Don't Drop Out of University (to move to Thailand… because you're vegan)
14 November 2015 [link youtube]
The painting in the thumbnail is Gauguin's "Green Christ", implying, perhaps, that Essena Oneill died for your sins, or, at least, that she dropped out of university so that you don't have to.
University is hell, but dropping out of university (so you can be "happy and healthy", etc.) may just lead to hell of another kind… and, yeah, it is a strange fact that the Chiang Mai vegan scene has been cited so many times as an inspiration (or excuse) for vegans dropping out of university. Admittedly, most of us don't need much inspiration (or much of an excuse).
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I'm troubled by seeing young people
declaring that going vegan is their reason for dropping at a school and dropping out of school being justified by being yourself being happy being quote healthy unquote I've really lost count but it's like more than 12 examples of this I've seen and I'm not looking for it like I'm not researching this I'm not actively interested in looking examples of people who give veganism as their reason for dropping out of university but whether it's a reason or a rationale a justification put together after the fact this is now actually a pretty prominent part of what's been going on in in veganism and I can't just say in digital veganism in the reality of what veganism is in the real world so seeing something about this today seeing yet another example of this of somebody making a sort of proud and bold declaration that they're dropping out of university and what their reasons are for that and what their philosophy of life is that's kind of justify their um supposedly being in our dead act I'm going to read out a letter I wrote a couple months ago to someone else who did the same thing someone dropped out of university and explained in terms of veganism here's my letter hi i just stumbled on your youtube channel i just watched your explanation of why you're dropping out of university i think you're the third person i've seen on youtube this month who stated that the thai fruit festival in directly inspired them to drop out of university some of the videos on my channel are about veganism and some are not reflecting instead the stuff of them working on University myself however my three most recent videos that have had a considerable reaction from people currently in Chiang Mai are in direct response to the Thai food festival and not cheap gossip but really trying to discuss the underlying issues I have lived and worked in Thailand I have lived and worked in a long list of places in Asia Hong Kong yen and Cambodia Laos etc Chiang Mai is full of dead end losers who dropped out of university Chiang Mai is full of really bad examples of people to model your life after seriously chiang mai is full of people who will make excuses for you and who will try to convince you that failure is more of an accomplishment than really having ambition I'm writing and tell you as a complete stranger don't fall for it yes you can learn a lot while you're in Thailand yes you may decide that a major in commerce is not the right thing for you to study however you won't learn a lot by just relaxing with friends etc learning is hard work everywhere in Thailand or in a classroom learning the Thai language would be a ton of very hard work I know from experience learning how to open a business in Thailand would be a ton of hard work including both book learning and talking to entrepreneurs who already run such businesses perhaps volunteering etc just reading the newspapers and becoming familiar with the basic political and economic situation in Thailand in English would be a lot of hard work I would encourage you to do any of these things or all of them living in Thailand could be the opportunity of a lifetime for you but it will be hard work not a vacation if you really want to be such an opportunity as critical as I am of university when I read her replies to me which she wrote back to me by email I could see this really is a person who needs a university education this is a person who would benefit from the process of having programmed procedural reading and writing exercises developing their ability as an essayist as an author developing advanced reading comprehension and putting together coherent and compelling arguments in writing in response to with their reading I do not have a glamorized view of what university is how it works what it teaches or even what benefits people derive from that experience if you're in a bad situation in a bad university the solution is to try to find a better University the solution too bad education is to try to find good education not to give it up and have no education at all and for the vast majority of people young adults or middle-aged adults are old adults that is really hard nobody's used to it nobody knows how to do it it's really hard to recognize this particular university is bad or this particular department is bad this program is bad to analyze why it's bad understand either what's objectively bad about it or what's subjectively bad about it what's bad about it for you personally why it doesn't work for you individually and then to try to seek out and find a program somewhere that will work for you subjectively and that may be objectively has better things about it it's tough but I've got to tell you from experience being an out of that act is even tougher autodidact is a fancy word for you didn't go to university you just taught yourself you learn how to do something yourself and you know autodidact SAR often glamorized by people who don't know their struggle who don't know what their aspirations or ambitions were how they ended up being stuck in a job that teach them self there was a guy in cambodia i assume he's dead now it was a bit of a legendary figure who was a self-taught medical doctor so let's be clear he had no medical training yet never been to university you know he taught himself enough medicine to do I guess what we would consider a nurse or a you know an emergency medical technician I don't think he could do heart surgery or brain surgery didn't ask and you know it always struck me