Another big, small thing I am grateful for: two weekends ago, I attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. I taught my 1:00 Friday class and then hopped in my car and drove 10 hours to a friend’s house in Arlington, VA, arriving at 12:30. My friend dropped me off on the mall the next morning and I settled in for the rally. Although I had friends on that mall, none of our cell phones worked (a great reminder of my life before 2000), and the crowds were too packed together to find anyone. As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I have been researching the Tea Parties since the beginning, not easy for a liberal to do. I also recently moved from a more liberal to a more conservative state, also not easy for a liberal, even an activist like myself who believes that I can make a bigger difference here than in Eugene, Oregon. However, I haven’t been to a liberal rally in a long time, so it did, in fact, restore my somewhat precarious sanity.

The town I’m living in reminds me a lot of Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina: both are former industrial towns that are struggling to find their identity in a postwar, postindustrial era. The broken streets here are reminiscent of Bosnia too: riding my bike here feels like mountain biking on rough trails. The streets here weren’t shelled in a war, but the lack of care has the same effect.

In short, it was nice to go to D.C., where I lived 1997-1998, and to be surrounded by people who want to see a more just, less angry world, not one that would be established through extreme versions of neoliberal capitalism calling for personal responsibility, like the Tea Partiers. I haven’t been to a good old fashioned liberal rally in a while, so my sanity was restored, until the following Tuesday when the Dems lost so many hard won Congressional seats. Sigh.

More good things: autumn has not ended, winter has not yet arrived. I like winter, especially the beginning, after the first few soft, quiet snowfalls. But I’ll take a few more weeks of surprisingly warm, sunny, colorful weather.

Finally, I appreciate little parts of my day like doing the dishes, raking my lawn, watering my plants, and playing with my kitten (okay, and watching cable television). For years in grad school, I considered those activities procrastinating: anything that did not involve grad school-related work was guilt-ridden procrastinating. Now I live, I don’t just work: I take weekends and nights off (sometimes), and I do not feel guilty, which feels strange, and good. That will probably change as I accrue more responsibilities at my new job, but for now, I will enjoy my day.

I first started thinking about – and noticing – survivor’s guilt in Bosnia-Herzegovina where I met friend after friend who displayed its heart-wrenching symptoms. They had all survived some aspects of war, but only some of them had survived shelling, violence, forced migration, and/or rape, and some of their family members and friends had not survived at all. “Why,” they asked, sometimes silently and sometimes aloud, “did I survive and she didn’t?” “If I hadn’t left to go to school,” someone might ask, “maybe they would have taken me and not her.” To be glad about something like that is mind-blowingly difficult, especially when there are faces in your mind of those “real” victims, who used to sit across from you in the second grade, or slept with you when she was scared. These same friends were also surviving, sort of, a postwar period when so many of their friends and family or even kinsmen had not. To combat it, many of them used a combination of humor, grace, activism, education, alcohol, video games, anger, and/or apathy. They were tired and hungry, hungry not for food, for I was there after the war, but for peace of mind, a sense that it would truly and deeply be okay. It never really was (what society IS truly at peace?), but my friends got better, with time and support and each other. After all, they survived. I continued to notice survivor’s guilt among refugees, especially friends who were refugees, in South Dakota, when I worked as a case manager for a refugee resettlement agency. There are countless manifestations of it, too many for this post.

I do not say the following lightly, as a literary tool to make me sound deep, sophisticated, worldly even: I have not, and I hope that I never will survive the kinds of violence that exist in this insane world, but I do feel like I’m experiencing survivor’s guilt, again (empathy’s a bitch), but differently this time. I’m feeling survivor’s guilt from the PhD and job. The recession has made getting a job in academia more difficult than ever. To get a job is strange algorithm of often unknown components: hard work, sure, connections, definitely, skill, maybe, and who knows what else? The message these days is that once you get a (tenure-track) job, you should be grateful for it everyday. Instead of reveling in the fact that I have a job, and dealing with inevitable challenges as they come, I’m tired ALL THE TIME and I feel guilty for it because I’m supposed to be happy and grateful that I’m doing what I love, what I’ve been trained (and well) to do! I’m not in another country. I speak the language here (sort of). Why am I so tired? Maybe it’s because I just finished a PhD; because I am still dealing with a flea infestation that was not my doing (it’s much, much better but not gone); because I don’t know anyone here and building close friendships takes time (there are cool people here but true friendship takes time); because I’m teaching two new classes in a new school in a new semester system (16 weeks instead of a 10), in new time periods (50-minute rather than 80-minute classes), and most relevant of all, because I’m teaching to a very different body of students than my last institution. But I have a job!!! Whoo hoo!

