Not either/or

I was asked this morning by the coordinator of my grad program, "So, how do you identify yourself?"

My answer: Chinese. What I should've said was "Today, I feel Chinese." (of course I couldn't really back that up with any reasoning, it's just a gut feeling)

As a biracial individual, I have often felt I had to choose one or the other. I am finding it increasingly more important to carve out my own path and be myself and to build up my biracial identity, because that is who I am and what I come from.

We worked on a poem today titled "I Am From". Here is my start:

I am from casseroles and dim sum

Corn fields and sugar cane

Golden hills with swaths of black

Temporary humidity, more-constant fog

Tradewinds sometimes

I am from the sweet smell of plumeria and sweet peas

Daily rain and weekly thunderstorms

Dairy Queen and Matsumoto’s

A couple of continents’ worth of cicada song

I felt it was so important to include, AND TAKE PRIDE IN, all the places/people/things I am from: Mom's casseroles to Dad's dim sum; the corn fields of Illinois, the sugar cane of Hawai'i, the dried and burnt landscape of Northern California; the cicada of Illinois, Hawai'i, Taiwan, and Japan. 

I am a complex story, as is everyone else...

"Just the facts, ma'am." vs. "... the rest of the story."

It is so very important to know where folks are coming from. We read each others' autobiographies today and it was an eye-opening experience. I found myself wanting this autobiography for everyone I know. Instead of getting snippets of folks' histories, I'd rather have it all packaged up in a nice, neat way (how antithetical to the way I usually work.) Granted, you can't put everything in an autobiography, but it's nice to know the basics, or the foundation, so to speak. 

As for today, I'm stressed by external things right now, not by this program really. Work politics came roaring back into my life this afternoon. I have to keep that one in perspective. Hubby and Thing 1 are leaving on our "family vacation" tomorrow morning, and that brings up a whole other set of issues...

But, the sun will set tonight, and, I'd bet, it'll rise tomorrow.

Support

I'm on a really steep learning curve right now (steep like Lombard, not steep like Hayes- that's just not steep enough in this case.) I've got several sets of learning going on:

• how to be a grad student
• how to fit being a grad student in the life of my family
• how to get all this damn reading done (which I enjoy- high quality, just HIGH quantity, too) (high like Everest)
• how to work with my group

Today I had evidence of how supported I am by my group in this learning- that their support not just buoys me but also spurs me on. And, if I've rushed through a reading simply because I didn't have the time to get it in depth, they really help me to grasp what I didn't at first. 

This really is a group effort, really.

There will be blood...

OK, well, maybe not blood. But there will be suffering to a certain extent. Heck, there already has been suffering. Example: It's after 2pm here and I've been switching between school work and house work (because I'm not willing to suffer through another moment of a messy kitchen.) My kids are still in their jammies and playing LEGOs in their room. OK, maybe that's not suffering, but here are some more examples of things we're all learning to endure right now:

• the messy house- OK, admittedly, my house has never been neat, but let's just say it's reach a new high (or is that low) in dis-neat-ness. 
• Mama just isn't fun anymore. Period. For anyone.
• the resurgence of the 30 minute supper- if it takes longer than 30 minutes, it ain't on the menu; no more lasagna, unless it's Stouffer's. 
• piles o' laundry. Make that the Swiss Alps of laundry. "I know you've worn it the last two days, but all you got on it was a little bit of ice cream."
• and something my kids are happy about: the use of TV as a study aid. 

Of course, there's my own "suffering". The things I used to enjoy I just can't. I was at a BBQ yesterday with interesting, fun people but every time I engaged in a conversation, my mind wandered to not Hawaii, not any tropical island, not even, dare I say it, KNITTING, but all the school work I had to do. Ugh. 

And I didn't even feel like having a beer.

Now that's suffering.

On being almost-40, a mom, wife, and grad student.

OK, I have to get this off my chest and I promise that will be it (well, maybe.)

I just completed my first week of grad school and the word I would use to describe myself is EXHAUSTED, but ENLIGHTENED.

I am EXHAUSTED because (and this is for all of you out there who are single, or married without kids, who are thinking they can't do grad school because they just don't have the time... five words for you: SHUT UP and MAN UP)...

... I get up at 5:30 to clear my mind through exercise.

... get home and pack lunches, wake up kids, feed them, get them dressed, pack up my ton o' stuff (really, almost a whole ton... stay tuned, I'm going to weigh it one of these days) and my son's stuff, get myself ready, and herd everyone out the door.

... drop off two kids in two different places, park a few blocks from school, and hoof it up the hill to class.

... class, in this case, does not mean sitting in a lecture (that would be easy)- class means work group and whole group discussions around some really deep readings that were done the night before (more on that later)

... leave class, run off to pick up at least one kid.

... get home, make dinner, eat dinner, clean up dinner, do a little laundry, read to at least one kid, put them to bed.

... by 8:30pm, if I'm lucky, sit down... TO READ at least 100 pages in the reader (which is HUGE... oh, the trees, the trees, felled in the name of academia and learning!!!)

I am ENLIGHTENED because...

... I read Paolo Freire for the first time. For those of you who don't know who he is, he wrote "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which, yeah, is pretty hard to get the first time around. After discussions, I was fired up to read on... it is fascinating stuff that has so much to do with not just education, but also with society at large. 

... I read Howard Gardner, and not just the multiple intelligences stuff. It was about truth, beauty, and goodness in education as well as his 3 E's- excellence, engagement, and ethics.

... I read Sara Lawrence Lightfoot's The Good High School

... I read Neil Postman and considered my gods and the gods of my school district.

... mostly, I feel ENLIGHTENED because I had meaningful and deep discussions with the folks in my cohort. Wow.

I remain thankful for this harrowing, growing situation I've put myself in. Yeah, I'm older than most of the "kids" in the program. Yeah, I have a family to take care of. Yeah, I still have the same school workload that the "kids" have. But, HELL YEAH, this is wonderful and I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Which, hopefully, won't be too soon.

If Howard Gardner came to my school district...

... what would he think?

In light of what Gardner wrote about the "three E's" (excellence, engagement, and ethics) and the fact that he believes that all schools should focus on all three ("no 'E' left behind"), I think he and I would have a very interesting discussion about what is happening in my district. I believe he would see evidence of all three- but would note that we just aren't there YET, but we are firmly on the road...

Yay, Oprah!

OK, before you get too excited, please know that I am NOT writing about Oprah, rather about something she reinvigorated that is important to me and my learning right now: the book club.

I am the type of person who will hear about a book and jump up to read it, only to realize that I read it a while back (yes, I am getting old.) Nothing against re-reading, but why when you can read something new? 

Right now I'm faced with hundreds of pages of educational theory to read every night. It's interesting, but when you are trying to do it at 10:30 after you've fed your family, bathed and read to the kids, and done some laundry, it's a little hard to do more than just get the gist, not to mention trying to look at the reading with different lenses (impossible at 10:30, really- isn't 10:30 the realm of evening news, trashy novels read in the comfort of your bed, or, dare I speak its name... KNITTING?) Because we are discussing our readings in depth with a variety of groupings, I am getting things out of it that I would never have in isolation. It is SO VERY important to read in a group, in fact I am feeling that it is essential to read something with at least one other person to bounce ideas and thoughts off of- this is for all kinds of reading.

Isn't the aim of reading to understand, after all, and what better way to understand than to get the viewpoint of others?