Why I DIDN'T Drop Out of School: University & Brianna Jackfruitson.
24 October 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey what up this video is inspired in
the moment by one of my fellow youtube vegans digital vegan activists what if you want to say named Brianna jackfruits and Brianna put up a video reflecting on her own largely negative experiences of the educational system how was the younger person showed a lot of positive motivation it was a bit of a perfectionist and why she decided not to go to university maybe Im even painting it in too bleak a color palette with that very brief description because it's it's not a downbeat video if anything she's very up being positive of her life right now and you know I really I'm so happy for Brianna she seems to have really turned her life around in some profound way and she's now talking openly about her mental illness in the past tense which is great and very happy for her and you know I I think anyone who's watched her videos on and off of the exam I'm not a regular viewer of her channel can see a tremendous contrast in her character in the way she construes her sentences in the way one thought leads to another it really seems like she's had a tremendously positive personal transformation and that's what she says about herself too so I'm happy for that she's turned her life around and you know mental illness itself is quite mysterious it's difficult to talk about with any precision but in a lot of ways the deeper mystery is what we mean by mental health is what we mean by sanity is what we you know in this context she's apparently recovered from serious mental illness and that's even you know more difficult to describe so shout-out to brand I'm really half of her and some people in the fastpass thought that bran and I hate each other we just we just don't know each other we're just complete strangers there's no contact between us um but anyway you know as with all these people I really hope that in future now that she's overcome some of those issues she could make more and more of a positive contribution to this movement that we call veganism Hey hahaha I hope uh you know but all of us have got to contribute in their own ways and I've talked about that a lot in earlier videos not everyone is going to have the same message to contribute and not everyone is going to employ the same modes of activism so branna whatever you do it next I really do wish you the best and I'm happy for you with the progress you've made though that haven't been said topic of a video University and I want to make a reply video her her video was basically titled why she did it drop out of university so I want to make a video talking about why I did not drop out of university um I have been to university well i was gonna submit university twice actually a huge part of my life has been spent in universities and I guess I could count at least three times when I was living on a university campus and enrolled in university my first diplomas from the University of Toronto and I went back and got a second diploma from the University of Victoria which I had not collected yet technically i'm currently in china studying pursuant to and as part of that diploma and then when i go back to you Vic I can pretty much pick up that diploma as soon as I go back to Canada that's simplifying somewhat but let's let's leave the details aside on both occasions the quality of education I received from within the Canadian system was so bad was so terrible that I didn't just consider dropping out I actively wanted to drop out I was actively pursuing and investigating options alternatives stink university so that I could drop out and I didn't find any oh now different people react to this in different ways it's normally especially difficult for me to talk to people with my university experience if for example they come from Germany um if they come from France if they come from another western country would they presume that our education system in Canada is the same as their own or where they presume that what they've seen in American movies is true of the Canadian education system or even that it's true with the American education system because let's face it Hollywood does not give you the most you know accurate portrayal of how I the education system works um my experience at University tronto was absolutely abysmal University on with such a big University that of course what I have to say isn't true about departments I wouldn't be true or for example Medical Sciences you had no contact with it wouldn't be true of computer programming totally different department might as well be a totally different University but I did have experience with many different departments at that University and I now have experience with many different universities over many years so I know that some of my negative experience they're really do reflect endemic problems with the system if that's how you want to talk about it and other problems of course just reflect particular people's personalities but a university is not an anarchist utopia it's very much a hierarchical top-down organization some people give commands other people follow them some people make decisions other people live with consequence those decisions so in as much as there were particular bad apples in the system that's also a feature that everyone has to deal with whether you're in America or England or any similar Western english-language tradition of how university works one person can destroy a department for decades can destroy the reputation the whole university for several years or what have you so it's a top-down system and the other peculiar thing about my experience was that I could see it from the professor's perspective because even when I was University of Toronto was a young student I was a normal you know kid a great many of the professor's you talk to me were if anything somewhat desperate to become friends with me to divulge to me what the problems were that they experienced in running the University from their own perspective they were if anything trying to make me a sympathetic a lie there's and to explain what the problems were they were encountering so in as much as I might have had a perspective that a given course was a disaster or given department or program was a disaster very often the professor's themselves were eager to explain to me look this course is bad for this reason here's the guy made the decision here was the planning that went to it here were the factors we considered they were very often wanting to give me the backstory for was wrong with it and now when I were turning University at University of Victoria that was even more true because I wasn't older I was a more mature student and many but that already happened back at University anto back in 1998 and when I was at University of Victoria even more so they were professors who were really eager to disclose to me what the systemic problems were what they were struggling with in trying to do a decent job and delivering education to people including myself uh with all that Evan said sympathy only goes so far when you're in a hierarchical relationship