academic
Misc. Thoughts #1
(From time to time, I’ll have a thought occur to me that is too much to scribble onto a piece of paper or enter as a note in my phone. Most often these thoughts have a short lifetime, approximately as long as it takes me to become distracted by television, games, or food. In an attempt to economize on my limited brain power, I will be tossing these thoughts up here as a discussion point or bit of commentary. The following struck me while sitting in on a PhD proposal defense today.)
When discussing online communities, many times researchers point out that there is no need for physical or previously-existing community interactions between members. While in a pure sense of the term ‘virtual’, I can see this being true, what I wonder is how these existing physical or “real world” relationships affect the virtual spaces. What I am imagining are RL friends who join forum communities together or play MMO games with each other primarily because of their previously existant relationship. Is this something that virtual spaces need? Does it enhance the development of a virtual community by providing an anchor of sociability that need not be formed in an environment that, according to numerous researchers of virtual spaces, has a good deal of trouble letting people interact in a deep and natural way?
The end is nigh
I’m rapidly approaching the so-called “end” of my masters thesis and, oddly enough, it reminds me of how it all began. Once I finally managed to choose a research area, my first step towards a degree was to immerse myself completely in any academic literature that could possibly relate to my thesis. You’d be surprised how enlightening that can be. If you can manage to fill your head with the vast range of research topics and concerns that are centered on virtual communities, fan culture, and gaming (and I would say that I only managed to cram maybe a third of it into my noggin before risking full mental failure), the possibilities for research can seem endless. So, yes, it’s all very enlightening… which only serves to make it even more intimidating. I mean, when faced with the scope of what has already been researched and then being expected to come up with something that is new, interesting and, above all, important, what is a person to do? Well if one were to go by my own experiences the answer would be to play a lot of World of Warcraft, go out drinking on a regular basis, take up a sport for the first time since middle school, and generally do things that don’t advance a degree for as long as possible until confronted with a “Do this or perish” ultimatum by one’s very indulgent but ultimately scary-when-provoked advisor.
And this is a good thing! Though my inital reason for writing this has long since escaped me, I wanted to say that as I slowly finish writing my thesis I’ve found myself back in that place where I get to see all of academia spread out before me, a big wide landscape of possibilities, directions, and futures. It’s still intimidating on the best of days (and you don’t want to see me on the worst) but…
I think I like it.