I made the mistake of offering only a midterm and a final (in addition to other projects, quizzes, and so on). I also wrote multiple choice exams for the first time in my life knowing full well that they could not measure the kind of concepts I taught my students to understand, and I had them take it on a weird online testing system because I thought that students at this university valued technology more than I did. These were all poor choices on my part and I will remedy them for the final. The midterms were too long and too challenging. I did not know that my students were not following me until now. Now that they have a grade to measure our mutual lack of understanding, they’re pissed off. And I’m tired. So tired. We’re all on this strange, steep learning curve with no seat belt and we all have to figure out how to get off the ride alive. I have received helpful information about my job, more than I can follow. Again, there are supportive, fun people here, but they cannot yet compare to the community I left behind because we simply do not know each other well enough yet. Like my students, I’m finding it difficult to know how much I don’t know, how to ask questions about that which I don’t know that I’m supposed to know, and even being evaluated on (I’ll save that for another post).

Students tell me that my class is not what they expected, not what they were told it would be. They don’t like being challenged in a way that they weren’t expecting. They were expecting more film, more sociology (sub cultures), and I gave them Culture and political economy. I won’t apologize for it, but I have lost a lot of sleep over it. They are not pleased, and yet they acknowledge that they are learning. Learning’s a bitch too. I’ll have to make changes to my curriculum and teaching style so that the learning is less painful, more gradual and subtle, but it won’t happen this term and in the mean time, I have to put on a grateful face, a confident face, a funny face to lighten the mood. After all, I have a job!

That said, let’s get down to the business at hand: teaching. I began a list of “things to remember” or “best teaching practices” based on previous and current teaching experiences. The list is short right now, but I will update it as time goes on, and I would appreciate suggestions to add.

1. Do not let your ego get in the way of good teaching practices.
More specifically: Jen, you cannot reach all of the students all of the time, especially not in an introductory class.

2. a la bell hooks: teach to the students where they are, not where you want them to be (but also give them the tools to build the bridge to get them where they want to be or you want them to be)

3. Don’t apologize or over talk.
As a woman, I have been socialized to do this and I’m sick of it!! I’m new, I don’t know the ropes. Bear with me.

4. Be enthusiastic, creative, and mix it up. Think outside the box. Be open to new teaching methods and not just the same old, same old. As a 36-year-old, I am now officially old enough to be a generation older than my students. I need to be up on the technology but also not cater to their perceived need to be connected at all times. In other words, my rule of NO TEXTING or LAPTOPS stands. I yelled, loudly, at my students today and threatened to “make an example” of those who refused to listen to my texting warnings: no more attendance points, I will ask you to leave the classroom, and I will make an embarrassing example of you. I felt instantaneously better and worse after I yelled this.

I should go to bed. I’m not sleeping enough but that’s to be expected, right?

In a word, these last few months have made me feel numb. I think the numbness comes from the months-long transition in which I am currently embroiled: if I could separate out the feelings, I think I would find elation (it is great to have a good job and a career for the first time in my life – it is, after all, what I’ve been working for all these years), sadness (leaving Oregon friends and my Oregon lifestyle and Oregon weather was hard), upset ( finishing a dissertation is upsetting if nothing else), excitement (believe it or not, my well of excitement has not dried up), and frustration (dissertation, teaching a summer class, goodbyes, moving, fleas – need I say more??). Even though I’m in a new place about which I know very little, I do not feel discombobulated. Feeling like a stranger in a strange land is my thing; it’s what I do and it motivates me. After all, this is not the first time I have moved to a new place, knowing no one; in fact, it’s the 8th time.

I finish this post in a downtown restaurant/coffee shop/bar, which is located on a cute downtown street next to a decent number of other bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and stores. Before biking to explore this downtown location, I bought my first turntable along with a receiver and speakers. I can finally play the vinyl albums I have been collecting here and there for years. I bought each of these components at separate pawn shops, one of which was a fun, college-kidish record store which I will probably visit often. I also bought a used DVD player to go with my old TV and a few lamps. There’s nothing like pawnshop shopping to get settled, relax, and get to know a new area and people. At one of the places, they were giving away garden tomatoes! I took three.

I like transitions. Unfortunately, they come with growing pains (in this case, painful, itchy growing pains) but also new people and more knowledge, so I raise my pint of Indiana India Pale Ale (not bad!) to Transitions with a capital T, and hope for the best.

