Cheap and Vain

The commencement industry must have taken some cues from the wedding industry, because dear lord, is the PhD graduation get-up expensive! To buy the "official" PhD regalia of my university, which includes the gown, hood, cap and tassel, would cost me close to $900. That's a friggin' wedding dress right there. It's a good thing I may never get married, so I could consider this a one-time purchase. Should I get married someday, I'll likely elope, so perhaps I could consider purchasing the regalia instead of the dress for the wedding of some imaginary life that I have hypothetically rejected. And I suppose it's a more worthy of a purchase than a wedding dress, given that I'll likely wear it more than once if I end up attending my students' commencement ceremonies throughout my imaginary career as a professor. But still... Nine-hundred fucking dollars!

I really should just rent the second-string regalia for $50 instead of humoring the idea of buying the fancy schmancy threads. After all, the Chinese in me likes to be cheap. But on the other hand, the Chinese in me also can't resist material possessions. I want those goddamn robes with their slick chevrons, dammit. So I've been hunting for a company that makes knock-offs for cheaper.

Sure enough, I've found one. Their whole set looks really convincing, and costs $495 for the whole outfit. If I can find 9 other people to order with me, each gown gets knocked down to $395. Naturally, I'm spamming every graduating graduate student I know to see if they want to go in with me.

But I suppose if I were super Chinese, I'd attempt to make the outfit myself.

How to Become a Professor (When You Don't Know What You Are Doing): Lesson 2-- Work Ass-Backwards

While it may be true that one needs a PhD to become a professor, it is also true that one needs to become a professor to get a PhD. I realize that in saying this I'm speaking from the privileged position of someone with a tenure-track position lined up. I don't want to come off as an asshole who is nonchalantly joking about a system in which most graduates end up jobless. I just want to draw attention to the fact that "normative time" for finishing can certainly vary, depending on the particular standards of your committee members, which are subject to change. While I'm sure my committee members wouldn't have signed off on my dissertation if they didn't think it was good enough to be filed, I also discovered that they weren't nearly as picky about my work after I secured my tenure-track position. Which makes sense-- There's no sense in delaying my graduation and keeping me around if I have a job lined up. But a part of me also wonders if they would have signed off on anything. As my dad likes to joke, "Your degree doesn't count!"

The thing is, finishing a PhD can take a really, really long time. Even if everything goes well-- if you have plenty of funding, your health is good, your family isn't overburdening you, if you know what you're doing-- your advisors could still stall your progress by making you revise revise and revise. My dad told me that when he was a graduate student, a classmate of his got so frustrated with his chair's refusal to let him graduate, that he shot the guy and then shot himself. I've never felt that level of frustration with my committee. (Actually, I complain more often of them not pushing me enough.) But I do have a committee of perfectionists whose level of excellence is something I feel pressured to emulate, even if they don't necessarily impose it on me. And this is why I'm surprised that they so quickly signed off on my dissertation. I was expecting that they would have me take the spring quarter to revise the entire document several times.

So really, the biggest factor that enables you to finish your PhD is to get the job, which is something I'm experiencing now as both a lecturer and someone with a t-t job lined up. Unfortunately, getting the job and teaching are two of the biggest timesucks that can also stall your progress.

The academic job market for literature folks goes like this: Starting in the early fall, schools start posting their job listings (onto databases like the MLA and the Chronicle of Higher Ed), and you look through them all. At the very least, you have to prepare a writing sample (usually a dissertation chapter or a journal article you've written), a cover letter (the most important document you'll write in your entire life), a C.V., and letters of recommendation from at least three advisors (your dissertation committee). Some jobs will ask for more documents, like a teaching portfolio, a dissertation abstract, and a research plan. You send out these documents to all the schools you're applying to. Sometimes you have to cater your documents to different jobs, especially if you're trying to market yourself in different fields. (I applied to positions in Ethnic Studies and English. For English positions, I applied to Ethnic American literature, Asian American literature, 20th Century American literature, and Postcolonial literature positions. So I had several versions of my cover letter.) From August to January, you're constantly visiting the job listings and sending out more materials. If a school puts you on their short list of about 8-12 candidates (out of several hundred), you get a call to meet them at the MLA conference in late December, during your winter break. Until then, you prep for your interview, practicing how to answer all sorts of questions that hopefully your advisors will supply you. You fly out to wherever the conference is taking place that year and do your interviews. If you make it to the school's list of top 3 candidates, you get a call a few weeks later with an invitation for a campus interview, which you then have to prep for. For the campus interview, you get flown out to the school, meet with the faculty, staff, students, administrators. Generally you have to do some form of a presentation, though the particular form varies-- Some schools ask for a research talk, some a research talk and a teaching demonstration, some will ask you to come into someone else's class and teach for the day. When your campus interview is done, you go home and bite your nails until you get a call again. Hopefully, it's a job offer. If it isn't, then you either plan to do this whole process all over again in the next fall, or your start looking at the spring listings and do this process all over again. It's kind of a ridiculous amount of work for a job that you might end up hating. Needless to say, I didn't get much of my dissertation written during the time that I was going through this process.

