When Time Unravels, a conversation with Marisa Parham

In this intimate, wandering conversation, digital humanities scholar Marisa Parham joins artists Sheila and Uzoma to untangle our fraught relationship with time—where ancestral proverbs collide with Zoom lags and capitalist futures.

Threads that Emerge:

• The Tyranny of Clock Time: How "Monday-Friday" constructs exhaust us, while digital spaces flatten grief, birthdays, and revolutions into one endless scroll. ("I couldn’t tell if I should celebrate a dog’s birthday or rage against homophobia")

• Meditation as Resistance: Parham’s Simone Weil-inspired insight: "Being present isn’t mystical—it’s the only way to survive a future that keeps disappointing us."

• College Degrees vs. Life Skills: A laugh-turned-revelation about why education was never meant to teach us "how to open a tin can" (or ride a scooter).

• Digital Playgrounds: As a builder of virtual spaces, Parham reframes her work: "We’re not just making rules for the playground—we’re building the swings too."

Why It Resonates:
A antidote to productivity culture, this dialogue honors time as both ancestral wisdom (via Achebe’s proverbs) and a radical act of presence—especially when "the Wi-Fi won’t reach the third floor."

"Capitalist time is a scam. The present? That’s where the magic hides."

Sheila: Welcome to the future.

Marisa: This is amazing.

Sheila: Okay, so, um, let me start by saying I'm very excited. And more than excited. I think I'm honored. You're this super fancy, fanciest, but also doesn't like to be the fancy guest we're having here. That's also great.

Marisa: amazing.

Sheila: Marissa and I have been working together since college. We have heard all my sob stories, but then also still managed to hire me. God, and she knows why. So that's amazing. So, I think we'll start by just doing brief intros so everyone knows everyone. And also, everyone in the audience knows everyone.

Uzoma: Yes.

Sheila: I mean, I guess I'll start first. Can you guys hear the children in the background?

Marisa: No, I think it is suppressed, which is amazing. I'm here for it.

Sheila: They’re expressing their musical talents on the piano. But that's okay. I'm glad that it's under control. So, I'll start with myself since I'm the bridge between us all. My name is Sheila Chukwulozie, and I am your host for today. I'm technically your host, but I also met like your host. But I am collaborating with Uzoma on this project about time. We're looking at the book Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe, written in 1964. We are just looking at Proverbs as these vehicles of timelessness that are always spoken in time, but at different times, you have different problems for different times outside this project. I'm a performance artist and a scholar. And just an all-around Queen. That's it. That's my intro. Uzoma, Do you want to go next?

Uzoma: Yes, my small preamble is that I've heard a lot about you, Marisa, from Sheila and Amir. And I'm very excited to be talking. You're our first guest. And I feel like, yeah, from everything I heard of you, it’d be a great way to kick off the series. I am Uzoma.

Marisa: Thank you.

Uzoma: I think there's a slight lag. Okay, I'll just Soldier on. So yeah, I am Uzoma, and I now identify as a digital and web artist. Um, I’m like Sheila said. While working on this project, I am trying to recode time, reconfigure time, and think differently. Using proverbs in the Arrow of God as a vehicle, I am particularly interested in situating the contemporary state of existence.

Sheila: I can hear you, but it's breaking. Marisa, is it breaking up for you?

Marisa: Yeah, it is.

Sheila: intensely? Okay. Yeah, try leaving and never coming back.

Uzoma: I don't know what to do. Maybe I should leave and come again

Sheila: Yeah. I feel like I am lagging, especially now that everybody else is getting to experience it. Because I think most of the time, it was like, I think people who had to communicate, like from really far places, just occasionally or family-wise. But now that people are working from far and wide places, I think people are experiencing much more lags.

Marisa: That's interesting. It makes sense.

Sheila: I have always dreamed of doing something like a performance. That's just people saying hello, hello. Can you hear me say hello?

Marisa: Can you have a family that is moving? And I cried thinking about it.

Sheila: I'm so serious, Marisa. It's like a one-hour play of just misunderstanding and miscommunication. Yeah, I feel like the weird one in your family boils down to a single WhatsApp call.

Marisa: Oh, are they coming back?

Sheila: Yes, they are, they are. But I think their internet is really bad. I think it also has to do with the way that people, that we build houses here actually. I've heard this time after time that based on how the houses are built, sometimes it's actually like, it doesn't allow for internet connection. You go to certain places. And they're like, yeah, this the way the houses are built in these entire estates. The Internet Yeah.

Marisa: That way.

Sheila: But what is it? Is it the way the houses…?

Marisa: It can be placement, utilities, or where they are outside. I'm in a big old house. Now. It's vertical. It's weird to have multiple routers like that all linked to each other across the floors cause the signal won't go up the stairs; it's gonna mean because the ceilings are old, and they’re probably plaster. You see, what I mean is that if you have concrete or pass-through water, it depends on where your water pipes are, for instance.