Some highlights from the drive, beginning with my farewell to the Oregon coast and dunes:

The tunnel was long, but the light was bright, and I gained strength from friends who traveled before me and supported me along the way.

In March and April, I went to two campus interviews, visited my family for a few short days, presented my research findings to remarkable organizations and individuals in Fargo, and then I turned in my dissertation on May 14. All of these experiences were exhilarating and exhausting. But, I got a job! I defend my dissertation on June 4, teach a summer class at the University of Oregon for four weeks, pack and move, and then begin my new job as Assistant Professor of Anthropology in August. To summarize the last few months in that one simple sentence, I think, skirts the personal enormity of all that has happened. In the meantime, as I finished my dissertation and got a job, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, oil began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, Arizona legislators passed horrible bills that aim to rid the state of undocumented migrants, and countless other tragedies and triumphs occurred. I am SO EXCITED about the time that I will soon have to teach, research, and be an activist without this “thing” hanging over me. It’s quite impossible to ignore it. It is weight, physical, emotional, and intellectual. Like a long run, from the very moment that I handed it in, I left relieved, tired, and happy. After my defense, I will certainly have edits and changes to make to my dissertation, but the brunt of the work is done and for that I am thankful.

The conclusion of my dissertation begins with the following:

As I wrote this conclusion, Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed another anti-immigrant bill into law. HB 2281 bans schools from teaching classes in ethnic studies. One of the arguments against the growing field of ethnic studies in the U.S. contends that ethnic studies programs are biased towards minority groups, that they foster potentially revolutionary activities against a presumed fair and democratic state. This argument falsely assumes that most academic departments are not biased. This bill passed just 20 days after another controversial Arizona bill that aimed to identify, prosecute, and deport undocumented migrants. These Arizona laws serve to ethnically cleanse only certain noncitizens from its borders, namely undocumented Latino migrants. One of the countless arguments against undocumented migrants has to do with the lack of enough state support to go around, whether law enforcement, education, health care, or social services. Both Arizona bills have to do with citizenship and belonging. They beg the questions, “Who belongs to the country? Who is a ‘worthy’ citizen? And, who is allowed to decide the parameters of belonging?”
My dissertation answers some of these questions. While refugees are legal residents of the United States and therefore have significantly more rights than undocumented migrants, there are strong correlations between the experiences of refugees and immigrants because refugees are often treated as illegal when it comes to informal rights of citizenship, like respect and political clout. In addition to legal status, the credentials for “worthy” citizenship have to do with race, ethnicity, class, gender, and culture. The criteria for inclusion are always changing in order to adapt to the political economic context. Throughout the 1990s, refugee resettlement challenged mainstream notions of “good” citizenship in Fargo. As a result the criteria began to change and become more inclusive. Like Arizona, however, North Dakota has some work to do. We all do.

I have plenty of work to do in terms of publishing this dissertation, learning a new city and university, and getting ready for my defense. But I also took a few, much-needed days off and went to the beloved Oregon coast. I hiked away my stress (16 miles worth), read, slept, cooked, and began catching up on long overdue correspondence. Some highlights from that trip:

Now that I have more time, I hope to post more on what it means to be an activist anthropologist.

I spoke with a man the other day who was explaining to me why he is a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Libertarian. As a good interviewer, I listened, nodded and asked probing questions but did not respond to his personal inquiries or provocative statements which, I think, he uttered in hopes of getting a rise out of me. He was also a little bit drunk. Fortunately the interview happened earlier than we planned. He asked if I would care to interview him during a “killer happy hour” at bar. Um, no thanks. He told me that I should be proud of my personal freedoms because I am “obviously a woman” (whatever that means) and if it were not for personal freedoms, I would not be able to vote, would not be interviewing him, or getting a PhD. In fact, he said, I would probably be mopping floors somewhere. Really? He also told me I was easy to talk to and touched my arm several times. It was not appropriate behavior for an interview. I wanted to ask if flirting was a personal freedom or a right? For him. I was annoyed but decided to pick a different battle this day and used the scenario to my advantage by getting information I might not have gotten had I been someone else.

This also points to the politics of research that include gender, race, and class. I’m certain this man would have responded differently to a man, or a person of color, or even to an older person. It’s interesting to work in a research team because we try to consider these identity, cultural, and political economic influences to our advantage when deciding who interviews who.

