The Life of the Mind You Dream Of, the Life of the Mind You Get

Alternate title: Attempting to do dark academia things in a post-socialist realist world

Last fall, I started a master’s program.

It took a few months of wrangling paperwork, getting documents translated, getting documents notarized (and convincing the confused notary that yes my university did demand a notarized copy of my degree because yes a regular copy is not enough for them now can we get on with it) (then bringing the notary chocolates because I lost my state ID card confirming that I in all of my delusions am a permanent resident of Serbia and only after a few days realized that she still had it and managed to get back in the nick of time to pick it up), paying through the nose for fees, convincing various university administrators that even though my undergraduate degree is in political science I am in fact qualified to do an English master’s because I am a native English speaker, having to prove my English knowledge by taking a placement test, getting a few questions on the test wrong and denting my ego, formally signing up for the course, having the nice ladies in the administrative office fill out the forms for me because the Serbian government requires you to fill out official forms in Cyrillic, which I can read but can only write like a very disinterested toddler, and several melt-downs via email to said administrative ladies.

I’m doing an English language master’s at the University of Niš, and I joke a bit about the irony of me, an American citizen who did my undergraduate degree at a fairly prestigious US school (Middlebury is a little Ivy, thank you very much), now studying English in Serbia. But here is where I wound up, and it seemed a mistake to put off doing something I want, which is going back to school, because the place where I now live doesn’t fit a predetermined narrative. I am not a Serbian citizen, so I am not eligible for a free tuition slot, but even paying the regular fees and my degree validation expenses is relatively affordable for me¹. The ability to do something you’ve always wanted to do, even if that something now doesn’t quite look the way that you imagined it would be, without bringing financial ruin down on yourself is a rare one these days, so it felt like an opportunity worth taking.

The studying I am doing bears no resemblance to the dark academia books and content that I, like any young person with vague intellectual aspirations and an Internet connection, has absorbed. The building of the Philosophy Faculty of Niš has no Gothic vaults or stained glass windows, it was built in the 1970s and serves Brutalism vibes². Like most public buildings in southern Serbia, it still has squat toilets.

I’m not even spending much time in the building—the masters program is online (something I didn’t realize until after I took the entrance exam). I cannot tell you what the library is like, as I did not get a chance to go there—less than three weeks after my course began, students at a faculty-wide plenum decided to go on strike. I hadn’t even had a chance to pick up my indeks yet (a combination exam booklet and student ID), so I technically cannot even enter the university where I am studying³.

I’ve been waiting for this master’s degree for a while, in a sense that I felt as if I needed a degree program to have permission to enter the life of the mind⁴. This is silly especially because in theory I live a life that is probably the most conducive to the life of the mind outside of the confines of the formal academic space, that of the freelance writer. However, even with this most flexible of jobs, I find it difficult to protect my actual capacity to read and think among the demands on my time and energy that come from mindless copy, money troubles, and the pressure to be doing something for your career rather than bulk-downloading PDFs⁵. I wanted a master’s degree to give me permission to study, to create those outside constraints on my life that would force me to make time for studying, or at least give me an excuse to tell other people to leave me alone because I’m studying.

However, the true life of the mind is the life of the mind you can make in real life, like my friend who is balancing finishing her dissertation while caring for her infant son. And even when you try to wall yourself off in the life of the mind, real life forces its way through the walls of academia, by forcing the university to respond to outside events—for example, the restrictions on free instruction and scholarship many professors the world over, including in the United States, face on Palestine.

The life of the mind is not the life of Pinterest. While I do run a (poor excuse for a) bookstagram, chasing an aesthetic comes at the expense of the actual life of the mind. That is not to say that the aesthetic isn’t real, because it had to be based on something real to be true. Just that it is not something that will be real for most of us reading or writing this, or if it was, like my time in Middlebury, it was only meant to last for a short time⁶. I want this to last longer, the reading, the studying, the writing, the thinking. Keeping that part, at least in my current financial/life situation, means giving up the aesthetics (and, unfortunately, the all-expenses-paid digital archives and library access).

When I realized that any further study program I decided would most likely not look like the dark academia books I wanted to read, I had to reframe how I decided to think about my degree—and why I wanted it. I’m grateful to the University of Nis, however short a time I’ve been here, because it’s forced me to redefine why I want to do this. It is not because of prestige⁷, as this university is not necessarily well-renowned within Serbia or not (without reason though, I was pretty happy with the education I got so far!) It is not because of aesthetic, as there is not much aesthetic about my camera off on a Zoom screen trying desperately to keep my rapidly deteriorating attention span in hand after Hour 9 on the computer today. However, even while the blockade is ongoing, being in a master’s program has made it easier for me to prioritize doing the academic stuff I’ve always wanted to do, such as plan for conferences and read books and count it as work. I can feel myself reading and forcing myself to make intertextual connections, sparked by something that was on a syllabus. It’s working, I guess.

I’m not sure the life of the mind I’ve carved out for myself is what I would have expected, what would ever fit on a Pinterest mood board, or one that won’t make my former colleagues from Middlebury or my fancy-pants NYC high school (and family) raise a few eyebrows. But I’m reading more, thinking more, and resurrecting this Substack to hold my leftover thoughts, which I think makes this truncated master’s degree worth every penny so far.

1. It is relatively affordable for me as I have continued to freelance on the side, mostly for foreign clients. For Serbian students whose families earn Serbian salaries, it is not quite so affordable.

2. Not that I think this is a bad thing. I was actually inspired to write this post after reading the Substacker Emily Spinach’s reflection on her time at Birkbeck University, which seems like a more polished version of this faculty. Like Birkbeck, the University of Nis’s newer buildings come from a time, Yugoslavia, when access to education was democratized, and the buildings reflect that.

3. I am also avoiding the blockades as it is generally a good idea to avoid protests in countries where you only have a visa, not the protection of citizenship, so I will also refrain from commenting further on the politics of the moment only to say that I do not mean to make this an essay about how the blockade is

4. Jury’s out on what that means, but for me, it’s about the freedom to read, write, and think and have that be how you spend your days.

5. Also…because of Twitter.

6. There’s a reason why a lot of dark academia books are about attempting to claw your way into a foothold that would allow you to stay in this world!

7. Even if prestige isn’t quite #1 on my list, I would still like it if I could get a job after this degree.