Between theory and practice

My life is a polarised matter.
I spend on average 10 hours a day on my thesis which is due on 4 April. On that day, my life as a student is over, my identity as an academic is challenged to the core. I have studied for 6½ years now and will hold to Master Degrees at the end of it. I have delved into the minds of hundreds of philosophers, analysts, scientists, antagonists. I have become one myself. But today, I have to go to work - my other work, out there in the real world. My work which involves 15 girls between the ages of 14 and 18 in one of the most troubled areas of Aarhus.

I believe that the challenges we are ready to take on present themselves exactly at that moment - when we're ready. Through all my years of studies I've thought of myself as an academic and believed that thinking is everything I'm good for in this world, my special talent. I still think it is. But, when this job with the girls landed in my world, I was ready for the challenge. And I took it on, insecure and vulnerable, worried whether I would be good enough, be anything at all. And I went home crying more than once. But I learned. So incredibly much. I learned that the world is not as square as I thought it was. I realised that there has been a valid purpose with my academic work, with challenging commonsense perceptions of cultural identities, because the world is not simple - but it is not as complicated as we often think either. Most importantly, I realised that the way the world looks today, the way this society looks today, I am needed out there.

I've spent nearly 7 years learning about the world, discovering the way we make sense of it and how this sometimes leads to conflicts. Conflicts that we don't understand because our theory doesn't fit the world. Now it is time for me to take the challenge seriously and make it my mission to be in the world of practice and not of theory. One does nothing without the other. Neither do I. World, bring it on!

Every chance that you get is a chance you take.