Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hey everyone!

I hope nobody is mad at me for leaving so suddenly earlier last year. sweatdrop

I feel like I should explain to ou why I left so fast and also why I did not come back yet. I say yet because I may come back later when I have the time to do so. I explained (in very few words) why I was out on Skype, but I feel like I should explain myself for everyone else here.

As of right now, I'm in the first year of a Master's degree in anthropology. I decided to study a very specific field that is called "digital anthropology", which, to make it really simple, is studying the anthropological theories and human interactions in the digital era and through the technologies, most notably the internet. So far, it is a really fascinating topic, you have no idea how awesome it is! And I am the assistant of a woman who made her thesis on the viral effect, so we can say that I am the assistant of a Ph. D in memes, which is really awesome when it is said like that. But I disgress a little bit.

Now I had two reasons for leaving as fast as I did:

a. I felt that being part of the kind of communities that we study in our field would be a little bit unethical, or even worse, put a bias to my studies, which I did not want. I talked to my professor, or more my boss at that moment, about that and she was like "so you play Dungeons and Dragons online?" and I was like "sort of..." and then she helped me understand the field work aspect of anthropology. When I was finally accepting that it was alright, it led to the second problem:

b. I was afraid that if I was staying around you while completing my degree, I would be judging you, analyzing you and I respect you all way too much to do such a thing to you all. I had some rough paths in my life and if there was one place I could come to forget about all this and just have fun, it was here. So the last thing I wanted to do was that.

So those are the reasons why I left so quickly and, worst of all, without notice.

Finally, I apologize to those I let down in that process, and I am truly sorry if it screwed up some of your plans, but at the same time, when looking back at what it did, I do not regret leaving the way I did. The reflexion that came out of that decision and the great debates and the deonthological ethics that we were able to bring out of that were the best tools that could came out of that situation, which probably seems like nothing to you all, but means a lot to us. It will help all of us during our Masters and, who knows, our Ph. D.

Anyways, you will probably see more of me every now and then here and on Skype in the future smile

Ah, dont worry about it! Looks like you had a pretty legit (and cool) reason to have gone! People come and go all the time, but its always nice when they can drop a line about what's going down.

As Chrono said, its great to have you back, Mystique!

blaugh

She's back! heart

She unofficially married King on the Skype chat for RP purposes

gonk crying

Wait, you left because you were WORRIED about judging us?

Hell, its like a second sport here. rofl

Besides, it wouldn't be the first time anyone here used the community for studying. Regardless, howdy again!