that when people talked about that guy and the sacrifice he made in the life he lived you don't think he got old for him you know you don't think sometimes he was stuck in his Hut in Cambodia and didn't wish that he had some of the options in life that a formally trained medical doctor would have now he might wish for them selfishly but he might also wish for it in order to make more of a difference for his patients to do more good to help people he might wish for it in order to make more of a difference in the medical field so we could write articles other doctors but reads we could do research that would improve things there are a lot of reasons why you would still want to have the credentials of a legit medical doctor even if you were in the incredibly tiny minority of people who taught themselves in the jungles of Cambodia how to get by as a kind of sort of good enough medical doctor and who manages to eke out a career in a bamboo hut because there are enough local villagers who respect his authority and ability to come to them when they have a broken leg or a skinned knee or when they're going to give birth where the case may be I mean it's it's a dark and difficult road being an autodidact in anything trying to gain the same skills with no textbook with no course with no exam with nobody looking over your shoulder with nobody to answer questions that's harder work and that's harder work even with languages yeah there's something special about and there's something wonderful about having a teacher and a chalkboard and someone who cares about you and someone who answers your question when you raise your hand and someone who prepares a test for you and someone who tells you what mistakes you're making what you're doing wrong and it is 10 times more work to be your own teacher and hold yourself to high standards and one of the reasons why being an autodidact is hard work is precisely because you can't fail you don't have someone there to tell you you're doing it wrong I feel for these people I really do I I'm in university right now for the second time I didn't drop out the first time I completed one university degree i'm back in university now getting a second university degree i spent several hours today having email with professors talking to them about getting a third university degree I am very far from an uncritical fan of what universities are how they operate the economics of them or anything else I woke up this morning at about 6am I look exhausted right now because I am exhausted I wrote an in class exam at about nine-thirty a.m. and then a lot of the rest of my day was basically related to the bureaucracy of university stuff filled out application forms and took the staples out of a transcript and attached a transcript to some other forms I'd to print out it's awful I'm the last person to sit here and tell you that university is a wonderful or liberating experience and that is not my experience I walk six kilometres today but I didn't get to work out in a gym I didn't even have time to work out my own apartment I'm not following my own interests around passions in terms of research terms the essays I'm writing or even the language I'm studying a lot of what I'm doing is misery last year my first year here at uvic my grades were in the 90s largely and 11 grade was 88 and so on my life was 90% miserable it's awful I don't recommend it to anyone it's not a good time is it worth doing the answer is going to be different for different people
declaring that going vegan is their reason for dropping at a school and dropping out of school being justified by being yourself being happy being quote healthy unquote I've really lost count but it's like more than 12 examples of this I've seen and I'm not looking for it like I'm not researching this I'm not actively interested in looking examples of people who give veganism as their reason for dropping out of university but whether it's a reason or a rationale a justification put together after the fact this is now actually a pretty prominent part of what's been going on in in veganism and I can't just say in digital veganism in the reality of what veganism is in the real world so seeing something about this today seeing yet another example of this of somebody making a sort of proud and bold declaration that they're dropping out of university and what their reasons are for that and what their philosophy of life is that's kind of justify their um supposedly being in our dead act I'm going to read out a letter I wrote a couple months ago to someone else who did the same thing someone dropped out of university and explained in terms of veganism here's my letter hi i just stumbled on your youtube channel i just watched your explanation of why you're dropping out of university i think you're the third person i've seen on youtube this month who stated that the thai fruit festival in directly inspired them to drop out of university some of the videos on my channel are about veganism and some are not reflecting instead the stuff of them working on University myself however my three most recent videos that have had a considerable reaction from people currently in Chiang Mai are in direct response to the Thai food festival and not cheap gossip but really trying to discuss the underlying issues I have lived and worked in Thailand I have lived and worked in a long list of places in Asia Hong Kong yen and Cambodia Laos etc Chiang Mai is full of dead end losers who dropped out of university Chiang Mai is full of really bad examples of people to model your life after seriously chiang mai is full of people who will make excuses for you and who will try to convince you that failure is more of an accomplishment than really having ambition I'm writing and tell you as a complete stranger don't fall for it yes you can learn a lot while you're in Thailand yes you may decide that a major in commerce is not the right thing for you to study however you won't learn a lot by just relaxing with friends etc learning is hard work everywhere in Thailand or in a classroom learning the Thai language would be a ton of very hard work I know from experience learning how to open a business in Thailand would be a ton of hard work including