Saturday Night, part 2

I have yet to write at length about my summer jobs. one of them is running a summer program at a low-income housing complex off Camino Del Sur (for those unfamiliar, it's an upper class neighborhood in San Diego) (not that I have any readers from outside SD) (...or any readers at all, haha). It's two days a week and it's ridiculously chaotic because the two of us "leaders" are trying to control 20 kids ages 3 to 13 who want to tear the room apart every time they come. But the interesting thing is that I could write a dissertation on these children. they are fascinating. the low-income housing complex (which truly is low-income. no it's not a farce) is situated in an upper-class community of predominantly white and asian working professionals. The housing complex kids, in contrast, are low-income children of color (mainly Latino and African-American). How do these kids construct their identities in an environment where everyone looks different than them, speaks differently, learns differently, spends money differently, i can go on indefinitely. their self realization and self understanding is governed by an "otherness" that is ultimately destructive in many ways. if to get good grades and participate in a dozen after-school activities is to be white then to miss school and roam aimlessly around the neighborhood is to be non-white, to be latino or to be black.

these kids are very aware that their parents (unlike the parents of their classmates) are not doctors or engineers. they don't get horseriding lessons nor will they receive brand new Lexuses on their 16th birthdays. in the attempt to construct and understand their own identities, kids look around themselves for clues. and when they don't feel an affinity for the majority culture that surrounds them, they turn elsewhere. the kids from the low-income housing complex turn to media representations of minority people. How do I know this? On the first day I met them a group of African-American boys, ranging in age from 9 to 13, surrounded me while joking "Sup Blooooood?", "Bloods are Mexican gangsters", "Compton represent". they repeated this stuff over and over again, puffing out their chests, cocking their heads and throwing up wannabe gang signs. these little immitation gangsters are just kids, bored kids who come to a summer program in a community room and do bullshit crafts with me. they aren't unruly; they aren't malicious. they're just trying to understand themselves and the world around them isn't helping.

at least they're receiving great educations, right? they're students in the award-winning Poway Unified School District, which offers amazing teachers and a plethora of AP classes. BUT, while last year 94% of all PUSD students passed the English/Language Arts portion of the California High School Exit Exam, only 77% of economically disadvantaged students received passing scores. For Math, the percentages were 95% as compared to 86%. Even in this award-winning district, one of the best in state, students are being left behind--and a very particular group of students. obviously these kids don't attend dilapidated schools and don't read out of ripped-up text books. the educational inequities at work in this community are more nuanced. an economically underprivileged child enters school underprepared. the teacher implicitly gives more of her attention to the children who seem to be "fast learners" (they also happen to have the working professional parents and after-school art classes). those kids who are under-prepared also receive less attention and less positive attention, less encouragement and fewer challenges. with each year they fall further and further behind. some, like one of my 4th graders, make it to the end of elementary school without knowing how to read and write, and thus loathing school. last week he told me, "if we have to write anything- i'm leaving". he doesn't even want to write his name nor does he want to draw. the very thought of holding a pencil or a piece of chalk is enough to send him rolling out the door on his Heelys.

At ths point there are racial and cultural forces at play as well. Very young kids love to learn, they want to be good at what they're doing. But at the age of 9, this kid knows that being excited about school, caring about academics isn't black. it's a very powerful and poignant idea: education belongs to white people, but he externalizes it in a hard-ass way (part of his wannabe gangsta persona) that makes the stuffy condo people despise minorities more than they already did before the low-income apartments were built next door. the bottom line is always the same- the kids lose.

the picture i'm painting isn't new. there were African American and Latino kids at my school too; they just weren't in my classes. to me (and perhaps to many of the teachers and adminstrators), they were invisible. how could i have been unaware of an issue that i now acknowledge as one of the gravest inequalities in our country today? how could we all have been so blind? i know i can't fully blame the people who live in this community. Wouldn't I be the same had it not been for the enlightening experiences I had in LA? How would I have been without Mentorship, Katie, Alice, Amlani, and the other handful of mentors and teachers who inspired and pushed me to think criticially? We are so incredibly brain-dead and when we're rich we don't care. These people aren't evil but they're satisfied and satisfied people don't care for change (eg. Republicans). If the system works for them, it must be working.

There's no big finale. I just wanted to get all of that out in case I do want to write a dissertation one day. We'll see.

