woe

So I haven't felt the impulse to update recently, mostly because my main sources of preoccupation/concern (my cohort and the graduate visit) were resolved in an excellent fashion. The last few days have basically consisted of me avoiding my thesis work (two and a half chapters behind, and it's due in two weeks! woe!), watching Coffee Prince (so addictive! click here for episodes if you dare!), and attending some events at the queer conference on campus this week (most notably, I got to hear Gayatri Gopinath and Heather K. Love speak and also saw a really moving performance by Miriam Yalini Thambynayagam and Varuni Tiruchelvam).

Goals for the coming weeks:
1) Finish thesis (what will happen when I'm the only person in the history of the world to get into a Ph.D. program and still not manage to graduate college?)

2) Find a place to live next year (must decide how to maximize stipend and still be able to walk around my future neighborhood at night. while at it, must also figure out how to minimize the amount of walking involved in general -oh laziness!-. must not contribute to gentrification. must figure out if roommates are desirable. and so on.)

Impediments:
1) Bad tv (I am so weak! I have no self control! Why must Top Model, Girlicious, and Make Me a Supermodel tempt me so?!)

2) Senioritis (like woah. It is a deadly disease)

In any case, we'll see how everything goes. I will undoubtedly be posting more soon, if only to avoid actually working. As for tonight, there will be the huge (and somewhat infamous) party that caps off the queer conference every year, so I plan to fully participate (and by participate, I mean amusedly watch in my safe and sheltered position as bartender) the drunken and debauched revelry that will undoubtedly be involved.

admissions visit OVER

So after worrying myself for weeks about my cohort (too old! too boring! too much love for dead white men!), I am back from my admissions visit, refreshed (ok, not really; there wasn't nearly enough sleep involved) and incredibly excited about the coming fall. To start out with, my cohort = fabulous and not at all what I was expecting/dreading. While there are a good number of people who took time off, got their masters, etc., there are also two others besides me who are still undergrads, and it really wasn't noticeable who was older and/or who had more experience. Best of all, I really bonded with three people (one has my research interests, only flipped -postcolonial with a hint of Asian/American-, one is a totally fabulous qpoc with interests in Asian diasporic writing, one loves shopping and clubbing and is going to be my golddigging buddy -totally kidding, totally kidding-) and even had tentative roommate conversations with two of these lovely ladies.

With regards to the current grad students: again, FABULOUS. A lot of people have diverse interests and are also into theory, but regardless, they're all a really friendly and supportive bunch of people. (Also, apparently the third years are the "queer year," with 9 out of 11 grads self-identifying as queer. While my cohort cannot match these amazing statistics -I think there are only three of us who identify?-, we already have the most skewed gender ratio -at the visit, around 12 women to 2 men-. Dubious distinction, I know.)

As for the faculty...oh the faculty. Let me count the ways to love! They are so incredibly friendly (I know I keep repeating this adjective, but it's so true!) and collegial and it's seriously mindblowing considering the insane academic reputations that are involved. We had a dinner party at Professor L's house the first night, and I think I knew then that I was destined for the program. The crowning moment was when I was outside chainsmoking with Professors L* and E (both, incidentally, the reasons why I applied for the program) and talking about Project Runway, Big Brother, and a myriad of other bad programs (I mean really, who knew that academics were so into trashy reality shows? It was seriously amazing).

I think, more than anything, I was really reassured that my program is where I'm supposed to be. I kept worrying that I was an admissions mistake (I was the ONLY person there who wasn't an English/Literature major in college and seriously glazed over when people were telling me about their interests in Renaissance drama or modernist blah blah blah or whatever), but in the end, it was really good to connect with the professors on a really substantive level and (ego moment!) to be told by Professor S -who was on the admissions committee- that my application was one of the few that really stood out to her.

In any case, I've already turned in my deposit and official acceptance for the program, and at this point, am counting down the days til I get to go back and start my grad school career for real.

*L who, incidentally, "quit smoking" fourteen years ago. Apparently she survives by bumming cigarettes off of her students after seminars. LOVE

worrywart, me? hop hop!

