Where I Come From
I think education is a long process of working through a personal, social, and political environment while learning more about it and yourself all the time. As the philosopher Gilbert Simondon explored in his writings about individuation, “The individual, as (continually) produced in a process of individuation, is never an isolated Self. It is always coupled or coordinated with a milieu; the individual can only be understood together with its milieu, and cannot subsist as a unity without it” (Shaviro). To facilitate my own development, I’ve changed milieus from a farm, to factories, to the oil patch, to theatre, to television, to politics, and back to theatre and non-profit social activism. At the same time, studying through Athabasca University has provided a grounding to understand these worlds, and several theoretical frameworks through which to consider them.
The skills I’ve gained through my occupations, through the completion of an undergraduate degree at a distance, and through the completion of nine courses of the MAIS program will help me continue in non-profit social action around homelessness, inter-cultural creation, and marginalized community-building.
Works Cited
Shaviro, Steven. “Simondon on individuation” The Pinocchio Theory,
www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=471 Accessed 7 August 2019.