3 Days to Go

I'm leaving on Wednesday morning, and it's beginning to get real. Months ago I was mostly just excited about going, although even then it felt like a fantasy. It was too far in the future to really feel too much one way or another, but sometime in the last week or two it finally hit me that this is real and this is happening. I'm going to go to Uganda, and life is going to be so different. People ask me what I will be doing there, and I give them the shpiel, but none of us really know what we'll be doing yet. I've begun packing madly, throwing everything I might ever need into my suitcase. I even have Moroccan oil for my un-straightened hair, tomorrow I'll be getting garlic tablets (apparently they don't make you smell but keep the mosquitos away--who knew??). It's terrifying. There. I said it. I'm terrified. I've never done anything this scary before. Over the summer, I went to Europe, but I kind of knew what to expect. There is a whole set of schema about what will happen on a trip backpacking to Europe. European nations are relatively similar to Canada, but we have been told so many times that everything will be so different and to just completely leave all expectations at the door so I have no clue what will happen. Anything could happen, anything could go wrong, and I will be so incredibly far. 

Perhaps it's wrong to admit fear over the internet. I suppose this is a channel for communication, and perhaps people shouldn't know that I'm scared because maybe that will make them more scared. However, I would argue that fear is important. The fact that I was feeling scared means that I am considering the negative possibilities. Because I am aware of what could go wrong, I will take the proper precautions in order to ensure that things don't. It could even be reckless to enter a situation fearlessly. Not to mention, one of the reasons that this appealed to me was I wanted to put myself in a situation that would challenge me and face me with a set of experiences in which I wouldn't know what to do or how to react. 

One of the best parts about new experiences and challenges is learning to deal with those scary or difficult things. If I weren't scared, it wouldn't be much of a challenge at all. But anyway, I expect this to be a very rewarding experience, and no matter what happens I expect to learn more than I ever could imagine I would. Or, I hope I do. There is so much that I can gain from this experience. That's another thing I love about travelling, or more specifically, life: you never know what you will gain, you never know what will happen or where you will go. It's all an unknown adventure, and what could possibly be more exciting than that?

Another interesting thing that I've been thinking about today is differences in thinking. Specifically, the difference between Academic (University) thinking and other types of thinking. For example, just normal thinking/real world thinking. Going to university trains you to think on an entirely different level; a level that is at once pedantic, detail orientated, and highly analytic. No truth is left unquestioned, nothing is considered final, and no reality is considered to exist. Our fundamental truths are constantly being questioned on a highly theoretical level. Even just talking about university makes me start to use larger words and more cat-chasing-tail language. "Real world" (for a lack of a better term) thinking tends to be more practical, and also occupies another realm that is hardly touched on in academics: Morality (or if you're going to be academic about it: socially acceptable norms). 

Much of academia does not often breech whether something should or should not be a certain way. Instead I find it tends to be more about whether it is or isn't, or how something is or isn't beneficial. Note: note right, but beneficial. Why do academics (not, I imagine, however philosophy or maybe international relations? I'm mostly speaking about Humanities and Social Sciences) not touch on morality? Likely, this is because morality is far to grey to even begin to analyze and understand, and people's ideas on morality vary so greatly. However, morality is so extremely important, and I think it's quite possible that focusing so entirely on an academic way of thinking can alienate that other way of thinking which, although focusing less on logic, can simultaneously make more sense. 

But related questions are: 

Why learn an academic way of thinking? (I would say to have the option of understanding things in multiple different ways; understanding things from different angles. Being able to look at the big/small picture and alternate between the two.)

Is one way of thinking 'better' than the other, or are they both just different?

What is morality? Or is it all just made up?

Other things that I can't think of because it's late and I'm really tired...

Anyways, I haven't given this a huge amount of thought, this is just something I was thinking about briefly today. Sorry for the longness (yeah, that's for you H.)