The highlight of the first semester was a rare campus sighting of Barry Cossar, father of Melbourne socialite Al Cossar (love your work Al). In fact it is up there with the time I saw the band members of Blur coming out of the bFM radio station studio. Yes it’s true, the only people I know at university are the fathers of the people I studied with the first time around. And before you say it, I should remind you that it’s not nice being called names, although I have been called worse things than a “mature student� before. The comment inevitability comes up when I reveal my university ID number, you know, like at parties and stuff, and people realise it is in the elite 2 millions, rather than the 4 millions like recently started students.
So what has been on the academic agenda? I have been taking papers in Sociology, Politics, and Economics. These are the questions I have written about, and what I wrote about them:
Describe briefly five or more “priorities� or enduring interests that motivate current US foreign policy.
-Heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race.
Explain the 1988 Burma uprising and the resulting transition from a one party socialist state to a bureaucratic military regime.
-Oil. It’s all about the oil stupid, in fact why study politics at all?
It has been suggested that late capitalism is marked by the process of ‘the production of consumption’. What is meant by this phrase, and how is advertising implicated in this process?
-Advertising is the capitalism’s predominant art form. All your problems can be blamed on advertising.
Critically analyse the 60 Minutes segment you have chosen, discussing how a particular ideological perspective is presented in the story.
-Ideology is the cosmic glue that holds the universe together. It is present in everything from the smallest quantum interaction to the construction of the Auckland Sky Tower.
What motives drove the evolution of EU institutions and policies, and in particular the EU’s move into the foreign and security policy spheres?
-Drugs, sex and rock n’ roll.
All unemployment is voluntary. Discuss.
-The fear of unemployment drives people into jobs. Thus unemployment is this true driver of any economy. Here endth the essay.
If you have an answer to any of these questions that isn’t oil, you can comment below.
