by Vineet Deshpande
In the first semester of my STS Master’s, the state of my mind could be described in two words: curious and overwhelmed. Curiosity is great; being overwhelmed – not so much. But what gave me solace was that this emotion was shared by almost all of my classmates. If you have to suffer, might as well do it as a group. At this point, I am going to make a corny pun. The word safar (???) in Hindi, which ironically has the same pronunciation as the English word, means journey or voyage. It’s hard to point to a single moment when my journey into STS began. Like we learned in our first semester courses, great discoveries are not based on a single moment or man but rather, a culmination of past knowledge, societal factors, personal agendas and a supportive cast which sadly remains unnoticed (Fleck, 1979). Having said that, if I have to pick a critical factor, it would be reading David Graeber’s (2018) Bullshit Jobs which made me wonder what would happen if my job completely disappeared one day and the sobering reflection that society would not be adversely impacted one bit and might even be better off.
The gestation period from the point where I found out about the STS Master’s, to applying, getting an admission letter and actually starting the course was really long. One would think that this would be enough to predict, analyse and plan for surprises but that was a completely wrong assumption. I knew that going back to University after 17 years was going to be a big change but it’s been one (pleasant) surprise after another. Where I come from (at least when I did my Bachelor’s), one does not expect the Head of the Department to wear floral shirts and insist on being called by their (shortened) first name. Not using the suffix ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ is unthinkable. Teachers aren’t flexible and understanding of late assignment submissions. Eating in class is frowned upon or not allowed. I can’t even imagine going out of the classroom to take a phone call and walking back in and everyone acting as if nothing has happened. The freedom and respect that is given to students here is wonderful.
The methodologies of teaching/learning have also been a great experience. Having never done a ‘seminar’ in my Bachelor’s, the whole process of reading texts beforehand, discussing them in class in different ways and realising that the onus of a good seminar experience lies equally with both students and teachers was very refreshing for me. The readings were a totally different experience too. Some texts (like Max Liboiron’s ‘Exchanging’) (Liboiron, 2020) blew my mind and some (like Peter Galison’s ‘Judgement against Objectivity’) (Galison, 1998) made me questions years of beliefs. Some were extremely engaging to read, leading me down different rabbit holes and a very few (thankfully) were frustrating and made me wonder why writing needs to be so complex in academia. But the fact that one can even criticise the complexity of the texts in class was mind blowing!
Overall, it has been a fascinating start to my Master’s. The number of new concepts that I learned, experiences that I had and the new people that I met has been thoroughly rewarding. Ultimately, it is always about the people and I’m extremely lucky to have such wonderful classmates, seniors and teachers.
On a lighter note, I am keeping a running count of how many times I have been asked if I am the teacher (current count is 2). Interestingly, since I come from a complete STEM background, the whole vocabulary and mindset of social sciences is completely new to me. So in an oxymoronic or Schrödinger way, I am both old and new at the same time 🙂
References
Fleck, L. (1979 [1935]). Introduction to Thought Collectives. In Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (pp. 38-51; pp. 154-165). University of Chicago Press.
Galison, P. (1998). Judgment against Objectivity. In C. A. Jones & P. Galison (Eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art (pp. 327–359). Routledge.
Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster.
Liboiron, M. (2020). Exchanging. In K. Jungnickel (Ed.), Transmissions. Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research (pp. 78–92). The MIT Press.
Vineet Deshpande is a master’s student in Science, Technology, Society (STS) at the University of Vienna, with a background in computer engineering. His previous work has been in different roles at software companies. In his spare time, he writes short stories and conducts unofficial walking tours through Vienna.