Sheila: Wow. So, the cables depend on where the water is?

Marisa: Like all the things that affect it.

Sheila: Interesting. I think we'll come back to that. But Uzoma, are you good? Are we back?

Uzoma: I think so. I mean, can you hear me well?

Sheila: It sounds promising. But we'll see. Were you describing yourself?

Uzoma: I described myself as a digital and web artist in this movement. And that I am particularly interested and excited about, in terms of my research, excited about situating Proverbs, which are timeless in the present because I feel like there's some sort of disconnect between where we are now in contemporary Nigeria, maybe even on the continent, generally. There's a disconnect between where we are now and some of the ancestral wisdoms that have gotten us here. And yeah, I'm very interested in how those things can be situated in the present day even using some of the tools that we've inherited, learned, and adapted, like the digital, so yeah, that's what's driving me for this.

Sheila: Marissa, would you like to do a bio of yourself for yourself?

Marisa: I don't know, and I don't have anything good to say. I'm Marissa Parra. I'm a Professor of English. I also direct ADHIM, the African American Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Maryland. I'm also a worker at IRL Humanities, the independent digital production and humanities lab. I'm also the Associate Director of MITH, the Maryland Institute for Technology Humanities. So, I spend all my time talking to people about how they want to play with their phones and computers to make amazing things.

Sheila: Amazing. Can you give us the most nonprofessional description of yourself ever?

Marisa: I don't have one lol. I'm old, remember?

Sheila: Irish news.

Marisa: Yeah. What kind of description do you want?

Sheila: I want to know what you would tell me if I had a child now; she was three years old and meeting you. How would you describe yourself?

Uzoma: I will say Hi, I'm Marissa. I play with computers to make digital art and experiences. I like that

Unknown Speaker: Nice. Lovely. Yes. Because I think we play so much. It was basically our job to find more ethical, responsible ways to play. It's like we're basically setting the rules on the playground. But we're also building the playground.

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Uzoma: That’s exactly right.

Sheila: I think it's cool. So we designed this particular call to go because we're opening. So, like we said in the email, we want to talk to you about time. And I think your perfect talks about time is because of the concept of passing the time, or revolutionary time and radical time, but I think me. I just named this whole space as just like a generative conversation. I think, instead of just latching on to maybe what you know or what I know, I really want this space to be a nursery for questions that affect all of us equally, like things that we may not have thoughts about or new things. So, we will begin with a quote on time, and I want us to explore that curse and respond to it. So, unreal time cast over all things, including ourselves, a veil of unreality. I love that. What do you love about it?

Marisa: Did I mean time, or how do we talk about time or measure time? I think that's perfectly to unreality, as time does exist to some extent, but how we talk about it is so distant from existence. You all have to be constantly running on multiple tracks, whatever, an SDR reality, eight-hour work day or, you know, Monday through Friday, or whatever your thing is. Those are the parts we've made up. And they are tiring.

Sheila: They are, they are; it's really tiring these days to be on time.

Uzoma: God, yeah, it's hard to be on time, especially if your body's not moving enough. Or across space. You know, one of my obsessions is when things that are about time we talk about as being about space, or things or space, we talk about time, and this just makes it all a mess. Because it's so hard to think about time without space, like multiple things happening, like sitting at my computer. But there are different things at different times. But I don't know.

Sheila: That's one thing that when I talk about my phone, the first break is one of the first and earliest breaks I took from social media. That was my big problem, and I felt like I couldn't separate my time on this one space of a phone, on this one space of a screen. I think one thing that bothered me was I would go on that time was Facebook, I would go on Facebook, and I would see, Oh, happy birthday to my dog that just turned seven. And then I would go and see, oh, my grandma just had cancer. And then I would go and see. Can you vote for like Palestine? And then I would go and see. You know, like, homophobia. I couldn't. By the time I’ve scrolled, I don't know if I should be celebrating that someone's dog just turned seven. Or should I be enraged that homophobia is something that is just so prevalent, I couldn't, I couldn't pick up the phone and know, Okay, this is what I'm spending my time on. So, I became like, you know what, I'm just going to write letters to people. I became very passionate about just going to paper and knowing that this page is dedicated to sending a message to someone. So, I think sometimes, when that time gets muddled up, I feel like I need space to help me separate time.

Marisa: That's amazing.