both book learning and talking to entrepreneurs who already run such businesses perhaps volunteering etc just reading the newspapers and becoming familiar with the basic political and economic situation in Thailand in English would be a lot of hard work I would encourage you to do any of these things or all of them living in Thailand could be the opportunity of a lifetime for you but it will be hard work not a vacation if you really want to be such an opportunity as critical as I am of university when I read her replies to me which she wrote back to me by email I could see this really is a person who needs a university education this is a person who would benefit from the process of having programmed procedural reading and writing exercises developing their ability as an essayist as an author developing advanced reading comprehension and putting together coherent and compelling arguments in writing in response to with their reading I do not have a glamorized view of what university is how it works what it teaches or even what benefits people derive from that experience if you're in a bad situation in a bad university the solution is to try to find a better University the solution too bad education is to try to find good education not to give it up and have no education at all and for the vast majority of people young adults or middle-aged adults are old adults that is really hard nobody's used to it nobody knows how to do it it's really hard to recognize this particular university is bad or this particular department is bad this program is bad to analyze why it's bad understand either what's objectively bad about it or what's subjectively bad about it what's bad about it for you personally why it doesn't work for you individually and then to try to seek out and find a program somewhere that will work for you subjectively and that may be objectively has better things about it it's tough but I've got to tell you from experience being an out of that act is even tougher autodidact is a fancy word for you didn't go to university you just taught yourself you learn how to do something yourself and you know autodidact SAR often glamorized by people who don't know their struggle who don't know what their aspirations or ambitions were how they ended up being stuck in a job that teach them self there was a guy in cambodia i assume he's dead now it was a bit of a legendary figure who was a self-taught medical doctor so let's be clear he had no medical training yet never been to university you know he taught himself enough medicine to do I guess what we would consider a nurse or a you know an emergency medical technician I don't think he could do heart surgery or brain surgery didn't ask and you know it always struck me that when people talked about that guy and the sacrifice he made in the life he lived you don't think he got old for him you know you don't think sometimes he was stuck in his Hut in Cambodia and didn't wish that he had some of the options in life that a formally trained medical doctor would have now he might wish for them selfishly but he might also wish for it in order to make more of a difference for his patients to do more good to help people he might wish for it in order to make more of a difference in the medical field so we could write articles other doctors but reads we could do research that would improve things there are a lot of reasons why you would still want to have the credentials of a legit medical doctor even if you were in the incredibly tiny minority of people who taught themselves in the jungles of Cambodia how to get by as a kind of sort of good enough medical doctor and who manages to eke out a career in a bamboo hut because there are enough local villagers who respect his authority and ability to come to them when they have a broken leg or a skinned knee or when they're going to give birth where the case may be I mean it's it's a dark and difficult road being an autodidact in anything trying to gain the same skills with no textbook with no course with no exam with nobody looking over your shoulder with nobody to answer questions that's harder work and that's harder work even with languages yeah there's something special about and there's something wonderful about having a teacher and a chalkboard and someone who cares about you and someone who answers your question when you raise your hand and someone who prepares a test for you and someone who tells you what mistakes you're making what you're doing wrong and it is 10 times more work to be your own teacher and hold yourself to high standards and one of the reasons why being an autodidact is hard work is precisely because you can't fail you don't have someone there to tell you you're doing it wrong I feel for these people I really do I I'm in university right now for the second time I didn't drop out the first time I completed one university degree i'm back in university now getting a second university degree i spent several hours today having email with professors talking to them about getting a third university degree I am very far from an uncritical fan of what universities are how they operate the economics of them or anything else I woke up this morning at about 6am I look exhausted right now because I am exhausted I wrote an in class exam at about nine-thirty a.m. and then a lot of the rest of my day was basically related to the bureaucracy of university stuff filled out application forms and took the staples out of a transcript and attached a transcript to some other forms I'd to print out it's awful I'm the last person to sit here and tell you that university is a wonderful or liberating experience and that is not my experience I walk six kilometres today but I didn't get to work out in a gym I didn't even have time to work out my own apartment I'm not following my own interests around passions in terms of research terms the essays I'm writing or even the language I'm studying a lot of what I'm doing is misery last year my first year here at uvic my grades were in the 90s largely and 11 grade was 88 and so on my life was 90% miserable it's awful I don't recommend it to anyone it's not a good time is it worth doing the answer is going to be different for different people