So the date of my admissions visit is drawing near (I'm supposed to do the whole wine&dine this coming Monday and Tuesday), and I'm starting to get really worried about meeting my cohort. Now normally, I wouldn't really care so much about this sort of thing, but given the fact that there are only ten other people in my class and I'm going to be with them for the next six years, I think it's pretty fair for me to freak out. In no particular order, my fears are:

1) I'm going to be the youngest person in my cohort (and not youngest like oh hey, we're separated by half a year; more like oh hey, you took three years off after your undergrad, got a masters, and now you're six years older than me and we can't relate to each other at all)

2) They're going to be standard, boring English people (aka those interested in dead white men and little else. I can't help it, my academic background -soc/anth and women's studies- makes me really, really wary of these sorts of people!) and my head will fall off when I try to talk to them (alright, maybe I'm more concerned about the first half of this sentence than the second...)

3) They will be super legit and scarily intellectual and find me totally frivolous/trivial for loving fashion and buying pretty clothes and having an insatiable appetite for things like PerezHilton and ANTM and so on and so forth (the list of the trashy celebrity blogs and reality shows that I keep up with is both utterly phenomenal and utterly embarrassing)

4) They will be old, boring, and engaged/married, and I will be forced to troll around the campus, desperately looking for people who will be my friends and go out to clubs and bars with me (WOE)

Granted some of my worries are admittedly ridiculous, but I can't help it! I'm seriously so nervous to meet everyone, and I just hope that I can find one person (alright, maybe I'm really aiming for three or four. High standards!) who I can really get along/engage with. We'll see how it goes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and I will definitely keep you all updated.

bell hooks and yummy food

I went and saw bell hooks give a talk at my future university today, and I have to say that while I loved her when she was being conversational and sharing personal anecdotes, I wasn't particularly impressed by the more "academic" portion of her talk. While she is undoubtedly brilliant and I love reading her work, I am not too fond of the way that she speaks or relates to an audience when she is reading her lectures. It's somewhat jarring to hear her moving from an "academic voice" to a funny and personally engaging one; I'm not sure if it's because I want to (perhaps problematically) essentialize her as either one or the other (academic vs. empowered, engaging woman), or if I find something unsettling or inauthentic about the abrupt transitions between the voices (and whatever is driving her to speak differently based on what material is being related).

In any case, it made me feel better to know that even someone as legit and amazing as bell hooks can be not the most inspiring lecturer ever (which gives me hope for future me!)

Afterwards, I went and got Ethiopian food (my first time!) at a little restaurant near the campus with AK, Tatiana, Erika, and Susannah. It's definitely very good, and best of all, I think very close to where I'll possibly be living next year...

panic mode ON

So granted this is totally my fault for not being better informed when I applied to grad school in the first place (silly me, I just looked to see where my academic idols were congregated and basically applied on this alone), but now that I've actually read some requirements for my particular program, I am totally freaking out and wondering how I'm going to manage.

1) Apparently while I'm fully funded with stipend for five years, the actual program is supposed to last six or seven. This provokes two reactions:
a) WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING TO GET FUNDING??? MOMMYBANK????
b) SIX OR SEVEN YEARS? AHHHHH!!! I'm going to be an old, withered hag by the time I graduate! (Ok, maybe not really, BUT STILL)

2) By my fourth year, I'm supposed to pass translation exams for two different languages relevant to scholarly study
a) I want to focus on Asian/AMERICAN literature (does English count as a relevant language? hah...hah...hah? DEAD)
b) I currently read NO languages besides English. How am I going to manage to pick up two in four years??? (Man, I better get on that youtube Spanish!)

3) I have a huge oral exam at the end of my first year that's supposed to cover fifty texts
a) I
b) am
c) such
d) an
e) admissions
f) mistake
g) CAPSLOCKPANIC

i love this woman

She says everything better than I ever could



Thanks to Tatiana for the link

porn porn porn (and a lesbian flick)

If you know me well at all, then you know that I have an absolute and unapologetic love for pornography. From my first exposure to the genre my freshmen year of college (yes, I was corrupted quite late. It happened during fall break, when a friend and I were terribly bored and had nothing else to do but take my “porn virginity”), I was entranced, horrified, and ultimately incredibly amused. I don’t tend to think of pornography as being titillating or sexy in the slightest, but I am almost always entertained by the absurd scenarios, campy dialogue, and ridiculous posturing involved.