Uzoma: Yeah, I think putting space and time together is interesting because that's essentially what the digital does. And Sheila, we heard this on our last call. The digital is the vehicle for turning space into Time and collapsing space. And I think the extreme end of that is what you're describing. When everything is flat, and you're experiencing, you're simultaneously in so many different spaces, emotional and even, you know, geographical. Yeah, when we talk about this a lot……

Sheila: and I think the thing with even saying I think it's tiring to be on time, is also, it's not just, of course, about showing up to things on time, like showing up to meetings that 10 am when it's 10 am, but it's also showing up to now, the time of different communities, like, for instance, the time of the Asian American community, is one of reflection, grief, and mourning. But that time, for instance, in Nigeria, I guess, which is every time but on a large scale, was last year in October. So, in a way, like, being on time almost means, and I'm just exploring your thought here, it almost means never actually being on your own time. I feel that choosing your own time in this place where the global time feels consolidated is a kind of, as they say, silence is violence. But when you're like, no, I'm only silent because I have just had violence done to me. And I don't know if I have any more to give. If you were to come here and tweet about what you just had for lunch, surely you could react to what's happening another time? So, I don't know. It's what do you guys think?

Marisa: I think that's very interesting. That's very interesting. I don't know if one time for one community or individual might be simultaneous times. That's so interesting to think about. And I'm just I'm still just…

Uzoma: Yeah, but also, even like that moment of showing up, like with your social media example, there might be times when I'm on social media, but also somewhere else. So even if the time doesn't work, I might be there precisely because I just want to talk about what I had for lunch. I need to be able to do that. But it won’t sync up with someone else's time. Right?

Sheila: Right.

Marisa: Do I know why they're there? You know, this is in black, constantly Anthropocene, this digital project I made years and years ago, I have a whole section about that, like, you know, you're going on like say hi, and see someone's like cute kids or puppies. Instead, you get hit with some catastrophe. Or you're going for a catastrophe because you are feeling catastrophic. Like, but OMG, I'm positive my dog is smiling, and I know how to reconcile time as a sort of refraction of someone's state of being right and how that gets played out so radically differently for different people. But then you're all being collected on these platforms, which collapses, all being the same in the moment. It fails, rightfully.

Sheila: right. And I think the effort to collapse… we were promised, I don't know if we were promised, or we took the experiments of collapsing to only be positive. Maybe there is a conflation of the word progressive with positive because it almost makes me think that whenever we say progressive, it almost means a future where there's no suffering.

Marisa: That's really interesting. Yeah, I think that's pretty good. I believe they said we feel like that's what we're doing here. Like this project, like our research is trying to see, you know, progress is in progress moving forward. That is like the Sankofa bridge, but not always. You know, yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily equate to vaccinating a positive thing. Yeah, but that's one of the other thoughts. I had was What's in those these social media platforms where you let you go on it? And it's like, you know, there are all these different rooms, depending on what people are talking about. I guess.

Sheila: So, you have different rooms with different conversations, like the conversations. First of all, you have even the groups of the… so it can be like veganism or like, I don't know, health. But then, even there, you have even more specific rooms. For example, is honey a vegan product? And so, you have the specificities. But even with that, I think people are surprised that they will get worn out in the future. I just, actually, which reminds me of something I just tweeted yesterday, so I've been reading that Simone Weil book, and there's a quote where she said, when we are disappointed by a pleasure, which we have been expecting, and which comes, the disappointment is because we were expecting the future. And as soon as it is there, it is present. We want the future to be there without ceasing to be the future.

I've been thinking about what you said, Sheila, about that quote, equating college to learning justice to journalism. I'm interested in how that ties in with the questions we are asking about what is defined as wisdom, as knowledge, or what comes to be popularly known as that. And I don't know. Can you say more about that? Like, where are the possibilities for multiple wisdoms? And how does that fit in? With sort of that coolest umbrella recording, like mapping these one-to-one relationships?

Sheila: I think that's tough because there are so many angles; even recently, I saw some tweets about “stop calling my English igbotic.” So igbotic is how we say someone's English is dripping with an Igbo accent. But the people are saying, stop saying my English is igbotic. When a white person speaks English, you just say that that's an English accent. So why can't that just be my Igbo accent? But when people say igbotic, it's covered in this shame because I always tell people how when I came to Amherst, I remember we were just walking, me and my friend, Alex, we're walking behind some people. And then one girl asked the other girl, Oh, hey, are you local? And I was like, why would that girl be so insulting? And the other girl just turned? And I was like, No, I'm just from blah, blah, blah. And I thought, Oh, my God. So here, I am being asked if your local is not an insult. It's just a question.

