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what's your major?

a perplexing question, if you take it personally

i've taken nearly all classes i've wanted while i've attended swarthmore, which leaves me without a department. the nearest thing is english - i'd have to take maybe three more classes, one about dead white guys for sure,

fortunately swarthmore allows me to do a special major -
all i have to do is write a proposal...

...and get it approved.

at first i thought to work with technology, but not studying computer science, but more like computer humanities:

humanist technology
or maybe i should major in virtual communities?

but those were two limiting words
someone suggested history of the future

or millenial studies
too ephemeral

i considered cultural studies

heck, it was carl's major
so i studied it, and decided it was too specific; while activist, it wasn't interested in personal/spiritual development as i am

major in meaning? that's broad enough.

too broad

construction then.
then maybe communications, cuz that's an accepted word,
but it doesn't have a serious broad context for others like it does me.
media?
i'm studying what things mean, where and why they happen
not just watching tv for patterns
which is not to say that's what media studies do

but by this time i had a destined sense of my major,
that it needed to absorb the thoughts included in manifold manifest, this web life, and the range of experiences and classes i've enjoyed
so i identified three areas that i've studied

meaning context and media

so that's my major title, and it's been approved.

i've chosen amy as my best intellectual and spiritual advisor,
and my proust joyce and faulkner teacher phil weinstein on the swarthmore side
he's got a well trusted bullshit filter here.

now to work on my thesis.

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