Global Division of Labour course, but I have two distinct memories. The first is a debate students had with the professor on the first day about how neo-colonialism is basically colonialism, and how the professor wouldn’t have it. I respected the professor because the argument seemed to be more about shit you’d put on banners, or share on Facebook (if Facebook was around) rather than a legitimate discussion on what neo-colonialism is, and the similarities and differences with colonialism. The second memory is my 20-page paper, which touched upon the Meiji Restoration in Japan. I knew nothing about Japan, and I didn’t learn anything writing that paper. I opened books to random pages, quoted lines, and put together some sort of paper. I felt bad that I got a B+ on that paper, as I didn’t deserve it. The paper was about the Meiji Restoration’s influence on Japan’s postwar economic miracle, and I think I would disagree with the argument the paper was presenting now.
The Sociology of Knowledge was taught by the professor who taught the Philosophy of Social Sciences. This course was on a Tuesday night, and therefore there was no sleeping in, or leaving early for work, as I had made myself unavailable to work Tuesday nights. This course changed my way of thinking more than any other course. Berger and Luckmann’s book “The Social Construction of Reality” is a book I think I actually read because I was so intrigued. Like in his class the semester before, this professor asked each student to do a presentation on the topic of one class. This time I was in a group of four with other people, and we did a jeopardy-like game. It worked. We also read Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. I think I was not able to comprehend the professor’s comments regarding Kuhn not actually being a postmodern thinker, and how postmodernists have misrepresented his work. I reread the book later that year with a friend, and have thought about the book afterwards, and think I understand the professor’s point now. However, at the time, whenever I tried to explain Kuhn to my friends, I ultimately could not do so in a convincing way. I think that was proof that I in fact did not truly understand. We had also read a third book in the class, or we were supposed to. The title of the book was a question, and perhaps that turned me off from the book. (I really dislike questions for titles of things.) Either way, it did not get read.
Fall 2004 was the beginning of my fourth year of university. I had thought I had one more year to go until I became an adult. (I did not realize at that time that in the fall of 2005 I would be singing and dancing with Japanese children across the Pacific.) There was a sort of contradiction in my fourth year: I believe I tried really hard. I had remembered getting better grades that any other year at Kwantlen or SFU. However, my memory is the foggiest about my fourth year. Before checking my transcripts, I was only right about the timing of two courses.
In the fall, I took Qualitative Methods and the Anthropology of Biotechnology. I also took by distance Canadian Ethnic Relations (a course I remembered due to the coursework being relevant a few years later), and the Sociology of Ageing (a course I did not remember until I looked at my transcripts). I had taken all the Sociology classes that I was interested in, and was moving on to Anthropology classes I found interesting. However, I still had the requirement to take two methodology classes, one of which is the Qualitative course mentioned above, and the other I took in the spring of 2005.
The Qualitative Methods course I had mixed feelings about. The professor was a very nice person, and I performed well in the course. However, I really didn’t connect with the professor or the class content. The professor talked a lot about challenging the structures, and that came across as shallow to me. My qualitative project was an ethnography on smoking pot. My methods of research were autoethnography, and interviews. I had to get all participants to sign papers, and I allowed everyone to use an alias as I was “challenging the structures”, and needed to make sure the man wouldn’t apprehend any of the people I interviewed. I got an A+ on the project, which always seemed funny to me.
The Anthropology of Biotechnology was a course that I greatly enjoyed and that I loved with passion. Sadly, I think I had rubbed the professor the wrong way. We learned a lot about eugenics policies, and how all these things were conceived in countries in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is very interesting, and a part of history that is sadly forgotten. I believe I wrote my paper on the history of how schizophrenia has been viewed by professionals. That resulted in receiving a very poor grade, attached with a comment saying that my paper had nothing to do with the course. The connection in my head was that when schizophrenics were forcibly sterilized, and the definition of the word mattered. “Feeblemindedness” would’ve probably been a better topic, and looking more closely at specific policies would’ve produced a better grade on the paper.
I basically have zero memories about the two distance courses. I suppose I did not complete any readings except for the night before papers were due, or tests were had. In those situations, I had binged on the information, overloading my short-term memory, and within a few days (after tests were taken and papers were wrote) I had completely forgotten everything. I remember learning that the politically correct term for old people was ageing, and not aged. Ageing is a process. We’re all on a journey.
Spring 2005 was my final semester at Simon Fraser University. I was ready to excel at all my courses. I was ready to have a GPA above 3.0. I was under the impression that to get to graduate school, I would need at least a 3.33 (B+) GPA, but thought that at the very least I would need a 3.0 GPA. This struggle for a B average was in great contrast to lazily excelling at school earlier in life. This semester I took my final required course, Quantitative Methods. I took the Anthropology of Biotechnology professor again (I signed up for the course before I learned how much he hated my paper) for the course Anthropology of the Past. I also took Anthropology of Medicine and Sociology of Religion.
I didn’t like the Quantitative Methods class, which was unfair, and didn’t like the professor, which was even more unfair. Due to all the theory courses I had taken, I had grown a dislike of quantitative work, and preferred to read about Phenomenology or Marxism. The professor was kind to me, and graded me kindly. He also emailed with me after the course ended, and provided a reference for me for my application to teach in Japan. The class was all about using some data set, and putting the data into SPSS (a statistics computer program for the Social Sciences) to prove or disprove something. Thinking about it right now, it actually was a great class where I learned a lot. If I had internalized more of the content, I would have probably been able to do a much better Master’s thesis years later.
The Anthropology of Medicine had an amazing professor who was full of life, and I wish I remembered more about the course, but I don’t. I don’t even remember what I had presented on. I remember the people in the course more than anything. There were great people in the class. I remember someone had taught in Japan for 6 months in the class, and I wanted to teach in Japan.
The Anthropology of the Past course was a course I enjoyed a lot. I felt that at this time I had finally understood what university was all about. I felt more confident talking in class and writing papers. I believe I did all the course readings for this class, and greatly enjoyed looking at how the past is remembered. My paper was on hardcore punk in Washington DC in the early 80’s. I showed my Minor Threat DVD in class during my presentation. I think that may have cemented the dislike my professor had of me. One of the texts we read in this class had about an Apache group in Arizona, and how they used place names as a way of telling history. It was really easy to read, and an interesting book.
The Sociology of Religion class I think I didn’t like, and I think I allowed it to represent to everything about the discipline of Sociology (as I viewed it) that I did not like. The course was heavy on how to define religiosity as a variable. For example, people who self-identify as Christian versus church attendance. Then there was defining church attendance, and how often does one have to go to church in order to be considered “devout”. I am unsure if this sort of discussion was a major part of the course, or just what my mind has latched onto. I believe the professor was also a Weber-man, and therefore we must have done some Weber-related stuff as well. I would be guessing as to what that would have been though.
After two years at Kwantlen, two years at Simon Fraser University (on the mountain) were finished. I graduated, quit my job at the big box electronics store, got a job from my friend and worked as a dishwasher in a bar for 10 weeks or so. I saved up a few thousand dollars and I moved to Japan to teach English for a year.