Local means you are from here. Because where we are from, we're so ashamed to be from where we're from that to be asked, In fact, you're never asked, Are you local? You're always told you are local like you are a local champion, that's something that's used to insult people, and I just think talking about how time is connected to space is just, it says, or it's sort of like refers to the fact that the reason that we're on isn't considered a progressive rhythm, which coincides with the mentality of even you know, Trump referencing us as shithole countries. And a lot of us, even as much as we want to complain, this is this, and I don't know any Nigerians. This is me personally. I don't know any Nigerian who does not complain about the state of Nigeria. I don't know any Nigerian that's not the first to be like, you can't trust Nigerians. Nigerians are stupid. Nigerians are greedy. Nigerians are dangerous. I hear those the most from Nigerians. And I remember when I was returning to Nigeria, and I was like, uh, yeah, really. I don't like the stereotype; I think we must change it. And I've been bitch slapped for that, like, I am in a daze. I am so many different dazes from so many different experiences of Nigerians who have, like, frustrated me, who have tried to dupe me, who've tried to extort me in Nigeria. But also, I've been in the presence of Nigerians who've tried to uplift me, supported me, taught me new things, and made me laugh; they celebrated with me. So, I think maybe the problem is, as Chimamanda says, the danger of a single story is that Nigerians are not what they say we are. But perhaps we are just not only what they say we are, but it's a bit expensive to spend so much time mining for what is good. And mining for what is not exploitative in a place where, like, that's so bogged down by affliction, because I, even in the book that I'm reading, the Simone Weil book, she talks about how affliction completely degrades the spirits. So much so that the person cannot define the AI from within; the person has only to be a slave to the AI defined from the outside. And so, what happens is that when people say, Oh, Nigerians are this, Nigerians are exploitative Nigerians, then also they're the most affected and afflicted by that because they can't even come to their own conclusion of, I'm a Nigerian. Still, I'm nice because they are not only affected by the outside, like in terms of just your family members outside, but also the outside of the world. And this globe that feels like a realm that always feels like paradise, like America, is the future for Nigerians. The concept of the future, which is something that hasn't happened yet, is a place that exists in the mind of a Nigerian. So, the visa office is like a spaceship to many Nigerians; that stamp on their passport is Star Trek to them. So, it's just that there are too many different ways my mind can go. But, for now, I think it's maybe just about the perception of ourselves, which is almost the foundation of what we need to address. But that foundation is affected by so many things that extend beyond just saying I am a nice person because sometimes you just have to be able to afford the money to know that you can give; it was even in Amherst that I came to that conclusion that, wow, kindness is actually like, it's a virtue of money sometimes, I remember being an Amherst cinema, and someone came in, we were in a line just waiting. Then someone came into the line, and everybody just adjusted and let them come into the line. And the first thing that came to mind was like, hey, in Nigeria, you want to come into the line, you have to write a letter explaining to the 2 million people behind you why you deserve to come into…like everyone is fighting, where are you coming from? You can't. And I just thought, what, wow, everybody here can afford one person skipping the line because it's not connected to like 10 extra people who want to skip the line, and I think with Nigeria, the number of people we have doesn't also afford us the time of patience because there's the fear that if you're patient for one car to sort of like, cut through, you're in traffic, you have to allow like 20 other cars. Right. So, it's just complicated in that way.

Marisa: I like that. I think we’ve lost Uzoma.

Sheila: We lost Uzoma. Yeah, well, he would be back soon; that’s my belief.

Uzoma: I think your rant is right. For me, the line thing is hard. In places like the cinema, many people tend to know each other. And again, most parts of the US would flip out. We already had an understanding of what was happening and why. You see what I mean? So that's your point. And we're thinking just about, like, the ways that you live a life of privilege. Are you able to afford more privileges? Versus like you're losing something in every interaction otherwise.

Sheila: Yeah. But I don't want to assume that because I also refer to that conversation we've had before, Marisa, where privilege shifts context. It's something that people forget, which is just another way of saying that, in a different time, which is related to a different space, that privilege may not be what it was, the privilege may be less privileged in a different time and a different space that already exists not in the future that is coming in I don't know 2025, in the future that is already here and now in a different arena. Privilege shifts context. So, I don't want to say, Oh, yes, about the privilege of people in Amherst. But I think that, even before I go into that, I want to ask you to attempt to explain what you think of when you think of privilege. Marisa?

Uzoma: I mean, that's a hard question because it's deeply contextual. I mean, there's economic privilege, there's social privilege, there’s gender privilege, I really mean it. And privilege is the sort of right to imagine that the kind of structure or even a rationale for your concern or your presence, you’re allowed to do things in ways that make sense to yourself. I'm trying to avoid saying freedom, and I don't quite go that far. But they're tied somewhere at their root, deep down. So, privilege becomes simply the right or the imagination that matters in any given situation.

Sheila: right.

Marisa: More people are using their privilege against each other. The people can't seem to understand that their sense of matter is being weaponized against someone else. The other person is not allowed to emerge into mattering via their perspective, their approach, or their life circumstances. So, I think it's, you know, simple for me in its construction, but how it plays out in terms of moments when they might be identified. It's hard because it's, again, tied to circumstance.

Sheila: What would you say? And what would I know? I'm asking for definitions. But it's less about defining but more about getting you to sort of just throw some words at a concept that we are grappling with now. So, what is your idea, or what has your idea of the word progressive been or progress even?