Teaching generally takes up a ton of time, whether you're doing it as a full-time or part-time employee. These last few months, I've been teaching two very different courses at two very different campuses, one of which is a class I had never taught before. When I'm teaching a class for the first time, it's not uncommon that I'll spend 5 hours of prep for 1 hour of class time. And one of my advisors tells me that I'm in good shape-- She'll take 10 to 1. This is why graduate students are not encouraged to teach-- It takes too much of your time, and ultimately what determines your career is a finished dissertation. But fellowships become more of a rarity, especially at public universities that are experiencing budget crises. I have had to teach or work for the university in some other capacity every quarter that I've been a graduate student. And I've been asked to teach classes that professors typically teach, from large GE classes to upper-division. So I've basically worked as a professor that the university can hire for cheap.

Which brings me back to my first point: One must be a professor in order to get a PhD. And I don't mean in the sense that teaching helps you become a better scholar, though that is indeed true. I mean being a professor means that you are no longer a student.

Because I had not quite finished my dissertation by the time I secured my t-t job, and because the budget problems in my university and the scarcity of funding opportunities have determined that advanced graduate students can no longer teach at the university after a certain number of quarters, I had figured that I was going to have to go on filing fee for the spring quarter. (Filing fee means that you have nothing left to do but finish your dissertation. You pay a modest fee instead of your tuition, but it also means that you have no access to the school's facilities or employment. And you have to buy your own health insurance.) At the very end of last quarter, though, the Asian American Studies department, where I've been teaching for several years now, asked if I could substitute for a professor who is taking a sudden leave of absence. As a student, I would not be able to get this gig-- I had exceeded my teaching quarters, and was told that my appeal for an additional quarter was going to be denied. Going on filing fee would have meant that I could not be employed by the university. So my only viable option was to graduate so that the department could hire me as a lecturer. I knew I would need the income, so I pushed for this.

I wrote to my committee members about my situation. Because they had already deemed my dissertation good enough to be filed, they had already supplied their signatures. But they still preferred to have more time to review my entire document and give me comments before letting me file. Fortunately, they're also very sympathetic individuals who didn't want to deny me a source of income, so they agreed to let me file and give me comments afterwards. That is how I ended up finishing my PhD during what just might be the busiest time in my life.

I do feel good about the document I ended up submitting. But I also recognize that there's a whole lot that could be improved. That's always going to be case, though, which is why finishing a PhD takes a really, really long time.

Asian Girl Prof, PhD

I haven't been updating this blog lately because I've been very busy and important. After several days of scrambling with revisions, bureaucratic nonsense and scouting affordable printing options, I have now officially...

(drum roll)

... filed my dissertation!

Yup, I have my PhD in hand. On Tuesday, I had my filing appointment with the Graduate Studies office, in which a friendly administrator checks that I've properly formatted and printed my dissertation and filled out all of my exit paperwork. She then hands me my interim diploma, rings a bell and announces my congrats. The entire office then applauds.

Afterwards, I celebrated with some of my closest friends from graduate school. Naturally we got very drunk and played a lot of Rock Band. Because that's what doctors do.

Skin Deep

I have quite a few girly weaknesses: shoes, handbags, boys who tell me I'm pretty... But as I get older, I find myself spending more money on something that directly feeds into my vanity: skin care.