Last week (or was it the week before?) classes ended, I finished entering my grades and spent last weekend cavorting with friends who graduated with their PhDs while daydreaming about this time next year when it will be me wearing the funny-looking gown and poofy hat, secretly and maybe even openly, loving the new Dr. title. But I have a lot to do before that happens, like write the dissertation, enter the increasingly competitive job market, and teach two 4-week summer classes: Gender in a Cross-Cultural Perspective and Gender, Folklore, Inequality. Fortunately, I have much fodder to use in those summer classes, like the murders of Dr. Tiller and at the Holocaust Museum not to mention so many other instances of violence that haven’t made front page news, all of which have so much to do with racism, sexism, classism, politics, economy and culture. For my second summer class, I have a unit on Iran where can discuss varying perspectives on why Iran’s electoral process seems to be running amok and the role of gender in that context. I taught a class both winter and spring terms too (Gender in a Cross-Cultural Perspective and Anthropology and Citizenship). More and more I feel teaching is my calling – or at least my profession of choice – so the shrunken academic job market worries me. Like the rest of my friends, I have plans A,B,C,D,E, and F but my first choice would be a university teaching job in a city with lot of diversity and a way for me to continue working with refugees not to mention a place to settle down and dig my feet into the community and feel at home for more than a few years.

In addition to teaching, about a month ago, I organized a talk by my friend Jen Marlowe, documentary filmmaker, author, and activist in Sudan and Israel/Palestine. Her latest film is Rebuilding Hope, a documentary about three Sudanese Lost Boys in their 20s who return to South Sudan for the first time since they fled the war as young boys. Jen gave a talk at the University of Oregon about her time in Darfur filming Darfur Diaries and in South Sudan and made the best, necessary connections I have seen between the two regions which are too often portrayed by Western media as separate entities. Thanks to professor friends who offered extra credit to students as incentive for coming to the talk, and the support of the local Lane County Darfur Coalition who also helped advertise, we had almost 100 people come to hear Jen speak and I raised $650 from various departments on campus which Jen is donating to her two projects. And I got to spend time with Jen and our friend Caroline, a PhD student in Human Geography, who drove with Jen from Seattle to Eugene. The last time we were together (and the first time I met Jen) was in South Sudan last summer so we had much to catch up on. Caroline and I are working on an article about women’s rights movements in South Sudan that we hope to submit to a feminist academic journal within the next few weeks, a project we have been working on for about a year. Weekends like these make me feel very lucky and appreciative to have the amazing kinds of friends that I do but also to be working in a setting, like a university, where feminist activist scholars can come together and discuss ways to best combat various forms of oppression. I love it!

Like my spring, my summer will not only be filled with teaching, researching, and writing but also hiking, camping, weddings, and BBQs galore. And I’m moving again! After all, it has been a year and thus time to change the scenery. This time, at the end of August, I”m moving out of my adorable, cavernous and expensive one-bedroom apartment in an attic into a to-be-determined home with a roommate who understands the dissertation-writing zone because she just finished hers and has promised to take care of me while I write mine. Did I mention how appreciative I am of my friends?

Happy Summer to all of you. I hope your weather is more indicative of summer than Eugene’s cool, breezy, cloudiness that is making me want to curl up with a cup of tea and good work of fiction and not get up until the sun does.

December 15, 1988
Today we have a basketball game in Pipestone at 4:15. I hope I don’t flub up!! I hope there’s a lot of Luvernians there to cheer us on. My dad’ coming but my mom’s not. Playing forward is a tough job, we don’t get enough credit!
I just got home from our game in Pipestone. Our A team lost 12 to 9 and B team lost too, but I don’t know what their score was. Ya know, forwards do NOT get enough recognition for their job. Rebounding and putting it back up is harder than people know. Especially when you’re guarding 51 or otherwise called “Moose.” It’s not fair.

Now that I think about it, looking back on Christmas as a child and how everyone believed in Santa. I remember one year, I must have been about a first grader or so and I was at my cousin’s house. Kurt, who’s A LOT older than me was talking to my dad, I overheard, about his trip to the North Pole. I asked him if he saw Santa Claus or his reindeer. He said no. I was SO disappointed!!! Wouldn’t that be great if there really was a Santa Claus just like in the movie “Santa Claus.” It’s too bad kids are thinking of technology things like satellites and Santa at the same time.