Uzoma: I mean, for me, progress is always utopian; it's an improvement. It's figuring out where people are and where they want to be, how to get them there. It might just be that simple. I mean, progressive has a specific, for me, sort of US historical valence, which is about race and gender equity and all this stuff. But that's difficult because that's one of those places where how it gets talked about has very little to do with what happens on the ground. But I think in that abstract, this idea of progress is just tied to bettering how people feel like they have control and agency in their lives and how to implement that in ways that meet the needs of multiple people. Because, you know, countries are big. It's so many people.

Sheila: Right?

Marisa: And so, thinking about, even how to or ideas of progress from really basic notions of, you know, capitalist resource, because the argument against this is there’s not enough money, there's not enough this, there’s s not enough that, I'm gonna go ahead and say, I don't actually believe that. Um, so, you know, what would the future actually look like if we thought more robustly about what people need and what people want? And actually, we gave ourselves the space to have that conversation outside, like, who's gonna pay for it? It's not unimportant, but the question of it being payable is tied to how you answer the first question.

Sheila: Right. So, can we actually separate it? Like, is it? Can we separate those two questions? Because, as you said, it's the capitalist, but God-like, I just realized my upbringing is so capitalist that Can I separate those two questions?

Marisa: What do you mean?

Sheila: Can I separate the question of what people need in the future from Can we…?

Uzoma: it's really effin hard, and it destroys communities. I've talked about this in arts and academia, how even when people make it, they don't let go of scarcity mentality and have to become so destructive for everyone involved, and we understand why, like we all struggle with it, but also how do we create the conditions to Move away from it? Because scarcity is its own kind of trap. Keep us in our place.

Sheila: Yes. Scarcity is almost back to circle back to that original course. It's almost as real….

Marisa: That’s amazing

Sheila: Like it's carrying the Yeah, it's a very historical story. Like it, it's a story that has lasted in our history as humans and humanity. But I think it's gone through so many different transformations. So, I think the best way for us to know that the story of scarcity can be different is to go back in time to see what scarcity meant to other people at different times. And sort of like, I almost look at history as an opportunity like an out for us, because where our imagination stops, history can prove to us that there are other ways even if you don't believe that they can be. Let me show you that there have been. And I really appreciate that. I think it's, yeah, it's part of why history gets banned when dictators.

Marisa: Our history is out the door, right?

Sheila: Out the door! Even Nigeria outright banned it in secondary schools.

Marisa: I was reading a thing about a coup this morning, and it's about, you know, the government after artists and poets first.

Sheila: Yeah, it's actually scary. It's quite… It's really scary, I think. Not too often. But when I think about it, it's a bit heavy knowing that I actually absolutely can become a target of violence just by encouraging people to express themselves. Because expression is always like a college, it's an institution of learning, like self-expression. And sometimes, when you learn that you can define yourself and be content and satisfied with something that is not sort of like state-given, a story that isn't state-defined, you become an enemy of the states because you've taken one of its workers.

Marisa: Oh, you just cut out?

Sheila: Oh, did I say that, like, just the fact that you can become an enemy of the states by encouraging people to express themselves? I think that self-expression can be an institution of learning. And when you teach people that they can define themselves outside the states, the state-sponsored story, and the state-sponsored definition, you actually take away one of their weapons.

Marisa: I think that's exactly right. And that's always what you're hearing now. For me, when thinking earlier, when I was talking about the changes in America, higher ed, that's more like the logic of it, like stop all this liberation talk. Right? Because all you're doing is producing people who don't want to do things away. We want to require them to, or some people, you require them to know who we are that way, right?

Sheila: Gosh, it's frightening. But I don't. I almost don't want to end because I know we have to end here. But I almost don't want to end on a frightening, bleak note. So, I don't know what you are hoping for.

Uzoma: I'm definitely hopeful that we can find more ways to ask each other for what we actually want and need and more ways to actually make it happen. I'm being vague on purpose. Again, I just think it's different in different situations. I'm also trying to figure it out; I just want people to think about it. And say, just like helping people understand. Right, I think they know intuitively that their lives could be different if they had a way to make them different. So, what should that process even look like?

Sheila: What do you want and need, personally?

Marisa: Oh, are you asking me? Oh, it's gone. No. I think for me, it's just space to make things. I'm really; we know the struggle of, how much the sort of work and labor support like pay chat, you know, Alicia, you need to be able to just, you know, not to make art to make a scholarship. Um, it's kind of shocking to me that sometimes this goes back to almost universal basic income stuff where it's just made logistically impossible. And it's not sustainable so. I'm feeling the unsustainability of the paycheck, so I have enough money to do art and scholarship, right? What do you want?

Sheila: Oh, okay, what do I want? Because you cut out a little bit, but I got most of it, what do I want? I think I want dignity. I want dignity for my choices, and I think my lifestyle, especially identifying as a non-religious, queer person in Nigeria, I say that knowing that my mother doesn't know that, any of that. But I still live my life. But I live my life, but I don't live outward all my life. I think that I wish it were possible for me to make all the decisions that I have to make toward my happiness without fearing that that's going to interfere with the happiness of people that I love, based on the fact that they are hooked, or they identify with a story that tells them that I'm not allowed to love in this way because I think that I want to have time and space to collaborate with them on my life as a thing, but also on my work. But there is a way in which they collaborate with me or my life once that becomes clear to them. My work is going to make them feel like they're collaborating with the thing, the very thing that they should be fighting against. They should be putting walls up against me. So it's, I wish I could afford both the dignity of my personal choices and the collaboration of my loved ones who live here.