A trip to Sephora could easily take a couple of hours. The store used to be overwhelming to me, but with the help of a good friend who used to work there (and who is an Asian girl with radiant skin), I got a start in figuring out which product lines are my favorite. (Caudalie, DDF, and Philosophy) I now thoroughly enjoy going up and down the aisles, testing out the countless cremes, scrubs, and sprays. I am perfectly aware that teams of people are being paid a whole lot of money to sucker me into shelling out $48 for 1.7 ounces of anti-aging eye cream with "biospheric complex," but somehow I keep coming back and adding more to my arsenal of glycolic acid, aloe vera, willow bark, grape water, and who knows what else. I've even convinced myself that all of this stuff really works.

Maybe it does. I will say that my skin is pretty nice. I rarely get any acne (though this particularly stressful month has been an exception, which explains my most recent Sephora splurge), and I have yet to develop crow's feet around my eyes. But that probably has more to do with genetics than anything I'm spending money on. Plus, as I'm constantly being told, Asian women just naturally age better. Ha.

I think that the notion that Asian women look young has more to do with projected assumptions about Asian femininity than anything actual about how they age. But still, there is definitely a special relationship that Asian women have with their skin care. (And because I like to blame a lot of things about myself on the fact that I'm Asian, I'm going to say that this is the root of my newfound weakness.) I have very early memories of the older women in my family marveling at my fair complexion. (Having grown up in a country where people prefer to be tan, I never understood this.) My mother didn't allow me to wear makeup when I was a teenager, but she always reminded me to wear sunscreen. (With my sun spots and freckles, I now wish I was better about listening to her.) I've often witnessed my aunt (who looks at least 15 years younger than her age) going to the cosmetics counters at Macy's and selecting her favorite top-shelf face cremes. (That was one thing she never hesitated to pay full price for.) Just as I grew up aware that my family eats rice for dinner every day, I grew up aware that women need to take care of their skin.

I'm sure this isn't an Asian-specific experience. All women, regardless of ethnicity, are pressured to preserve their youthful looks. That's why we have a multi-billion dollar beauty industry. But one thing I've noticed is there is this pervasive idea that Asian skin is different from any other kind, and that Asian countries somehow hold the secrets to beautiful skin. A google search for "Asian skin care" pulls up loads of articles like THIS ONE, which declares, "It is not an accident that Japanese women have beautiful skin." Other Asian folks also seem to believe that the Japanese know skin care best. When I went to Japan with my family, among the things that the Chinese tour tried to trap us into buying were sake, kimonos, and skin care products. I once went to Sephora with a group of friends (one Chinese, one Vietnamese, one half Chinese/half Japanese), and the sales girl (who was white) recommended a product line, Boscia, specifically because it's made in Japan, where, she claimed, the quality standards are way stricter than in the U.S. (We nodded and sighed, "Ahh...")

So maybe there's a sociological study that could be done about Asian women and skin care. (Actually, I'm sure there's been one already.) Chris Rock's documentary, Good Hair, investigates the relationship that African American women have with their hair: the time and money they spend on it, the industry that's built around it, the notions of beauty that it reflects and perpetuates. In a writing class I used to teach, I assigned an essay by bell hooks called "Straightening our Hair," which argues that while the practice of hair straightening is clearly a product of internalized white supremacy, it has also become a sort of cultural heritage and form of bonding among black women: a heritage that gets dismantled when the practice gets removed from the kitchens in black households to the shelves of white corporations. A film about Asian women and skin could feature different, but still related, social issues. It could raise the question of whether skin care products are marketed to Asian women in a way that reflects either Orientalist notions of beauty or white notions of beauty. (At the same time that Asian women often pride themselves for their Asian skin, there's also a huge market for skin whitening products in Asia.) The film could also trace ad campaigns of cosmetic companies like Shiseido and dissect their cultural implications. The pic above is a vintage ad from Shiseido, a Japanese company, that targets Chinese women but depicts a white woman in its picture. The film could even try to take a scientific angle and investigate whether there's any truth to the idea that Asian genes or Asian cultural habits hold the secrets to good skin.

I might just have to get on this project.

