Moving over 9,500 kilometers in order to study in Canada had a massive impact on my life. One of the many was the effect caused by the sudden change of my involvement in various interpretive communities. I realized that I had lost connection or reduced my communication with many of my interpretive communities after reading Farhat Shazad’s article on the role of interpretive communities in learning and remembering. This sudden change of my interpretive communities, however, did not only had negative outcomes

First of all, my relationship with my family had huge changes over the past month. Weekly phone calls replaced everyday conversations causing a natural change of the content of conversations. Instead of talking about events, politics, or other people, our conversation became more focus on our lives, which in a sense limits me remembering the past and learning about the current conflicts and in my country.

It might sound terrible at first; however, this actually had a positive impact on my psychology. Coming from a country in the verge of a civil war, not knowing how our president is using the war he started to gain votes or how people are being attacked while defending peace, clears my mind. I feel like my brain is now open to new knowledge instead of being busy worrying about the desperation of Turkish politics.

This, of course, was not only caused by one of my interpretive communities. I don’t hear President Erdoğan’s speech from the TV neither do I listen to what he did from the taxi driver I just hop on to. Most of my interpretive communities that I heard about the corrupt politics in my country do not exist anymore. Therefore, instead of worrying about the present and the future, I acquire knew knowledge from the interpretive communities that replaced the past ones.

Barış Uzel