Marisa: Yeah, I think they're being hooked on a story part is really interesting, right? And, like, how do we fight through that, or how do we establish that? I don't know if our people love us. Right. But it's like, you're worth the work. Yeah.

Sheila: Yeah. Exactly. Because they will also have work to do that will seem to them more like it's for you than it is for them. So, they have to convince themselves that it is for me, personally, not just for someone outside myself. So, the hope is that they mean as much to me as I mean to them. They, I mean, as much to them as they mean to me, and they sort of see the benefits they reap from understanding my perspectives.

Marisa: I think that's exactly right. Sorry, I'm mumbling along, but my mic was turned off. Yes, yes, yes.

Sheila: Yes, exactly. That's what I want. That's actually what I want for, like, time, and I think, again, that space related to time because I think if they had all the lifetime, if they were if they could see themselves across all lifetimes, they might see that this is not as catastrophic, my decisions are not what causes the catastrophe that they think will cause because if they could see, then they could see themselves in either heaven or hell, which is part of their own story of what time like leads up to because for them time leads into heaven or hell, so maybe they may see themselves in heaven or hell and understand that it's not because they had a queer daughter that they are in hell or like this is not enough to put them there.

Marisa: Yeah. Oh, man. Okay.

Sheila: Yes, we do have to end here. Thank you so much, Marisa. Enjoyed this conversation.

Marisa: Yeah, we shall have many more. Oh my god. I can't wait for it.

Sheila: Next week is our call on cryptocurrency.

Marisa: I shall, my dear. Okay, I gotta run. I'll talk to you soon.

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Marisa: That's really compelling.

Uzoma: Yeah

Sheila: Say more; what do you mean?

Uzoma: That’s why meditation is good. I just feel like it helps, at least for me, take away that everlasting allure of the future; it helps you situate whatever promise you're hoping for.

Sheila: So basically, it's like, at the end of your day, being present is not just like, the way I'm seeing it is like being present is not just some spiritual woosh thing that, I don't know, the mystics talk about, it's almost the only option we have for surviving, because, and even for being happy with ourselves, because if we plan a future, knowing that it's a present that we're going to meet, or we might meet, even if it's not us in this body, but even us in a future iteration of ourselves, and we have to deal the state with the present, the only way to sort of like enjoy, all these efforts we put into creating our future is being okay with enjoying a present as it comes.

Uzoma: It's interesting to think about where the Present fits in anything if we're allowed to actually appreciate the president.

Sheila: What do you mean?

Marisa: Yeah, just thinking like, that's part of the meditation thing to where it's just where you are, as you are, whereas the future and being so caught up in anticipation, which also reduces the idea of time to this sort of product that's supposed to deliver being it delivers an experience or deliver, you know, deliver on the expectation or deliver a moment. If there's also, you know, a way of thinking about capitalist time, being oriented towards the future, which is hard because if we go back to where Sheila started thinking about the idea of progressive progressivism as like a sort of, you know, thinking about improvement through the future you know, it's hard to also be clear uw, this kind of call that capitalist, but it's hard like balancing between like setting goals in this articulating difference, but also understanding that it's never going to satisfy

Sheila: Yes, I'm laughing because I think, just why did I laugh? I found it so funny to really understand that. It feels like a synonym between something being in the present and something being unsatisfiable. It kind of revealed to me how so many people are so dissatisfied with the present.

Marisa: I really agree with what Marisa is saying about it being so clearly a capitalist time structure. We've had all the reasons why it's like a marketing ploy to always be looking for a better version of yourself and a better life in the future. All I am trying to say is it’s a scam.

Sheila: putting eyes on the future is a scam

Uzoma: Yeah, it's definitely a scam because Yo, yeah, like when?

Sheila: Immaculata Nnoma asked a really good question on Instagram the other day. She asked if she would still go to college if she didn't think her college degree would get her a job. And I'm asking you guys now.

Marisa: No, well, I didn't want to go in the first place, so…

Sheila: Why didn't you want to go?

Uzoma: I don’t know if this applies. It just didn't feel relevant to me; I didn’t see points to like what I wanted to do. Like, yeah, it wasn’t about the job from you. That was, yeah,

Sheila: Marisa, what about you?

