Why philosophy, of all things? For the longest time, philosophy had been the enemy of the state. For a third of my life, it was mine. We were as incompatible as Voltaire and censorship, though unlike Voltaire, I have never courted my ideal philosophical self in exile. It is here, on Canadian soil, where I have sought and continue to seek it. My success is tentative, but still a bustling, ongoing enterprise.
My earliest rendezvous with philosophy at a Canadian university can only be described as a catastrophic fling that left me shattered and scrambling to reassemble myself in time for graduation. Thanks to philosophy, I almost didn’t graduate university at all. What was supposed to have been a light “bird course” on metaphysics to supplement my English program, and fill in a toothy gap in my schedule, turned out to be a demonic vulture hellbent on devouring my liver. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Was I missing something? Was I incompetent?
Bio:
EMILY R. ZAREVICH is an English teacher and writer from Burlington, Ontario. Her work can be found in journals such as Jstor Daily, the Monitor, and Women in Higher Education, among other publications.