That said, I have to admit that I’m not such a huge fan of the gonzo/amateur videos that tend to dominate the porn landscape these days. While I can appreciate the types of clips that run rampant on sites like youporn or redtube (and there are gems tucked in these places), I’m much more into the sorts of videos that came out during the “Golden Age” of pornography (approximately late sixties to mid-seventies). Films like Debbie Does Dallas make me smile in the best way possible…they’re funny, cute, and strangely heartwarming, adjectives that I definitely cannot give to contemporary series like "bangbus" or "I am a good daughter" (yes. seriously.)

Yesterday, on the recommendation of my friend Emerald, I downloaded and watched The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1975). I think this might be a new favorite of mine. Without spoiling it too much, I will say that I really appreciated the moments of empowerment that the lead actress had (especially near the end) and that the plot was compelling enough that I tended to view the sex scenes as somewhat annoying distractions from the storyline (this is something that I cannot say about Pirates, the 2005 blockbuster known for being the most expensive porn ever made. While it tries to have a plot, the acting is so atrocious 99% of the time that I was infinitely more entertained by the sex scenes. Though I guess the stilted delivery was good for a few laughs…).

In any case, I would strongly recommend The Opening of Misty Beethoven to any porn fans out there (or at least fans of porn with plotlines. If you’re just trying to get off, I don’t think this is the right movie for you. For one thing, the fact that it was made in the 70s means that contemporary standards of pornographic aesthetics aren’t always followed…in particular, none of the women are shaved, which could be jarring if you expect women to look like pre-pubescent girls).

Afterwards, I had dinner with my friends Evan and Anna, and we ended up watching Go Fish, an artsy-ish lesbian film from the early 90s. It is undeniably low budget (apparently it was filmed in black and white solely to save money) and showcases some pretty bad acting and dialogue. But all in all, it has some really stellar moments (in particular, the main character’s journal entries and a powerful scene questioning what it means to identify as a lesbian). I can’t wholeheartedly endorse the movie given some of its flaws, but if you’re like me and have a soft spot for queer films (and thus tend to be more forgiving in your judgment of them), then I would say that it’s definitely worth checking out.

Today involved attempting to get some work done on my thesis research chapter. Unfortunately, the attempt utterly failed, and I spent my time perfecting my freecell and hearts skills instead (WOE).

vienes a mi casa?

So to reward me for getting into grad school (read: celebrate the fact that she no longer has to support my bum ass), my mother has offered to give me a trip this summer to wherever I want to go. Now I was originally thinking about traveling around Europe (especially considering the only country on the continent proper I've been to is Spain), but lets not kid ourselves, this kind of trip would be no fun alone and Europe is way too expensive (damn you, euro!) for me to expect that I can convince someone to come along for the hell of it.

Luckily for me, my friend Cat has been scheming for months about hitting up Buenos Aires this summer. She studied abroad there last fall, so she's very familiar with the city (and it doesn't hurt that as a native Colombian, she's fluent in Spanish). Our plans are to share an apartment for a month and spend the whole time eating great food, partying, and basically detoxing from college (and in my case, getting mentally prepared for grad school with one last major fling o'fun).

Now unfortunately for me, I don't speak a word of Spanish (aside from choice phrases that I was taught by Cat and Tatiana when we went to Madrid for fall break our sophomore year. In particular: "I am extremely religious. No sex!" and "I'm a prostitute. No sex without money!" Yeah. For some reason, they thought that knowing how to say these would help me ward off sketchballs in da club.)

In any case, I've now got a goal to be conversationally fluent (I use the term "fluent" here very, very loosely) by the time I go to Argentina. To actually achieve this, I've been checking out the "how to speak Spanish" videos on youtube and obsessively writing down and repeating phrases in my spare time.

I'm particularly fond of a video entitled "romance," which I assure you is filled with absolutely priceless gems. I've learned such wonderful phrases as: Veniste solo/sola (Did you come by yourself)? Tienes novio/novia (Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend)? And of course, my personal favorite, vienes a mi casa (Are you coming back to my place)?

With such amazingly useful phrases under my belt, how could I not be ready for BA?

personal growth? or just personal craziness?

