a small/final update

i did manage to graduate with a phd

i left academia, sort of (I adjunct)

i feel much better about online teaching (though obviously the last two years kind of made me get over it

❤

(also some of you i know were directed here from university of arizona timestep program, which, how cool! i hope that my ‘questions i wished i asked’ is helpful 🙂

online teaching

is the fucking worst. it’s all the work of teaching and none of the joy. just content creation and grading. no improv, no performance, no fucking joy. i hate it so much and yet the department is for some reason moving towards online teaching more and more

i cannot each this content online, it needs to be in person, it needs to have a back and forth dialogue that cannot be done online

take care

so, i’ve read a lot of stories about how professors of color (especially women) are expected to do a lot of labor and work to mentor students of color, that their white counterparts are not expected to do. which is obviously unfair and a problem with the academy. these professors need to be compensated, and if they weren’t the only ones then they wouldn’t have this pressure

but can we talk about professors of color who exploit students of color for research projects and such? people who don’t pay students but expect them to work 20 hours a week and then some on a project that should have ended last year when the funding was up?

ultimately i do the work for the resume/the contact/the fact they’re on my committee/the possibility for this professor to be a letter writer. but i hate doing it because it takes away from time with my dissertation, it stresses me out to get one or two emails a day at odd times, and i hate how its framed as ‘this is really good work’.

because scholarly work is rarely good work. it rarely helps the community in direct ways. so don’t lie to me about it in order to take advantage of my labor. i would not be so upset if this professor didn’t do this part of it.

Visiting Graduate Programs as a Woman of Color (Or, Questions I wish I had asked)

This has been done a million times but here’s my spin. Back in fall 2013/spring 2014 I searched for something like this and did not find it. I remember using this guide to help me ask things for my campus visit. I’ve expanded on it with questions that current-me wishes past-me had asked. This list is a mix of before applying and then what to ask if you’re on a campus visit. It’s not a perfect list, so fell free to email me if you’d change anything or have comments/feedback. I’ll probably add/refine this eventually.

• questions about funding
  • what is the funding situation? are grad students fully funded? if so how? (teaching, research, administrative assistantships? fellowships?)
  • are there options for extra funding per semester? (like stacking a research position on top of a teaching position)
  • do you need to bring in outside funding?
  • what does the grant situation look like in the department, college, and university? (professional development grants, research grants, ‘diversity’ grants, etc)
  • is the funding livable according to your circumstances? (car vs no car, child(ren) vs no children, medical expenses, etc)
  • how is the student insurance/benefits? (for yourself or for you and a spouse and/or kids)
  • does student insurance support transition?
  • what fees are taken from your stipend each month?
  • what are retirement options?
• questions about life
  • what is the public transportation like? (if you get the chance check this out for yourself) is there reliable taxi/uber/lyft? or do you need a car to live?
  • what neighborhoods do graduate students live in mostly? are there grocery stores near by? are they walkable? is there  [thing you need, like a gym, dog park, k-12 school]? what are neighborhoods that are being gentrified?
  • what is the public school situation of the city? what k-12 programs are there? day care? summer camps?
  • what’s the ______ scene like? art, activist, sports, LGBT, etc whatever kind of scene you need to be happy
  • what is the experience of other (LGBT) women of color in daily life? can I walk around and be safe? what does racism/sexism/homophobia look like on campus? what about the city? what’s the history of this place?
  • where can I find food like at home? where can i find X groceries?
  • can i find community centers to make me feel welcome?
  • what’s the community look like in the city in general? what are the demographic groups?
  • is there a gayborhood? lgbt center? lesbian bar? if so, what’s the politics of the land? are there QTPOC groups?
  • what’s the night life like? is there only 3 bars in the entire town? what do grad students do for fun? (for me I would ask, what is there to do beyond drinking?)
  • what kind of cultural centers, museums, galleries, art studios, etc are there? do they represent women of color and other groups? are they primarily focused on white men?
  • what activities can my kids do?
  • what kind of off-campus study spots are there?
• questions about the campus
  • what’s the demographics of the campus? who are you going to be teaching?
  • what resources are there for you? your students?
  • are there any groups for graduate students of color? students who are LGBT? students who are both? what kind of activities do they do?
  • are there any cultural centers to tap into? what are there politics?
  • what does the university actually do to help students of color?
  • what professional development is there?
  • what job market help does the university/college offer?
  • is the university LGBT friendly? can i be out?
• questions about the department
  • what are the unspoken rules of the department?
  • what are some of the tensions of the department? the politics? who doesn’t get along? (ask graduate students NOT faculty. faculty might tell you or give you hints without meaning to but definitely don’t ask)
  • are grad students happy? if not, why?
  • what’s the process of going through the department?
  • what are qualifying exams like? what expectations of graduate students are there? how prepared did grad students feel leading up to it? did course work help?
  • what are classes like? is there enough variety offered every academic year?
  • how is race/gender/sexuality/etc taught in the department? (if it is at all)
  • how many students and faculty of color are there in the department? what are their experiences
  • what was the racial make up of the cohort prior to yours? two years prior?
    • this can hint to some of the issues the department has in regards to accepting people of color and if they’ve tried to change it at all
  • how many women of color have made it through the program? is there a trend of women of color leaving or dropping out at all?
  • where do women of color end up after graduating?
  • can i be out in the department? is the department LGBT friendly?
  • is the department activist friendly?
• questions about your potential advisor
  • what is their advising style?
  • how have previous advisees done in the job market?
  • how supportive are they of students?
  • who do they usually work with on committees?
  • what kind of work are they doing? grants they’re applying to?