Saturday Night

you can learn so much about a person from the books they read. a friend told me that his new favorite hobby is visiting yard sales and looking at the books that people read. it sounded interesting but i didn't think too much of it until a few minutes ago when i noticed the stack of books on my dresser. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the post-colonial Things Fall Apart (yes, i mentioned it earlier), and the Biography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. i don't mean to name drop in a way that will feign intelligence (because in reality i'm neither well-read nor educated). rather, my point is that there is a theme to the books that have recently caught my interest. well actually, i've been trying to read two of them for several weeks now but i have a major problem finishing books. i've started more than i have finished. anyway, yes, i am intrigued by the struggles of peoples who have been oppressed by the white man... and that is everyone who is not white (and women too!). i have been really itching to read up on feminist theory as well but instead i just watch Princess Diaries 2. i hate bad movie scripts; they're so painful.

i'm writing because i'm in a bad mood. and as always i'm disappointed in myself for being in a bad mood because i have a good life. but back to my bad mood (hah): i am so a n t i s o c i a l. this seems to happen when i am in san diego for extended periods of time. the onset always follows the same pattern. i stop answering e-mails and instead Keep Them As New. then i stop returning phone calls. when it gets really bad i start screening people i like and then even people i love. needless to say, i don't call anyone out of my own initiative. this behavior is completely inexcusable. why?
1. i do this to people who i really enjoy and love. i'm not avoiding them or trying to rid myself of them.
2. this is an awful way to treat friends and i would be hurt if someone treated me this way.
3. i'm not doing anything better. it's not that i'm too "busy" or i'm just really into something else. no no, i'm sitting at home spacing out to reruns of Scrubs.

I know what I need to do and it isn't hard at all. i just need to go through my emails and answer them, return my phone calls, contact people i haven't spoken to in a while. i can do it any day of the week. but i don't. instead i just sit around and feel bad and sulk.

WHY does this happen to me here? it used to happen in LA too but it stopped when my life got happier. i don't think this happened very often last year. maybe it's because i'm in this strange purgatory-like place right now? i get emails from cecie saying that i was missed at these amazing mentorship events and i am so touched and thankful that she misses me and feels my absence but i'm also jealous and hurt that these great moments are happening without me and i can't bring myself to respond because i just feel so awkward. i just hate jealousy so much. i think it happens to people who are not happy with themselves, with their lives. so jealousy just comes form insecurity, as do most negative traits, emotions and actions. and since i know that's something i can change i guess it must be that i just don't want to.

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the last five weeks

waking up at 430 "things fall apart" shades of blue
beautiful kids, pink stucco summer boredom, falling behind? chaos bubblegum art, LT
espresso
in debt to myself
strong women, i deeply love and admire my friends
rejection, awaiting test results, money is so hard to make
feeling bad about how your body feels and looks
is so suffocating
laziness, smashed window
did i already say i love my friends?
there is so much to read, realizing your own inadequacies
preparing (spanish)
losing hope that, there is someone
for everyone else but you

every inch of me is protected by the comfort of privilege
it gets passed on, parents to children breeding incompetency
same goes for poverty

In the aftermath

of graduation, nothing much has happened. which is depressing. I had such high hopes, for what, I'm not quite sure, but I feel the disappointment keenly. I've spent most of this summer feeling depressed and sitting in a classroom--it never ends!--and it has only slightly gotten better. I always knew that I liked to be productive, but I never knew how much of my purpose and sense of self-worth was tied up in the DOING of the everyday. Let me explain. So I was depressed for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because I felt my idleness. I wasn't doing anything...and while having the time to get some serious reading out of the way was great, I also felt profoundly useless. I wasn't living or doing anything beyond myself; I wasn't aiming for anything bigger than myself because I had no goals. So yeah, my head space was really messed up for a while.

Which leads me right into whyyy I'm slightly less depressed than 2 weeks ago. new job, I'm horrible, the end.

And the major reason why I'm being made less than happy is the fact that I'm absolutely NOT excited about the MA program. I know, I know, I was all stressed out and I picked this path so I should just commit to it. Believe me, you wouldnt be excited either if they didnt really specialize in what you want to learn and yet you still have to pay them to sit in a class you dont want to be in in the first place.

And the thought thas has been haunting me recently--and I'm almost afraid to make this jumbled thought manifest on this blog--is whether I even want to continue with my PhD. I cant remember when and why this decision got made...I dont know if I ever really wanted it or if it was something that came my way and I accepted. I know I said that it was because of latin, that I can't lose it now, but does that automatically mean this one set path? Did I resign myself to this because my options are remarkably limited? these are just thoughts, but grave nonetheless.