The pun really is too good to pass up. You see, today I made a decision that will affect the course of my next few years pretty significantly: I changed my major from Theatre Studies to Sociology.
School is a pretty big piece of my life right now, and I’ve written about it before. Like I said in that post, I am in some ways ambivalent about the whole thing. But I do like school, and while I’m here I want to be doing what I like in school.
And more and more I was feeling like that wasn’t theatre. I mean, don’t get me wrong–I still love theatre. I suspect I always will. But I may love it best as a consumer. And Sociology…
Okay, I spend all of my offtime doing cultural criticism. I talk about cultural norms with the people I know. I push back at them through demonstrations, and other activist things. They occupy a lot of my thoughts. But I don’t have any formal training. And I’m not saying you need formal training–I kind of believe the opposite, to be frank. But I feel like for me, personally (and only for me personally–I am not presuming to speak for anyone else), I would like to have the toolkit a formal sociological instruction would provide.
Also (as if this post wasn’t scattered enough already), I want to point out that I know I am going to run into some problematic stuff as I go up through the ranks of sociology classes. Both from my classmates, and probably from my teachers (as I learned just this past semester). To be honest, I’m almost looking forward to that. In theatre, controversial issues rarely come up. And if I can disagree with someone in a classroom environment, and by doing so, maybe change their mind, or the minds of others in the class? I feel that’d be worth it. I’m looking forward to engaging critically with material, rather than in the solely fact-based way that some theatre discourse tends to lapse into.
And sometimes it’ll be hard, and frustrating, and I’ll want to tear my hair out. But overall, I’m feeling like this is a sound choice.
The reasons you cite for why you want to study Sociology are why I tried so very hard to be an Archeologist. I love history and I read a great deal. In fact my favorite part of history is literature and this is why someday I will get a degree in Philology (The study of a societies literature tracing through each version of the story to try and find an original and the societal implications there in).
I think you will be very happy with your studies as long as you pace yourself. I look forward to reading about posts regarding sociology as it IS a fascinating idea that this could be studied objectively. I say it this way because often sociology is used as if this is an imperial science instead of a subjective study of observations. If you are part of society (and even the observer is a part of society) then you are biased with in your observations.
Wait does this mean you are going to be doing a sociological experiment on your sociology classmates and professors? You naughty boy! (Sounds fun).
Oh my god, that would be the BEST THESIS EVER. Sociological analysis of sociology students!
I am terribly amused now. Thank you for that.
And yeah. Once I get back to school, Expect Posts!
If you write that Thesis I will read it. I am glad you found the idea as amusing as I did. I suspect though that some may be offended by the idea. (Part of me likes the idea more now. I should borrow your idea and go do that bwhaha)