Class

As naive as it sounds, when I was back home I never thought about class. It was the unassuming background to my life and most the people I knew. My undergrad had above 50% of the students on some type of financial aid, my k-12 schools quite similar. Sure, I was annoyed when friends said the occasional dumb thing (like being incredulous to the idea someone’s family had no savings), but it was isolated events.

However, since coming here and being in graduate school, this changed greatly. First, the school I go to, which is enormously white compared to my alma mater, is also very different in terms of class as well. I think under 20% of students receive financial aid? Until literally today I was aimlessly annoyed by things that my peers said—assumptions about what my parents did, about what opportunities I have had, about what my parents can do/did for me, about where I would be if not in graduate school.

I thought it was all petty, and to some degree it probably is, but while doing reading for a class I realized that I do not have a comfy cushion to fall back on (this is not entirely true, I still have my BA, but in comparison to some of my peers here) like a parent buying me a house, or giving me money to start my own business. I used to joke that if this did not work out (grad school) I would go home and join my siblings in food service. It was a kind of self depreciating joke but quite literal as well. I see my friends and family back home struggling to keep afloat and deep in my mind I knew/know that could very well be me. I have the opportunity (realize I say this both sarcastically and earnestly; sarcastic in that the opportunity is a farce by a racist/sexist/classist/etc system, but also very real since it got me ‘out’) to do something else.

So, to echo my last post, I will continue on to spite ‘the system’ and all the assholes.

An introduction

Whenever anyone asks me how I survive winter here, the first thing that comes to mind is the wind. I remember crossing campus with bright blue skies and bright white snow blinding me but what made it unbearable was wind as sharp as a knife. It cut into my wool coat, under my layers to get rid of any warmth I had saved away. Not only was it intensely cold but it was often very powerful as well (the joys of living near a huge lake) and made it hard to walk against. A gust to push me back physically as I wished to be back on the west coast.

I was too stubborn to stop walking in the snow and wind and kept going on in order to spite it. That is how I feel about graduate school at this point. I want to keep going—even though I hate nearly every second of it—to spite academia. I hate most my peers, my university, the stupid college town, the huge lake that looms to the north, almost everything about my decision. But for now spite is enough to keep me going on, as well as the non-graduate work I do.

I will stop when I feel I have taken enough from this place to get me ahead of where I was when I entered.

The Joys of being a woman of color in graduate school

• hearing lip service about diversity every day
• being toted out to talk about diversity
• being asked to promote the school to underrepresented populations
• being expected to be part of any panel that vaguely touches your identity (like being expected to talk about being a gay immigrant… even though you arent an immigrant…)
• dealing with grad students who happen to be white and study/worked with a population vaguely connected to your community and now are the arbiters of your identity
• hearing guilty white people handwring about what to do when the west is criticized for neocolonialism
• being in classes where you speak and then no one in a majority white class responds or acknowledges what you said
• seeing the above happen to the other two people of color in the class
• being told that if only my parents saved really well they could have been middle class
• hearing someone say “this is my field of study, i thought i should be here” at a vigil
• having white people assume they can speak for you
• being condescended to
• having to teach race/racism/white supremacy to students and then get no support in department to deal with non/verbal cues of students reacting negatively
• reading about racism, dealing with it from classmates, teachers, my students, then dealing with it outside campus, on the news with very little or no examples of something else, or imagining beyond
• white people in general demonstrating how good they are in obnoxious ways
• complaining about racism in another class and having a white peer laugh it off and suggest violence
• going to that one park with peers and feeling the unbearable pressure of being  one of three people of color there, out of dozens of white people
• fakeness from white people about how they really appreciate my comments about race, but they never say this in class at all
• experiencing white classmates interrogate (often the only) writers of color in ways they never interrogate white writers
• related to that, assuming that we can transcend the icky parts of white writers thoughts/beliefs but writers of color are completely grounded in whatever ickiness they have

and more probably. this is just what i have experienced.