I Know the Blog is True, Cuz it Feels Like Awesome
I'm listening to General Conference and blogging at the same time, so you'll have to forgive me if some Mormon-isms make their way into this blog... even my blog on this internet in these latter days.
I've had a really exciting and whirlwind first week of school. I've always wanted to teach but I've been discouraged since starting graduate school at the fact that, rather than landing a full-blown TA-ship, I was given the pithy research assistant job. Actually, being a research assistant is a lot more fun than being a TA--the TAs don't get paid to read this book, and I did--but it's also a lot less financially secure. The TAs get their tuition and insurance paid, and get paid for a set number of hours a week, whether they work them, overwork them, or don't. The RAs (this is me) have to meet hours in order to pay our own insurance and usually borrow money to pay our tuition.
Last quarter I was assigned to my favorite teacher to be an RA since the original didn't have enough work for me. She immediately enlisted my help in writing study questions and reviewing materials for a class. In short, I've ended up as the TA and I get to stand before a classroom a little bit and help out.
It's a class in American Ethnic Identity and Coming of Age. I told that to a friend and she rolled her eyes. "Let's be multicultural, right. I feel like that's been shoved down my throat so much that I hate it." This is not exactly a backwoods hick. This girl lives in Seattle, works for Boeing, and last time I checked, her last three boyfriends were all of a different ethnicity.
So if this were just a class in PCisms, it would suck. Lucky for me it's a class in identity and in the history of those identities. We're reading the greatest greatest book ever, James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, as a way of absorbing the history behind current notions of race. We're also reading some funny and touching stories in a collection that isn't nearly as PC as it sounds, Growing Up Ethnic in America.
My teacher has made the point several times that there is no way to rank ethnicity. She compares it to the AA principle that all pain is equally valid. If one person comes into an AA meeting weeping over having not gotten a job they wanted, and another person comes in weeping because their son died, the meeting does not ignore one person's pain in the idea that the other's is more important. They try to give equal love and support to both. In the same way, this isn't a class in white guilt. This is a class in discovering identity. It's really neat and I'm glad I get a chance to be a part of it.
I've had a really exciting and whirlwind first week of school. I've always wanted to teach but I've been discouraged since starting graduate school at the fact that, rather than landing a full-blown TA-ship, I was given the pithy research assistant job. Actually, being a research assistant is a lot more fun than being a TA--the TAs don't get paid to read this book, and I did--but it's also a lot less financially secure. The TAs get their tuition and insurance paid, and get paid for a set number of hours a week, whether they work them, overwork them, or don't. The RAs (this is me) have to meet hours in order to pay our own insurance and usually borrow money to pay our tuition.
Last quarter I was assigned to my favorite teacher to be an RA since the original didn't have enough work for me. She immediately enlisted my help in writing study questions and reviewing materials for a class. In short, I've ended up as the TA and I get to stand before a classroom a little bit and help out.
It's a class in American Ethnic Identity and Coming of Age. I told that to a friend and she rolled her eyes. "Let's be multicultural, right. I feel like that's been shoved down my throat so much that I hate it." This is not exactly a backwoods hick. This girl lives in Seattle, works for Boeing, and last time I checked, her last three boyfriends were all of a different ethnicity.
So if this were just a class in PCisms, it would suck. Lucky for me it's a class in identity and in the history of those identities. We're reading the greatest greatest book ever, James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, as a way of absorbing the history behind current notions of race. We're also reading some funny and touching stories in a collection that isn't nearly as PC as it sounds, Growing Up Ethnic in America.
My teacher has made the point several times that there is no way to rank ethnicity. She compares it to the AA principle that all pain is equally valid. If one person comes into an AA meeting weeping over having not gotten a job they wanted, and another person comes in weeping because their son died, the meeting does not ignore one person's pain in the idea that the other's is more important. They try to give equal love and support to both. In the same way, this isn't a class in white guilt. This is a class in discovering identity. It's really neat and I'm glad I get a chance to be a part of it.
posted by Spencer at 9:25 AM
3 Comments:
Can you apply to be a TA next year? I think you should make them feel really bad for the poor grad student father. Make them feel guilty if they don't give it to you. And for being white.
I agree with you about Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's an essential text and I drew on it heavily back when I used to teach Grade 12 History.
No way to rank ethnicity. Hm.
The adrenaline, the overwhelming sense of joy and achievement, will be coursing through the veins of Nihat Kahveci this morning. The sensations will be similar for each and every one of this remarkable Turkey squad, who never know when they are beaten, and it will be present and correct in all of their supporters, for whom the party will go on and on - certainly until they face Croatia in the quarter-finals of the European Championship on Friday.
(I live in Berlin, which has a large Turkish community. People were cheering, honking horns, waving Turkish flags, shouting TURKIYE! TURKIYE! TURKIYE!) I'm not saying the success of a handful of men in chasing a ball up and down a field is a good way of ranking ethnicity, but it is certainly one that enjoys inordinate popularity.
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