I’m currently on spring break (finally relaxing and getting away from the pressures of constant work), and for some unknown reason, I keep finding beauty in the most random and seemingly inconsequential moments. On Monday, I sat transfixed in the student lounge for a good hour or so, listening to a boy play piano in a way that simultaneously made me want to cry and jump out of my seat and rejoice (silly, I know). And today, while hanging out at Starbucks with my friend Sam and attempting to write my thesis chapter, I glanced out of the window, saw a sudden burst of sun illuminating the trees and cars and asphalt, and felt this urge to run out into the parking lot and just dance and dance and dance...

I feel all delicate and fractured, antsy, unsure, and expectant, and I can’t tell if I’m about to go crazy or if some good and meaningful change is finally happening in me. Who knows. All I can tell for sure is that I feel happy and free and looking forward to things for the first time in a long while, and if this is what it means to be growing as a person, then I’m glad that I am. I don’t want to change a thing.

the academic bubble

I was supposed to go into the city and volunteer at SEAMAAC (a nonprofit that works with Southeast Asian refugee/immigrant communities) today, but when I woke up, I couldn't stop coughing, my voice was completely gone, and I basically felt like I wanted to melt into my covers and die (melodramatic? me?). My immediate reaction, and the course of action that I ended up taking, was to email the woman that I work under, explain that I was sick, and suggest a different day for me to come in. I thought nothing of it (granted this was around eight in the morning, and my mind tends to think about nothing anyways), blearily sent out the email, and then promptly fell asleep again.

Now, five hours later, awake and refreshed, I wonder: How much does a sense of (college student-developed) entitlement play into or motivate my actions? I mean, as an undergrad, it seems totally natural for me to skip classes or meetings with professors when I'm sick, expect extensions whenever I'm delayed (even if it's for no good reason beyond my -extremely poor- time management skills), and so on. But how are these expectations going to fly once I'm actually in the "real world"? How am I going to survive when deadlines are strict and non-negotiable and being sick means hauling your ass to work anyways?

I got really concerned about this (and my future survival in the job market) until I remembered that I'm going to be in academia for the rest of my life. Barring my dissertation (which does have that important time limit, considering that after five years MY FUNDING RUNS OUT), I suspect that everything will remain negotiable in grad school. And as a professor, I can (within reason) do most things (like grading papers) on my own time schedule.

While this was obviously a cause for relief, I really wonder, is it such a good thing to never have to learn time management skills? And really, what happens when the only things motivating my output and timeliness are the desire to publish and ratemyprofessor.com?

cold day, warm hearts

Today was an absolutely wretched weather day. The sky vomited rain like there was no tomorrow, and I could barely make my way through the wind without getting somewhat blown away at certain points. I almost didn't go to the International Women's Day celebration/meeting that I had been looking forward to all week, but in the end, I dragged out my trusty new umbrella (and myself, of course!), and I'm so glad that I did because it turned out to be an absolutely amazing experience.

To be completely honest, though, the event didn't start off so well for me in the very beginning. After missing the initial rally and march, I walked into a set of speeches that made me really uncomfortable with their reductive, second-wave rhetoric (a lot of emphasizing "women" as if it was a monolithic category, or worse still, throwing around lines about "minority" and "immigrant" women in terms of "they" this and "they" that). Luckily, my friend and I stuck it out and stayed around for the small group discussions, which were divided up by interests. After a small debate over whether to join the "international" or the LGBTQ group, we decided to go for the latter.

Beyond the really stimulating dialogue and incredibly positive and supportive interactions that were had during the conversation, we ended up getting connected to an amazing woman who's setting up a group for queer and trans women of color (I think I've decided to volunteer with this organization), as well as another woman who told us about a popular hangout for qpoc (and where, incidentally, I'm going to tonight!).

Afterwards, as I was sitting at the train station, I got accosted by a drunken twenty-something for having the amazing foresight to wear a green dress. Apparently some bar has its Saint Patrick's Day bash a week in advance, and this particular man was convinced that I was there (or at least should have been). Luckily we just ended up bantering about random things (including the number of "trust fund babies" at my graduate school that I can take advantage of come fall) for the fifteen minutes that it took my train to get there, and what could have been a bad or uncomfortable situation ended with me walking away with a big, silly grin on my face.