like that the bottom line is they're responsible for their decisions they're responsible for the consequence of their decisions and people like me really suffer because the consequence their decisions and in both universities have already mentioned the context that was in the particular Department picture program was so bad was so terrible that I was looking for any way out so going to come back to that point just one second but you know years ago I'm now divorced but years ago I remember sitting with my wife and we're watching a news item a television news item and it was about a controversy at University where one student beat up another student and because it was recorded on camera like someone had a cellphone and uploaded to the Internet there was then this question of if the student would be expelled or go to prison or both and you know was in general a news item reflecting on how you know these kinds of cameras have changed the game have changed the ethics and politics of these kinds of these kinds of issues and I think some people were looking at this in questioning well in the past didn't University students just kind of beat each other up and forget about it did it always have these kinds of terrible consequences of kicking people at a university and what have you but number I looked at it I was sitting there watching the peace with my wife and you know from the video you really did get a sense of the personality of the guy who assaulted this other person who started this fist tight and so on and I remember i said to her i said they're asking the wrong questions 30 years ago that guy would have never gone to university and it was University in Canada I said a guy like that 30 years ago you can see his whole attitude in this fight he doesn't have an interest in academic study you just think about he has no desire to become an academic this is not someone who aspires to this he obviously someone who's been cornered to go into university because he feels he needs it to get a job um and you know not in a perfect world in the very imperfect world we had a few decades ago somebody like that would have had all kinds of opportunities outside of university that didn't require a BA that didn't require an MA and he wouldn't have had to fit himself into this context that he's uncomfortable with and the Vanek dote um the truth is that I myself even though many professors praised me as brilliant I've had professors say to me at length that they believe that was a genius like sit down with me and talk to me like this is something they've got explained to me for my own good I've had professors you know not just sometimes praised my work and son it spreads my character and talk to me about my future take the time out of their day to try to advise me on my future career I appreciate all that but the bottom line is my experience the university both on both occasions on both universities actually there's a I can make this video longer tied with a third university I was involved in but we're leaving that out we're going to pretend they're only two universities involved here was so terrible was so uniformly unforgivably negative that on both occasions I was applying for jobs outside of the university including like literally working in a coal mine one of them was a gold mine I was applying for all kinds of blue-collar jobs the type of jobs my grandparents actually did and also more broadly that were commonly available my grandparents generation and I can say to you honestly if just one of those jobs had come through for me I would have dropped out of university to pursue that job something else i'm on the record for that I've already discussed the channel while I was at University of Victoria I applied to join the Canadian military I went through the whole testing process and it's a funny story tell it the funny way right and I can tell you again if the Canadian military were as well organised as the US military because they are very well organized at recruitment at you know getting you from the recruiters office to basic training in 24 hours they're very proud of that I would have shipped out to Afghanistan rather than stay in that university program it was that bad so even for someone like me someone who identifies as a bookish intellectual someone who studied so many languages someone who's so passionate about history and politics if I had had any alternative I would have dropped out of university because the quality of education available to me was absolutely abysmal II terrible and I gotta wrap up this video now for the sake of it if you think that someone with my interests interest in ethics philosophy ecology politics if you think those interests are rewarded in a Canadian university context you may be watching this in Russia you may be watching this in Germany you may be watching this right here in China where I now live I know what may be hard for you to relate to but no my report it at all um I really found myself again and again in university context where just the fact that I existed was an unwanted challenge to the whole system no matter how polite i was about it when i was involved in put his studies the fact that i would talk about slavery within buddhist studies was an unwanted challenge to the whole system within asian studies the fact that i would talk about politics in the way that i do and you see it on this channel doesn't matter a plant was an unwanted challenge to the whole system there were departments of asian studies that tell you straight up all they talk about is poetry literature movies and they don't want to admit that politics even exists so it's completely absurd if you watch this channel you may think my interests are mainstream but actually my experience subjectively and personally has been that again and again I've been an unwanted challenge to the institution it was a part of and if there had been any alternative if I curl worked in the coal mine if I could have signed up and gone to Afghanistan as bleak terrible i'm not not talking about a dream job as terrible as those options were um all those jobs i applied for and in well was a universe toronto i applied to become a paramedic there's so many jobs i mean at while i was at uvic i probably applied for a hundred different jobs including internships as well as jobs well over the university of toronto i don't want to count but including what was the universe dry apply to just become a waiter like I applied for all I applied become a security guard i pled become a security guard and it's not worth describing i applied for really low level jobs and i applied to enter a trade school to become a bricklayer i I did the application okay if any of that have been possible for me if any of that have worked out for me I would have dropped out of university because that's how terrible the quality of education was for me despite the fact that I am as many of my universe professors flat flattered me I am a naturally gifted writer researching and writing essays is very easy for me and in many ways I'm intellectually inclined so that's what it's like growing up in Canada in 21st century and for any fuel watching this think of relate my arcos at you because there are tons of people going through the same struggle