Uzoma: I will still do so, but I'm in a different place because I believe, even when it's not always true, and sort of like the possibility of college and university. Still, I also strongly believe that, um, I also strongly believe that, at the same time, we don't go to college to get jobs. So, we don't go to college to get jobs; we go to college, at best, to be employable. But that's not the same thing. There's no job aspiration. I mean, I'm constantly telling students, you don't major in your future job. That's not a thing. And telling students that has been part of the great lie of, like, trying to justify in the US at least the destruction of trade school and college in a way that college became a requirement for employability in ways that never got articulated. I always find that we don't explain that to students, so I don't know, I’m distressing to think college universities are very important. And they're not tied to employment.

Sheila: I remember. Sorry. I was just saying that one of the strongest memories comes up so often because I don't think I realized how often the thought would come up. Why don't I know how to do this? I have a college degree, and it comes up so often. And I remember when I was in LA with you. And we spent that day together. And I think it was time to ride the scooter or something. And I was like, I can't believe I can't ride a scooter. And I have a college degree. And you were just like, that's like, do you think that's why you went to college? Do you think a college degree allows you to ride a scooter? You are just so. I think I said it about three times. And every time, your response was like, that doesn't guarantee you like anything like that. Your college degree will not give you any of these things you're discussing for living your life. Like your practice, especially because I couldn't drive at all then. And you were like, It's not the same intelligence. They're not about the same thing. And I didn't even know I expected them to be about the same thing. But I thought it was even a joke. It was so natural to me. Because, like, it seems like, of course, once you have a college degree, and not just like any college degree, the kind of college degree that I had, once you have that, then like, why can't you figure out how to use a tin like a tin can opener, which I had a problem figuring out for a while. And I think it does something to what you think that four years is supposed to open up for you; I think maybe I thought that in four years, I should have acquired all the skills to figure out the 80 to 90 years of my life. For some reason, I should come out of college and know how to drive a truck better than a truck driver who's been driving the truck for about 35 years because I'm a college graduate.

Uzoma: Yeah, and that's just so strange. I think a lot of people have that. I haven't figured out where that pressure or that understanding comes from. I think there's such a pushback because, at least in the US, everything is so anti-education. And so, you put the job in front of education because jobs are important, education isn't. And college sort of fell for the rhetorical trip, which is mainly about keeping women and people of color Out of higher education, right? And so, there's a way in which, you know, it becomes this sort of horrible moment where you're making promises about people's lives like, I mean, to go all the way mean, you hear some college all the time, even things you think of as skills, like, you’re not supposed to necessarily be learning to write in college, you're supposed to learn it before you got there, I mean, learn to get better, or do different kinds of things, right. So, the idea that college is even sort of high school, part two, from me grandparents, my parent’s generation, had high school education; they were all public-school people who were in many ways more rigorous than what you see today. So, they came out of high school with an intense number of likes and really strong academic skills because it was understood that high schools will actually prepare you for employability and further learning, right? Because that fell away out of high school, that burden shifted to college as if college was like part two, we call, you know, high school here. And so became this sort of weird moment where people didn't realize that there are all kinds of ways of knowing and doing things that are valuable. It's just actually different than what you're supposed to be doing for the most part in the college environment. But since we held up college as if you go to college, and you become this other person, on a level of knowing things, on the level of skills, it just literally makes no sense. Right, and this is unfortunate.

Marisa: what made that shift? It is different for different countries in the US again, and I just think it's the way everything became about getting jobs as the job market became tighter. The college sold itself as a thing that students have to do because we have all these statistics about how you have a better income in the US if you have a college degree, which is true, but they're not actually correlative. Right? It correlates with how people hire, not with what you actually learned in college, and so became this weird sort of displacement of education or displacement between actual education and the actual outcome. And we don't seem to care anymore about how they connect.

Sheila: What was the PR that made people? I feel like people, especially businesses will do things that they think will make them profitable. So, what was the PR that got sent to hirers that people with college degrees somehow would make them more profitable?

Uzoma: I don't think there was. I mean, it's interesting, but you can make the argument that it's true: a college degree makes you more employable. So, what employers are looking for is people who have skills, who can read, who can write, who can compute, who can manage, who can do all these things, right? And the idea is that by passing through college, you've proven that you have all these skills. But most importantly, you've proven, you know, how to learn, and the part that got left behind is this idea of learning how to learn. And that's the rise. I remember, part of my generation, it was very rare that someone would say they were going to college as an undergraduate to major in business. There's no such thing as majoring in Business, and it's not a thing. That was part of that push right to make college more useful. So, you have people majoring in things that have no relationship to real life, and you don't major in business. Undergrad, and then go open a business. It just doesn't work that way. You open the business by being scrappy, having a good idea, knowing how to manage people, blah, blah, right? So yeah, it's just this kind of, like, very sort of sad moment, I think, whereas the US was changing, and more kinds of people, especially women, were entering the workforce, the standards of what it took to be in the workforce continually rose. So, there are all these jobs you can no longer get with a high school degree because fewer women and people of color have high school degrees, right? That's why the whole thing, like a black woman in the United States with a PhD, very likely will only earn as much as someone white with a high school diploma. Absolutely. And so, there's a way in which the numbers never attract. Anyway, it wasn't about producing new kinds of moving goalposts that most people could never reach. And then it backfired on itself and became the general message for everyone. So, speaking of anticipation of the future, we're all screwed.

