5 percent chance is still a chance
I'm going to post a real update right now and I'm telling myself that it will be the last post on this thing. The reasons for that decision are numerous and I'm not going to go into them. They can be summed up as: I believe, essentially, that the internet is not a productive space for me.
There have been shifts since the last time I posed. Important ones.
As I mentioned last time, I told the HST dept. here that I was not willing to continue. This fell on deaf ears. I didn't recieve a response from them for weeks, and finally I met with the person who is formally "in charge" of graduate studies last tuesday. But before that meeting, something unexpected happened.
The only course that I have really put any meaningful time into this semester, and the one that made the most sense in terms of the work that we really have to do, was my Chican@ studies course at MSU. I have come to respect the prof. greatly and value his opinion quite highly. He is committed to the liberation and self-determination of our people and has been through many battles with the ivory tower in order to transform it into something that serves our people. In short, a companero, one hundred percent.
However I was very much behind in the seminar paper...i've never written a seminar paper in my life, and in fact I hadn't written anything scholarly in well over 2 to 3 years. I put it off, i put it of, I put it off. Finally, about a week or two before meeting with the people up here, I went into his office early one day to talk about the paper, and also to mention to him my decision to quit grad school. I wanted to see what he thought. I figured that he would have let me off somewhat "easy" based on some vision of myself as not being cut out for this, but perhaps more useful in other fronts in the struggle.
I was wrong. he didn't let me off easy, at all.
The conversation was long and complicated and intense, but what matters the most, and what has been ringing in my head over and over is the following:
"...you know, we cannot afford to lose someone like you. You've got what it takes and there are people who have their eye on you and who are expecting a lot from you."
Needless to say, I left the meeting swirling with confusion and some strange mix of sadness, defeat, and hidden somewhere deep inside a vague sense of self-confidence and recognition. Me? Eye on me? who? why?
But that's the point: this whole thing is about WE..it's about US. that's why I came back here adn that's why i decided to go to school. emancipation has to be collective if it is to mean anything, and my strengths, sloppy and underdeveloped as they may be, are in fact in this space...this space of the "battle of ideas"...this space of theory, of education, of cultural work.
So fast forward to the meeting with the gabachos here. That meeting was long and complicated as well, but less "meaningful". What was said is not so much as important as the result: I'm staying.
And it relates to somethign else i've learned from the chiano prof: this is a hard place to be, but those who survive know how to pick their battles. In other words: battling with CMU and it's patriarchal, euro-centric, dishonest, sloppy, self-serving, careerist history dept is perhaps not worth my energy. But appropriating their resources and doing the best that i can to contribute to the fight that "really" matters is possible, and desirable...hell...it's even pretty fun!
So this semester was mostly one giant error...but an error that I have learned from, and, despite the ugly transcript that will be the result of this semester, I know that frankly that's not important.
because he's right, "we cannot afford to lose you"...not just "me", but all of us young scholars of color who are committed to our people....we can't afford to lose each other. If I quit, that's just one more brown person that has been driven out of the ivory tower. Where's the fighting, appropriating spirit in that?
So. yeah.
I have to go, now, i"m late for something. But i wanted to get this out of the way.
adios, livejournal.
There have been shifts since the last time I posed. Important ones.
As I mentioned last time, I told the HST dept. here that I was not willing to continue. This fell on deaf ears. I didn't recieve a response from them for weeks, and finally I met with the person who is formally "in charge" of graduate studies last tuesday. But before that meeting, something unexpected happened.
The only course that I have really put any meaningful time into this semester, and the one that made the most sense in terms of the work that we really have to do, was my Chican@ studies course at MSU. I have come to respect the prof. greatly and value his opinion quite highly. He is committed to the liberation and self-determination of our people and has been through many battles with the ivory tower in order to transform it into something that serves our people. In short, a companero, one hundred percent.
However I was very much behind in the seminar paper...i've never written a seminar paper in my life, and in fact I hadn't written anything scholarly in well over 2 to 3 years. I put it off, i put it of, I put it off. Finally, about a week or two before meeting with the people up here, I went into his office early one day to talk about the paper, and also to mention to him my decision to quit grad school. I wanted to see what he thought. I figured that he would have let me off somewhat "easy" based on some vision of myself as not being cut out for this, but perhaps more useful in other fronts in the struggle.
I was wrong. he didn't let me off easy, at all.
The conversation was long and complicated and intense, but what matters the most, and what has been ringing in my head over and over is the following:
"...you know, we cannot afford to lose someone like you. You've got what it takes and there are people who have their eye on you and who are expecting a lot from you."
Needless to say, I left the meeting swirling with confusion and some strange mix of sadness, defeat, and hidden somewhere deep inside a vague sense of self-confidence and recognition. Me? Eye on me? who? why?
But that's the point: this whole thing is about WE..it's about US. that's why I came back here adn that's why i decided to go to school. emancipation has to be collective if it is to mean anything, and my strengths, sloppy and underdeveloped as they may be, are in fact in this space...this space of the "battle of ideas"...this space of theory, of education, of cultural work.
So fast forward to the meeting with the gabachos here. That meeting was long and complicated as well, but less "meaningful". What was said is not so much as important as the result: I'm staying.
And it relates to somethign else i've learned from the chiano prof: this is a hard place to be, but those who survive know how to pick their battles. In other words: battling with CMU and it's patriarchal, euro-centric, dishonest, sloppy, self-serving, careerist history dept is perhaps not worth my energy. But appropriating their resources and doing the best that i can to contribute to the fight that "really" matters is possible, and desirable...hell...it's even pretty fun!
So this semester was mostly one giant error...but an error that I have learned from, and, despite the ugly transcript that will be the result of this semester, I know that frankly that's not important.
because he's right, "we cannot afford to lose you"...not just "me", but all of us young scholars of color who are committed to our people....we can't afford to lose each other. If I quit, that's just one more brown person that has been driven out of the ivory tower. Where's the fighting, appropriating spirit in that?
So. yeah.
I have to go, now, i"m late for something. But i wanted to get this out of the way.
adios, livejournal.