the moment by one of my fellow youtube vegans digital vegan activists what if you want to say named Brianna jackfruits and Brianna put up a video reflecting on her own largely negative experiences of the educational system how was the younger person showed a lot of positive motivation it was a bit of a perfectionist and why she decided not to go to university maybe Im even painting it in too bleak a color palette with that very brief description because it's it's not a downbeat video if anything she's very up being positive of her life right now and you know I really I'm so happy for Brianna she seems to have really turned her life around in some profound way and she's now talking openly about her mental illness in the past tense which is great and very happy for her and you know I I think anyone who's watched her videos on and off of the exam I'm not a regular viewer of her channel can see a tremendous contrast in her character in the way she construes her sentences in the way one thought leads to another it really seems like she's had a tremendously positive personal transformation and that's what she says about herself too so I'm happy for that she's turned her life around and you know mental illness itself is quite mysterious it's difficult to talk about with any precision but in a lot of ways the deeper mystery is what we mean by mental health is what we mean by sanity is what we you know in this context she's apparently recovered from serious mental illness and that's even you know more difficult to describe so shout-out to brand I'm really half of her and some people in the fastpass thought that bran and I hate each other we just we just don't know each other we're just complete strangers there's no contact between us um but anyway you know as with all these people I really hope that in future now that she's overcome some of those issues she could make more and more of a positive contribution to this movement that we call veganism Hey hahaha I hope uh you know but all of us have got to contribute in their own ways and I've talked about that a lot in earlier videos not everyone is going to have the same message to contribute and not everyone is going to employ the same modes of activism so branna whatever you do it next I really do wish you the best and I'm happy for you with the progress you've made though that haven't been said topic of a video University and I want to make a reply video her her video was basically titled why she did it drop out of university so I want to make a video talking about why I did not drop out of university um I have been to university well i was gonna submit university twice actually a huge part of my life has been spent in universities and I guess I could count at least three times when I was living on a university campus and enrolled in university my first diplomas from the University of Toronto and I went back and got a second diploma from the University of Victoria which I had not collected yet technically i'm currently in china studying pursuant to and as part of that diploma and then when i go back to you Vic I can pretty much pick up that diploma as soon as I go back to Canada that's simplifying somewhat but let's let's leave the details aside on both occasions the quality of education I received from within the Canadian system was so bad was so terrible that I didn't just consider dropping out I actively wanted to drop out I was actively pursuing and investigating options alternatives stink university so that I could drop out and I didn't find any oh now different people react to this in different ways it's normally especially difficult for me to talk to people with my university experience if for example they come from Germany um if they come from France if they come from another western country would they presume that our education system in Canada is the same as their own or where they presume that what they've seen in American movies is true of the Canadian education system or even that it's true with the American education system because let's face it Hollywood does not give you the most you know accurate portrayal of how I the education system works um my experience at University tronto was absolutely abysmal University on with such a big University that of course what I have to say isn't true about departments I wouldn't be true or for example Medical Sciences you had no contact with it wouldn't be true of computer programming totally different department might as well be a totally different University but I did have experience with many different departments at that University and I now have experience with many different universities over many years so I know that some of my negative experience they're really do reflect endemic problems with the system if that's how you want to talk about it and other problems of course just reflect particular people's personalities but a university is not an anarchist utopia it's very much a hierarchical top-down organization some people give commands other people follow them some people make decisions other people live with consequence those decisions so in as much as there were particular bad apples in the system that's also a feature that everyone has to deal with whether you're in America or England or any similar Western english-language tradition of how university works one person can destroy a department for decades can destroy the reputation the whole university for several years or what have you so it's a top-down system and the other peculiar thing about my experience was that I could see it from the professor's perspective because even when I was University of Toronto was a young student I was a normal you know kid a great many of the professor's you talk to me were if anything somewhat desperate to become friends with me to divulge to me what the problems were that they experienced in running the University from their own perspective they were if anything trying to make me a sympathetic a lie there's and to explain what the problems were they were encountering so in as much as I might have had a perspective that a given course was a disaster or given department or program was a disaster very often the professor's themselves were eager to explain to me look this course is bad for this reason here's the guy made the decision here was the planning that went to it here were the factors we considered they were very often wanting to give me the backstory for was wrong with it and now when I were turning University at University of Victoria that was even more true because I wasn't older I was a more mature student and many but that already happened back at University anto back in 1998 and when I was at University of Victoria even more so they were professors who were really eager to disclose to me what the systemic problems were what they were struggling with in trying to do a decent job and delivering education to people including myself uh with all that Evan said sympathy only goes so far when you're in a hierarchical relationship like that the bottom line is they're responsible for their decisions they're