"Party" activists!

昨天大考结束后，发展学的一大班同学便出席了由系主任KEN COLE号召的酒吧聚会, 从出席率就可以知道这位立场鲜明的老师在同学之间的受欢迎程度。

考试前一个星期，日夜“开车”紧凑复习，考试后，竟然有种空虚怅惘的感觉。与几位同学闲聊时，大家都对于即将从批判性极强的课堂理论，回到可能渐渐吞噬我们 的社会感到无可奈何。我想，老师被学校的僵化制度逼走的无奈，应该是有过之而无不极。平日上课、讨论会上、写作时，同学们极尽可能批判资本主义、新自由主义、世界 银行、国际货币基金组织、联合国、全球化等等，离开象牙塔后，我们在这个充斥非正义、非公正的世界，将选择驻守在怎样的岗位呢？若真被马克思这位已故老人家不幸言中，眼前的一切，是一个过程，我们能在这个过程中做些什么？坚守什么？

我在大伙赠送给老师的黄色衬衫写下：“我来这里寻找答案，您却教我怎么提问，谢谢您的教诲！过程比结果还重要。”

最后，对于那些即将开始人生另一段旅程的同学，同窗的日子将成为美好的回忆，祝福大家。

Finally, the spring course came to the end after our final exam. Last night, we all went out for “pub crawl” again with students in the School of Development Studies with Ken Cole. From the attendance, we can know his popularity!

The one-week intensive exam preparation was followed by a sense of emptiness and void after the 3 hours exam. When few of us talked about future, we all have a feeling of impotent towards the society that we are going to face and maybe absorbed gradually by it. I believe that within the rigid teaching appraisal system, our professor, Ken, who enjoys teaching so much, but is forced to leave in the end must be very frustrated, much more than we are.

After we left this ivory tower which allowed us to think and criticize critically about injustice and inequality in capitalism, neo-liberalism, the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, globalization etc, what kinds of role we are going to play in our tiny position in the future? If things are happening today have been predicted by Marx accurately- unfortunately- it is part of the progress, what can we do as part of our life?

I wrote down a short sentence on the yellow shirt which we gave Ken as a token of appreciation:“ I come here to look for the answers, but you told me to look for the questions first…” Never stop questioning.

Lastly, for those “party” activists (my dear classmates/course mates) who are going to begin another part of journey in their life (fieldworks, dissertations, careers, marriage etc. ), I am going to miss the days when we were in Dev and UEA ! Good luck to your future undertakings!

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