Sheila: I remember reading an essay when I took this course on disability, and it was we read; I've been in college. And in the essay, he was saying, I just remember. First of all, I remember when he was saying people mistake the court of law for justice, and people mistake journalism for truth. That was the first thing that sort of clarified, and I think it's very relatable. You're seeing now that people mistake college for learning. So, they make these equations: no college, no learning, no journalism, no truth. No, like Primary School, no education. He went on to say the way class also affects these things is that wealth is also signified by exclusion. When the majority of the population is catching on to the signifiers of wealth, the wealthy have to create new signifiers because it's not about the thing itself. It's about the fact that only a minority of people can afford to be included in the thing.

Uzoma: It is exactly right. Just a moving goalpost? Right.

Sheila: Sorry, you're saying…

Marisa: it's also just very bleak. Yeah.

Sheila: It's very bleak.

Marisa: That's why schools here and college universities have become more diverse. That's the rise of stuff like, you know, even seeing your undergraduate like, the rise of the career office, and all these fellowships and all this stuff. And it's tied to the fact that schools didn't used to have to offer those kinds of services. The students who got into, for instance, a, you know, fancy university or college came in already with their future work connections. They don't go to college to get a job; they had a job before they got to college, going to work for their father's friend or whatever. It's real, right? So, there's a way in which, as you begin admitting more kinds of people for more kinds of economic backgrounds, colleges suddenly had these abysmal job placement numbers because they were letting in all those people who didn't come in already set on their path. Unless they have to do something, they've made this promise about betterment but never really were honest with themselves about the mechanism they had to look at. Because the people who they'd always brought into the colleges as students, again, were coming in as already having money and connections, the colleges were, in some ways, even taking responsibility for that. So, you know, X number of students graduate and go to this fancy job, and the college gets to say it's because they have a degree from us, but it's not because of you; it's because their uncle works there. But you get to displace one thing and see the other as a substitute for one truth unto the other.

Sheila: So is college, back to time, does that mean originally or historically, college was a place for wealthy people to spend time?

Marisa: Absolutely

Uzoma: I mean, It was supposed to be learning and doing all this stuff. But absolutely. It's a holding place. And it's very recent that it's not a space that's mainly for people with wealth. In time, the idea is that the time you need to grow up and improve yourself is real, and I think all kinds of people deserve that time. Those used to be a kind of time when only wealthy white men had no one else.

Sheila: Right? Which makes me think about, like, frat culture, you know?

Marisa: Yup

Sheila: How, yeah, that's so important or interesting, like, because, in my mind, I've always wondered, like, how did the whole like these people are not here to learn, it was just clear, because even, for instance, when I used to work at the phone or phone where we call alumni, sometimes we would get into conversation with the alumni. And it'd be asking, like, yes, do people still just throw parties? And then we'll get to a conversation of, like, No, I'm actually in school. And they're like, Yeah, no, in our day, we were just like, we had these parties that people would just come from different schools. And we would organize parties, and it would be organizing parties. And it's weird, right? On the one hand, there's that racial aspect. But even coming back to Nigeria, like when I speak to my siblings, like most of them, I just might make my oldest sister or like a new dancer that I have, for her university was also like, it was university because of the parties, you find any way to sort of get through your degree. But what makes University University is the party. So, I don't know how to ask the question because of the question of whether race makes the concept of university time different. But then you come to a different culture. And then you also find out that, like, that's like, the first-time people are maybe free from their parents, they free from regulation, they're free from the law. Their parents are paying their school fees, and so they also sort of want to band together. So, is it something where people universally want to use that time as a holding time? However, in some spaces, some people are seen as only working. So, what makes you think you can come and then not work? Because you are made to work.

Uzoma: Yeah. I mean, I think that's all exactly right. And I think as you were talking, I thought how it plays out so differently amongst, I mean, with context against people from different cultural backgrounds. There's always a conflict that tools because even the sort of party imagination isn't held by everyone equally. Right? And so, becomes this thing of again, where are you going to college So you can live the stereotype of college? Because it's an experience that's been promised to people? Or are you going because you want to learn or do new things or meet new people? And for a lot of people, it's the latter, but even the space for that becomes impossible. It's, you know, I think the complexities of students who don't want to be heavy drinkers will be an example. And what kind of life are they allowed to have? Right, or not being demonized, or, you know, etc. It just makes you understand how it's a cultural pact that more people are being asked to participate in, but they're not being allowed to change engagement terms. Right. So, you can be a person from a background you're from, but the purpose of coming to your college is to become like everyone who's been there before. And then that's problematic, to say the least.