Last night I made 52 Ritz/Peanut Butter/Almond bark cookie crackers. Actually I made more but that’s left as my family (and I) ate a couple. I also finished my homework at a decent time, practiced 1 1/2 hours of piano, cleaned my room, and got to bed by 10:20! Not bad for also having early BB practice. Tonight we don’t have practice, but do have confirmation. I also want to shoot baskets in the gym while my parents walk after church. I can’t wait for Christmas vacation…I’ve been hoping to have a party New Year’s Eve. My dad’s all for it by my mom says NO WAY. I hope my dad can overpower my mom this time. My only problem is the kids I don’t invite will find out. I’ll feel terrible…

Today in English we got our essay tests from Great Expectations, the first half, and I got 71 out of 90. Luckily we were graded on a curve and I got an A with the highest score!!! I know. I can’t believe it either!!! Unfortunately we also got our History tests back. I got 54 out of 70!!! A C!!!! History’s one of my better subjects. I always get As in there. Well almost always…

Tonight would you believe I have NO HOMEWORK!!? I don’t, but I guess that means practice, practice, practice!!! Piano and horn, horn, horn! I guess I have a math/Algebra test tomorrow, but I studied last night. I better take Earth Science home because there’s a test on Fri. Gotta Go.

December 15, 1988
Today we have a basketball game in Pipestone at 4:15. I hope I don’t flub up!! I hope there’s a lot of Luvernians there to cheer us on…Playing forward is a tough job, we don’t get enough credit!

I just got home from our game in Pipestone. Our A team lost 22 to 9 and B team lost too, but I don’t know what their score was. Ya know, forwards do not get enough recognition for their job. Rebounding, and putting it back up is harder than people know. Especially when you’re guarding 51, or otherwise called “Moose.” It’s not fair.

[To the left of this entry is a Family Circus cartoon strip that reads: "How can Santa see us all the way from the North Pole...By satellite."] I saw this card in the paper and I had to cut it out…Some kids are so naive, including myself. Now that I think about it, looking back on Christmas as a child and how everyone believed in Santa. I remember one year, I must have been about a first grader or so, and I was at my cousin’s house. Kurt who’s A LOT older than me was talking to my dad. I overheard about his trip to the North Pole. I asked him if he saw Santa Claus or his reindeer. He said no. I was SO disappointed!! Wouldn’t that be great if there actually was a Santa Claus just like in the movie, “Santa Claus”? It’s too bad kids are thinking of technology things like satellites and Santa at the same time.

When I was young, we celebrated Memorial Day by going either to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, my mom’s family’s country church in Northwest Iowa, or to Old Westbrook Lutheran Church, my dad’s family country church in Southwest Minnesota. We wore fake poppies, brought real flowers to plant graveside, and visited tombstones where many of the four to five generations of my Norwegian American ancestors are buried. In the church basements, we ate heavily buttered ham sandwiches, potato salad, and of course several varieties of jello and bars, and then went to relatives’ farms for fun family times. If it sounds like Normal Rockwell, it was, with plenty of behind-the-scenes drama a la Garrison Keillor to boot, not that I was aware of it most of the time. I remember these days as idyllic and it’s times like those that make me nostalgic for my rural Midwest roots. But times have changed for better and for worse. I haven’t been to either of those churches since my grandma died in 2001 and my understanding is that such churches and small communities are suffering in these difficult economic times. Today, I would question the homogeneity of the region but I think that is slowly changing too. In any case, I’m glad I remember.

In 2009, I’m not doing anything specific for the holiday. I have plans with friends, plans to work and go running and hiking, and to catch up on this blog. I have been trying to set aside time outside of my social and professional life to do things that, before grad school, I used to enjoy and had time for, like beading (I mostly make necklaces), reading the printed Sunday NY Times (I have about four months to catch up on), writing in my journal (I would much rather write in my journal than twitter!), and playing music (thanks to a friend who donated his casio to me). I have been working hard these last two terms: teaching classes, participating in several conferences, organizing talks, finally beginning to work on my dissertation, and writing grants. I got a nice grant (one of seven I applied for) so that beginning next fall, I will not have to teach and I can devote all of my time to my dissertation in addition to entering the terrifying academic job market (there are almost no jobs right now so I’ll be lucky to get a postdoc and may have to consider jobs outside of academia). Before that, however, I am preparing to teach two summer classes over the course of 8 weeks so no rest for the weary grad student anytime soon. I have also been doing more than my share of socializing with great friends and work has taken a back burner since last week when the picture-perfect Oregon spring weather arrived for good.

Speaking of which, I’m off to dinner with friends and to enjoy more of the weather.

What or who are you remembering this weekend?