Academic vent post?-
It's a pain balancing between dark academia, light academia, and chaotic academia.
Dark academia: That strong desire to be better, to do better, to succeed above everyone else because that's what you've been told to be your whole life. Not even that. I was that person, I did succeed over everyone else. Wrapping myself away in literature and fine arts and history and languages. And I did find enjoyment in it all, but it was taken from me by the cruel hands of my family, my peers, my past partners, the institutions that chewed me up for my talents and spat me out to be left with an empty heart. And I was told I would succeed my whole life, and that kind of pressure destroys children. Now I'm desperately clinging onto the little talent I have left but it's not enough anymore. I can scream all I want to be better than my classmates, but in the end I just feel like a foolish child. Late to classes, missing classes entirely, forgetting homework, no revision done, and no time to even endulge in my own personal study. But the desire to be better will always be the bitter taste left upon my tongue, choking me out.
Light academia: The pure joy produced from the one topic that settled in your heart and never left. Literature comes to me naturely, the analysis, the imagery, the symbolism, the metaphors, the rhyming, the stage settings, it all combines into what I like to call my soul. People talk of soulmates, and literature is what I would call my soulsubject. The love I had as a kid only grew, and while the dreams to be an author dissappeared over time, it has only been crafted into my dream to be a lecturer. Proclaiming and sharing the adoration that I have for the one thing that has kept me going in my life, fueling my very being, in the hopes that at least one student, at least one, will find the solace that I also found myself. But the pressure that comes with that? The pressure to help those understand literature when at times I struggle to even understand myself? And if I fail? What comes next? I cannot help but put the weight of the world in my hands.
Chaotic academia: The rebellion, and the excitement that emits from it. The detachment of pressures that come with both dark and light academia. That feeling when you do skip a class, and yet can come back the next lesson and prove that you know what you're doing. The chaotic array of notes that can be barely defined as revision. But it works. The pressure is alleviated but at what cost? What am I to do when the chaos needs to be calmed? Because chaos is not agreed upon by the rest of the world, and in thriving in chaos, you are simply subjecting yourself to a life filled with hatred.