On Police Brutality

I've been fielding a lot of backlash rhetoric over the protests on March 4th. I had expected as much. I can understand why the students not participating in the protests would be pissed about facing blocked roads, late buses, and canceled classes. I fully expect that most people don't know enough about the history of social movements in America to accept that disruption is a necessary part of protest, especially when you're dealing with fighting a structural problem. I understand, too, that images of students facing police officers isn't one that will get most of the general public behind the cause. But the general public has never been behind any campaign for social justice, really-- Whether we're talking about women's rights, civil rights, or workers' rights, activists who ended up on the right side of history were in the minority during their day, and faced backlash from their peers as well. Still, even knowing that I can only convince so many people of the merits of direct action, I'm still going to try.

So the first line of rhetoric I want to combat is the notion that protestors are misdirecting their anger by confronting law enforcement officers, and that the police are just "doing their job" when they beat the crap out of unarmed students and shoot rubber bullets at them.

To be clear, I'm not one to condone strategies like blocking freeways. That's a risky and dangerous move, and one that's not going to make a whole lot of sense to too many people. As a citizen, I am also exceedingly law-abiding, and hesitate to even jay-walk most of the time. But I do see confrontations with law enforcement as a necessary part of insisting on structural change. A friend of mine, who's also a professor at my university and a leader in these demonstrations, wrote a really great note on Facebook that explains why. I'm reposting it here.

Spring and All (on 7:06 of the Aggie TV video, the question of police brutality, and conditions of possibility)

by: Nathan Brown

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=346915612345&ref=mf

A friend in the Aggie TV video linked above (one of the most lucid and committed actors at UCD this year) says that by blocking the freeway, the cops are just doing their jobs. She is exactly right. That is the structural situation.

But what does this mean?

A sequence: with March 4 approaching, structural antagonisms seem to contribute to the eruption of a series of hate crimes across the UC. The LGBTRC at UC Davis is vandalized. Anger at these crimes builds along with anger at the exclusionary logic of the UC budget cuts. On March 4 one of the most active staff members at the LGBTRC, Laura Mitchell, plays an important role in protest actions (as she has in past actions). The cops apparently target her for arrest. At 7:06-7:07 of this video, while she is already lying on the ground after having been clubbed, punched, and kicked, one of them deliberately reaches for her head and smashes it against the pavement, hard.

Obviously this is totally unacceptable. Obviously the officer in question should be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the paradox of state power is that the fullest extent of the law also includes his action. In all seriousness: this is also the police just doing their jobs. And that recognition should be our starting point in tackling the question of 'police brutality.'

The rhetoric of police brutality is important, because it brings to the fore the university's reliance upon the repressive apparatus of the state to impede collective resistance and to beat individual political actors into submission (though this hasn't worked, in most cases, this year - students and workers HAVE NOT submitted in the face of police intimidation and violence).

But police brutality needs to be recognized as the rule, not the exception. Any determined and principled resistance to violence, intimidation, exclusion, and oppression (whether those operate through the exclusionary logic of the university, or elsewhere) will be met with more of the same - intensified to an unbearable degree, as at 7:06 of this video. Smashing someone's head into the pavement the moment they resist is STANDARD PROCEDURE.

This doesn't mean the students should do anything they can to avoid confronting the police, as the liberal faculty of SAVE, for example, seem to think. It means that - insofar as one wants to force genuine structural change - there is no avoiding the constitutive entanglement of university policy with the brutality of the state. And that entanglement has emerged clearly, over the course of the year, as the necessary site of resistance. The capacity of the police to repress the struggle to transform the university - and to repress the passage of that struggle beyond the university - cannot be accepted as an unalterable fact. It has become increasingly obvious that the capacity of the movement, in its various manifestations, to press through police repression, is the condition of possibility for any real transformation of the university and the structures in which it is embedded (and reproduces).

That's why I think the moment in this video when students press through the police line and continue forward is the most moving and important thing - the most NECESSARY thing - that has happened all year. And that's why, for me, the incredible courage of everyone in this video, and of their counterparts in Oakland, and of everyone else who fought back on March 4, has become the very substance of Spring.

Gender Subversion

I saw this poster in a (unisex) bathroom at a coffee shop I frequent.

March 4th Day of Action

This Asian Girl Prof moonlights as a Militant Asian Woman.