responsible for the consequence of their decisions and people like me really suffer because the consequence their decisions and in both universities have already mentioned the context that was in the particular Department picture program was so bad was so terrible that I was looking for any way out so going to come back to that point just one second but you know years ago I'm now divorced but years ago I remember sitting with my wife and we're watching a news item a television news item and it was about a controversy at University where one student beat up another student and because it was recorded on camera like someone had a cellphone and uploaded to the Internet there was then this question of if the student would be expelled or go to prison or both and you know was in general a news item reflecting on how you know these kinds of cameras have changed the game have changed the ethics and politics of these kinds of these kinds of issues and I think some people were looking at this in questioning well in the past didn't University students just kind of beat each other up and forget about it did it always have these kinds of terrible consequences of kicking people at a university and what have you but number I looked at it I was sitting there watching the peace with my wife and you know from the video you really did get a sense of the personality of the guy who assaulted this other person who started this fist tight and so on and I remember i said to her i said they're asking the wrong questions 30 years ago that guy would have never gone to university and it was University in Canada I said a guy like that 30 years ago you can see his whole attitude in this fight he doesn't have an interest in academic study you just think about he has no desire to become an academic this is not someone who aspires to this he obviously someone who's been cornered to go into university because he feels he needs it to get a job um and you know not in a perfect world in the very imperfect world we had a few decades ago somebody like that would have had all kinds of opportunities outside of university that didn't require a BA that didn't require an MA and he wouldn't have had to fit himself into this context that he's uncomfortable with and the Vanek dote um the truth is that I myself even though many professors praised me as brilliant I've had professors say to me at length that they believe that was a genius like sit down with me and talk to me like this is something they've got explained to me for my own good I've had professors you know not just sometimes praised my work and son it spreads my character and talk to me about my future take the time out of their day to try to advise me on my future career I appreciate all that but the bottom line is my experience the university both on both occasions on both universities actually there's a I can make this video longer tied with a third university I was involved in but we're leaving that out we're going to pretend they're only two universities involved here was so terrible was so uniformly unforgivably negative that on both occasions I was applying for jobs outside of the university including like literally working in a coal mine one of them was a gold mine I was applying for all kinds of blue-collar jobs the type of jobs my grandparents actually did and also more broadly that were commonly available my grandparents generation and I can say to you honestly if just one of those jobs had come through for me I would have dropped out of university to pursue that job something else i'm on the record for that I've already discussed the channel while I was at University of Victoria I applied to join the Canadian military I went through the whole testing process and it's a funny story tell it the funny way right and I can tell you again if the Canadian military were as well organised as the US military because they are very well organized at recruitment at you know getting you from the recruiters office to basic training in 24 hours they're very proud of that I would have shipped out to Afghanistan rather than stay in that university program it was that bad so even for someone like me someone who identifies as a bookish intellectual someone who studied so many languages someone who's so passionate about history and politics if I had had any alternative I would have dropped out of university because the quality of education available to me was absolutely abysmal II terrible and I gotta wrap up this video now for the sake of it if you think that someone with my interests interest in ethics philosophy ecology politics if you think those interests are rewarded in a Canadian university context you may be watching this in Russia you may be watching this in Germany you may be watching this right here in China where I now live I know what may be hard for you to relate to but no my report it at all um I really found myself again and again in university context where just the fact that I existed was an unwanted challenge to the whole system no matter how polite i was about it when i was involved in put his studies the fact that i would talk about slavery within buddhist studies was an unwanted challenge to the whole system within asian studies the fact that i would talk about politics in the way that i do and you see it on this channel doesn't matter a plant was an unwanted challenge to the whole system there were departments of asian studies that tell you straight up all they talk about is poetry literature movies and they don't want to admit that politics even exists so it's completely absurd if you watch this channel you may think my interests are mainstream but actually my experience subjectively and personally has been that again and again I've been an unwanted challenge to the institution it was a part of and if there had been any alternative if I curl worked in the coal mine if I could have signed up and gone to Afghanistan as bleak terrible i'm not not talking about a dream job as terrible as those options were um all those jobs i applied for and in well was a universe toronto i applied to become a paramedic there's so many jobs i mean at while i was at uvic i probably applied for a hundred different jobs including internships as well as jobs well over the university of toronto i don't want to count but including what was the universe dry apply to just become a waiter like I applied for all I applied become a security guard i pled become a security guard and it's not worth describing i applied for really low level jobs and i applied to enter a trade school to become a bricklayer i I did the application okay if any of that have been possible for me if any of that have worked out for me I would have dropped out of university because that's how terrible the quality of education was for me despite the fact that I am as many of my universe professors flat flattered me I am a naturally gifted writer researching and writing essays is very easy for me and in many ways I'm intellectually inclined so that's what it's like growing up in Canada in 21st century and for any fuel watching this think of relate my arcos at you because there are tons of people going through the same struggle