I recently remembered why I got into the American Studies program in the first place. It wasn’t a random decision, or my attempt to coast through college, but it was due to the influence of Siva Vaidhyanathan. When I realized a Computer Science degree wasn’t for me, I tumbled, undeclared, into the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My interest at the time was centered around Intellectual Property law, and the waves it was creating in society. This interest was a direct result of being accused of breaking copyright law in high school, and later realizing I was protected under Fair Use. Being the agent of spite that I am, I learned everything I could about it.
Around the same time I settled in to being undeclared, Siva wrote a paper about a field of study called Critical Information Studies. Being a field that he had just invented, it wasn’t actually offered anywhere, but there were fields that were similar. American Studies was one of these, and was what Siva taught at the University of Texas. I read his manifesto, got fired up and declared my major, promptly forgetting why a semester later.
By that time I had managed to become bogged down and overwhelmed by the college process. Doing college became the focus of my time, instead of the knowledge I had hoped to receive. This was largely my own fault, starting myself off with a horrible first semester. I rarely attended some classes, and didn’t study much for others. This left me on academic probation, meaning I had to start doing well if I wanted to stay, whether or not I learned anything. This was extremely upsetting, and by the end of my sophomore year, I was fed up. I realized that I didn’t actually want to stay. I felt there was nothing being taught there that I couldn’t learn on my own, and my time could be better spent earning money. My parents convinced me to stay. After that, I was in it for the diploma, and anything interesting I could glean along the way. I didn’t think about Siva’s essay again until a few days ago.
The classes I took in my second two years were certainly more interesting than the first two, and I don’t think I could have gotten those same experiences outside a college environment, but I’m not convinced they were worth the time. My degree resembles nothing of what I had set out for it to be, and is probably closer to a Sociology or Philosophy degree. Critical Information Studies was a very academic discipline, and I was fed up with academia. But this whole story is moot, because even if I had crafted the degree that I had wanted to, I still couldn’t get a job.