Today was a nation-wide Day of Action to protest the defunding of public education. For details on all the various factors behind California's public education crisis, go HERE. For a blog that updates on student activism across the nation, go HERE.

I am, in just about every way, a product of the University of California system. My dad graduated from a UC as a foreign student in the 1970s. I got my BA from a UC, and am currently finishing my PhD at a UC, where I also teach. Many people in my family also claim UCs as their alma maters. So this day was important for me, politically, professionally, and personally.

There were a series of protests going on in the fall, when the UC Regents decided to institute a 32% fee increase for undergraduates. I participated in a lot of them-- I gave speeches at rallies, posed questions to administrators at their town hall meetings (aka bullshit PR stunts), served in an "advisory committee" of sorts that was supposed to dialogue with the Regents (who never showed up because they don't give a shit) and occupied buildings. So when the March 4 Day of Action was called, which would include students and educators from all school systems: UCs, CSUs, community college and K-12 systems, I knew I was going to be there.

At my campus, a group of students headed toward a freeway onramp leading to campus. A barricade of police and CHP officers met us there. The police very quickly resorted to violent tactics: batons, tear gas, rubber bullets. That was my first exposure to tear gas. That's some nasty stuff.

Later we also blocked off a major intersection near campus, which was a gathering that also eventually dispersed. All in all, the protests were fairly peaceful on our campus. (That is, aside from the popo beating the shit out of students.) No one, aside from one woman who was detained at the freeway standoff and later released, was arrested. I'm kind of relieved. I've always been tempted to throw myself to the cause at these things, but I've never felt ready to get myself arrested. Frankly, the idea of spending a night in jail terrifies me. Especially as a small woman of color.

It was awesome seeing some of my students at the protest. For most of them, this was their first protest. I told them that they were bound to learn more from being there than in any class they could attend, including mine. Most of them dispersed once they saw the popo break out the tear gas. But some of them stayed on, even after I told them repeatedly that they should feel free to leave whenever they want. One of them said, "No, I want to stay. This is important." That was pretty awesome. Especially because that kid is kind of a tweaker and I never would have expected he would turn into an activist. But he also told me that he never expected that his college experience would turn out like this.

There are plans for more actions tomorrow. I hope the momentum continues. I've been googling for coverage about what happened nationwide, and have been amazed at how many campuses got themselves organized today. Here's hoping for the start of a revolution. March FORTH!

The Limits To My Fierceness

So yesterday I wrote a post about channeling my inner fierceness through a Salt-n-Pepa ringtone. I should probably provide a disclaimer saying that, most of the time, my ringtone is actually set to this:

Oh yes. That's the Lea Michelle cover of the Barbra Streisand classic, "Don't Rain On My Parade" from the super cool series, Glee. Apparently, when I'm not pretending that I'm a black woman, I'm pretending that I'm a gay man.

Now, this song is not lacking in fierceness. I mean, you don't want to mess with Barbra Streisand. She will cut you. And there are few moments in music recording history more tingle-inducing than when she belts, "Hey Mr. Arnstein, HERE I AAAAAAMMMM!!!!" Those pipes are no joke.

Still, this is not a ringtone that inspires awe and admiration. Nor is it one to be used on campus. Last week, I was in my office hours with three students who wanted help on their research papers. I had forgotten to put my phone on silent, and all of a sudden comes blaring, "Don't tell me not to live, just sit and putter..." My students immediately recognized it and exclaimed, "Glee!"

Maybe that scored me some coolness points with my apparently very dorky students, but still, that was kind of embarrassing. Though perhaps less embarrassing than had I said, "Yes, but have you seen Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand???"

This is how I know I will never be cool. After I shared with my brother the website that my friend shared with me, Audiko.net, we immediately started a war of sending each other embarrassing ringtones. His first hit for me: "Souper Trouper" by ABBA. But not the ABBA original. The cover from the embarrassingly bad movie, Mamma Mia!, featuring Meryl Streep. For some reason, my brother takes great delight in the idea of me having to listen to, "I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night from Glasgow..." every time someone calls me.

I think I trumped him, though. This was my gift/revenge:

His response: A text message that simply said, "U suck."

Now, the deal is that if I use his ringtone, he'll use mine. At least for each other's IDs. But I don't think that's going to happen. Even we have limits to our dorkiness.