Writer in Residence - David Young

Monologue by Sean Hingston

   I'm confused. That's why I'm here. If I knew everything I would have no need to surround myself with such an unfathomable mass of text. I came here this morning looking for answers and after a day of turning pages and scribbling notes, I feel like I may have a few.

I'm an undergraduate student in the midst of a crisis. I am a sociology major who is about to graduate and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do once they release me from the sheltered confines of the university. And I have debts! I did the math and I owe various parties a grand total of a 2012 Audi A5. The A5 takes sophisticated design to new heights. This modern grand touring coupe provides hour after hour of long distance comfort. Yeah. Needless to say, I'm in pretty deep.

I don't know why I studied sociology. Who is going to pay me to sociology? How do you sociology? So why have I spent the last four years of my life borrowing large sums of money and toiling away at some aimless pursuit? There is only one thing that can explain my absurd decision to embark on this path. Marketing. The story seems to go like this: Companies are competing not just for customers, but also for employees. Therefore companies need to market themselves too. One way of doing this is to implement hiring policies that are primarily geared towards building a strong corporate brand. So Company X only hires those with master's degrees and therefore must be an admirable organization that is worth working for. Some consulting companies go so far as to only hire those who have graduate degrees from ivy league schools. Whether or not such an education is necessary to do the work is secondary. Employer branding is the primary motivation and it continually raises the bar for us ambitious, approval seeking future members of the workforce.

Employers are not the only ones to blame for the cultural doping that has led to a university education being the now obsessively sought after prerequisite for a worthwhile human life. Universities themselves have adopted a marketing logic and given rise to what is called academic capitalism. A short ride on the subway is enough to take in a handful of aspirational marketing pieces telling you that a piece of paper from University X is a foolproof gateway to self-fulfillment and approval. Another aspect of academic capitalism is the construction of programs tailored to any potentially profitable segment of prospective students. I'm waiting for the day when I see an ad for a Master's of Science program in Timbit Management. That is when I'll be absolutely certain that we are doomed.

I must admit that for all my griping and as disconcerting as these ideas are, I do find this to be an interesting line of enquiry. A number of ambivalently executed internet searches have unearthed a few master's programs that would allow me to study this phenomenon in more depth. But now I can never know if I am truly interested in studying this at the master's level or if I am simply buying in to the dominant ideology that earning more degrees promises success and happiness. How can one understand their true motivations? Do we really make our own decisions? I guess I know what I'll be researching when I'm back here tomorrow.

This monologue is reprinted with permission from the author. It was performed at the Toronto Reference Library as part of David Young's Writer-in-Residence workshop program, on November 30, 2011.