All in all, I'd have to say it was not a bad time for a rainy and dreary Saturday afternoon. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say it was not a bad time for any kind of day at all.

little things that keep me going

I went to an amazing talk the other day given by Celine Parrenas Shimizu, and it really got me excited again about going to grad school and becoming an academic. Shimizu gave what was probably the best lecture I've ever attended. She was engaging, extremely informative/straightforward without sacrificing content, and best of all, absolutely hilarious (she peppered her talk with personal anecdotes ranging from the time she was confused for a whore who could shoot ping pong balls out of her vagina to the time she and her friends were confronted by a group of women in prom dresses for "ruining" their experience of Miss Saigon).

I was so impressed by the talk that I immediately ran out after the lecture (and I do mean ran, because I had a class immediately following) and bought her book (and you should too! I haven't read it yet, but I will as soon as I finish the midterm paper that is, unfortunately, due in about five hours. Oh procrastination!). From what I gathered from the talk, Shimizu attempts to argue for an interpretation of Asian American female representation (particularly in film and theater) that goes beyond the simple good/bad, empowering/demeaning binaries and views performance as a site of agency and negotiation.

In any case, I was extremely inspired by Shimizu and the way that she talked about her research interests. I have a tendency to either sound overly academic (read: incomprehensible) or rambly (read: ditzy and confused) when I attempt to discuss anything remotely theoretical, so I appreciate someone who can deliver complex information in a way that is thoroughly accessible without being watered down.

Now comes the difficult part: Exactly how am I going to get from where I am to where she is? Does grad school involve some kind of miraculous process through which I will emerge from my cocoon of bumbling ineptitude as a beautiful, articulate butterfly..?

ah yes

The one thing that I will undoubtedly enjoy about graduate school: A stipend that is large enough to enable me to live by myself and thus avoid being woken up at two in the morning by my roommate and his girlfriend's amorous cries of lurve.

end of an era

I suspect that when your particular program accepts only a limited number of students each year, you end up being highly invested in making sure that nearly all the accept-ees matriculate. This sets off an interesting and highly delicate process of courtship: fellowships and stipends are offered, egos stroked, and tenure-track hiring records constantly reiterated.

Today, I received personal emails from two faculty in my particular program--doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary, but then again, you'd have to know me to understand why that was the smartest advertising ploy they could have ever pulled.

See, I've never been one to be any kind of celebrity fangirl. While I admittedly partake in my fair share of gossip websites (perezhilton, dlisted, thesuperficial, anyone?), I can't say that I've ever harbored excited daydreams about meeting famous people or even been particularly moved by their "accomplishments." However, when it comes to academic scholars, the tables are completely and wholly turned. The thought of meeting or interacting with any of my intellectual idols is enough to transform me into the equivalent of a screaming tween at a Hannah Montana concert.

So receiving six polite paragraphs (which, swoon, also contained plans for an actual one-on-one chat during the admissions visit!) basically made my day, and by made my day, I mean made me dance around my room like a ridiculous idiot. At this point, however, I suddenly realized: Dear god, I'm going to have to actually take classes with these two professors. And when that happens, I cannot behave in such an embarrassingly star-struck manner.

I think this basically means that the time in my life where I viewed certain intellectuals as unattainably distant rockstar-gods is over, and that (sadly, sadly!) I'm going to have to start understanding that academics are also, you know, actual human beings.

Woe. I feel like this is the end of my intellectual childhood. Now who have I got to place on a pedestal? (No matter, perhaps I can secretly continue to fangirl the ones that won't be at my program!)

it started with a letter

Dear S:

I am delighted to inform you that the admissions committee of the
English Department at X has accepted your application to our doctoral program, and has nominated you for a Y Fellowship, which provides full support for five years of graduate study. Competition for a place in our program was extremely strong this year; we received xxx applications to our doctoral program, and we expect an incoming class of approximately 11 students.

and so on.

Immediate reaction: Thank god! No more worrying about my unemployable skills! No more looking at my wimpy resume (the culmination of four years of academics at a small liberal arts college and very little else) and wondering how I'm ever going to feed myself! Five more years of academic bubble-time! Hurrah! Thank God!

Second thought: Oh my god. Am I really ready do this?

Third thought: Wait a second...eleven students???!!!!