Unfair Academy

Today I am in South Korea, setting in front of my personal computer in the cozy house of my parents-in-low. Everything here in Korea is cozy: cozy, technological and fashionable. Except human relationships, these are almost not existent...but this is another story.

I am writing my dissertation and i need to read a lot of books. One year in Makeni did not help me to stay up to date with new publications, books, articles and so on. Actually what i am doing now it is to look for books that I or my adviser consider as important.

I was thinking how easy is do research in our time, I can download a lot of books from internet, I bought a e-reader that is helping me to read all the pdf materials that I downloaded. I can take notes with my e-reader, I can even download for free the first chapter of whatever book I want on Kindle bookstore.

And if I want to take some sentences of that book in order to make a citation, I have only to go to google books, input the words or the sentence I want to use and google will tell me which is the page that contains that sentence.

I was so happy, it is so easy to do research now, I cannot imagine how you can do research without these facilities. But.....just wait a moment! I can imagine it, or better I have experienced it, during the all past year in Makeni, at Unimak.

You cannot download books because the connection is too slow (when it was working....), if it rains the internet connection is out of use, therefore you cannot have access to articles, to up to date publications etc. There is the project to bring the optic fiber to Makeni, one of the big mining companies is doing it, but till now a student (and I don't want to mention lecturers) finds many and sometime insurmountable difficulties in doing a proper research.

And I feel this deeply unfair. Unfair because the academic system is more and more becoming a business, and in this market the importance that these technologies are going to assume a more and more high position. The problem is that with this parameter of evaluation, the better, smarter and clever Sierra Leone's student cannot even try to confront himself with the most stupid, unenthusiastic Asian student (I said Asian only because I consider Asia as one of the most "computerized" part of the world).

And this is deeply unfair.

Anyway, tomorrow it will be a great day for Unimak! Graduation Day! Many students will graduate, many friends....I am thinking on them and their faces come out from my memories, from the many moments that we spent together......Moses, Jellicatu......

I wish you all to make a good use of this opportunity that life (and Unimak) is offering to you, be proud because you did a not easy job!

I miss you all my friends! I would like to be with you tomorrow!