Ends/ Means

Graduation: there is much to say. Commencement weekend was beautiful. Too beautiful I might actually risk ruining it with words... this is only a bit of what is floating around my head.

Commencement, Baccaleaureate, the funny cap, ill-fitting gown, shiny cords, and diploma are "ends." They are certainly important, but completely unrepresentative of the means (how I got to the photographs above). The means were less shiny; more real.

Being real, my eighth and final semester of college was the most difficult of them all. It was epically long and exhausting. It was physically/emotionally/spiritually draining until the very last moment. I am much too close to begin drafting my reflective memoir. But I think, when I look back on this strange chapter of my life, I'll say I learned about the means. I learned about getting through a class period (not a course), a page (not a paper), and a day (not a semester).

I am grateful to everyone involved in the many steps I took towards graduation-- the means. My diploma pales in comparison to the warm and generous wisdom of my friends, family, professors, coaches and mentors. My only thought for repaying you is to lead an important life. Not a life of being important... I have heard that is overrated. An important life, embracing the full range of human experience and making life better for others. I will carry you with me.

Tomorrow

Rough

One "page in process" from my Spanish research. Ouch. Lesson learned: never, ever become attached to a first draft. Especially in your second language, because even good ideas can be grammatically nonsensical.

Chaos: a portrait

This is my desk, circa April 31, 2010, shortly before I turned in my second senior thesis. Can you find: 3 separate coffee mugs, a rubber duck, Fulbright acceptance materials, a pocket Ecuadorian constitution, a Michel Foucault greeting card, something that says "Honduras", a handmade ceramic dish, a Jesus action figure, 2 graduation tassels, an ipod, and something in support of gay marriage?

Unsurprisingly, I have found it nearly impossible to work at my desk this year. I am packing everything up now, in anticipation of graduation (countdown: 7 days). The ants are mostly gone.

Spanish Thesis

Spanish speakers/readers can access the full text of my thesis ("Ecuadorian History and the Construction of Female Subjectivities: an Analysis of Three Novels by Alicia Yanez Cossio")
AQUÍ.

True.

Fulbright

Excellent news. In a matter of mere months, I will again have something [interesting] to write about.

Here is what I know right now:
- I will go to Ecuador (don't know where).
- I will be there from the fall of 2010 until the spring of 2011(don't really know when).
- I will have an English Teaching Assistantship at a University (don't know which).
- I'll be able to conduct my own research on the side (don't know what).
- The grant covers everything-- travel, cost of living, books/materials.
- It will be awesome.

Most importantly, you should all come visit. I'm quite serious. Ecuador is a wonderful, beautiful, fascinating place. I'm going alone this time, so I will need some familiarity. And you've always wanted to stand on the equator.

When Seniors Have to Resort to Fortune Cookies

Today I opened a fortune cookie and it said, "You will travel to an exotic location." Good news from the Fulbright Commission on the way? Two of my friends have already heard back from their respective host countries (both in their favor!) so I am hoping my letter is next.

Why I love my roommate, # 528

She picks daffodils [from other people's yards] and gives them to me [in an empty gin bottle] when I'm having a bad day.

Senior Profiles

Always the anthropologist, I've been observing my senior peers closely over the past several weeks. Consider this: in about 2.5 months, a host of recent grads enter the so-called "real world." The majority of us simply have no idea where we'll be in six months. At this point, most applications and interviews have been unanswered, and we wait in a precarious state of limbo.

So how do seniors cope? Here are a few of the many senior profiles I have seen emerge:

1. The "life plan" senior: This senior reacts to graduation by planning out every moment of her future life, including (though not limited to): the design of her extravagant wedding invitations, the names of her 3 children, the street location of her future private practice, and her expected 401k outlook by age 39. Tread lightly, as this senior can be expected confront a quarter-life crisis of epic proportions when the tiniest of plans falters and thus throws her entire future into jeopardy.

2. The "hasty approach to graduate school" senior: In January, this senior decides she should probably do something about post-graduate life [usually spurred by an overachieving friend landing a sweet job or teach for america placement]. Having already missed the deadlines for 95% of graduate programs, she arbitrarily picks a couple of schools and infuriates several professors by asking for letters of recommendation three days before the deadline.

3. The "best days of my life!" senior: This senior spends her entire final year in a daze of alcohol and missed assignments. Having convinced herself to "LIVE IT UP" (every monday, wednesday, thursday [but it's just happy hour], friday, and saturday), she creates the illusion of extreme happiness and nonchalant-ness towards what remains an extremely uncertain future.

4. The "see the world" senior: Upon graduation, this senior dreams of backpacking through Europe, hitching a boat to New Zealand, or taking a motorcycle tour of South America with an Argentinian lover she has yet to meet. By second semester, this senior has taken to creating fictitious plans to tell people ("backpacking...how marvelous!") and is busy buttering up her parents for funds to "find herself."

Hello from Home

A Eulogy for Fall Semester

Oh, Fall of 2009. Today I bury you, for good.

You showed me the awesome and terrible limits of the human body. The all-nighter, followed by the all-dayer, followed by two hours of semi-pointless meetings and a terrible nights sleep because the neighbors are always celebrating, loudly. You showed me the frightening depths of human intellect; how to skim an entire novel in spanish in under an hour; how to craft a thesis during a lady gaga dance break in the library bathroom; how to write endless pages; how to write more endless pages and revise the endless pages previously written and subsequently destroyed by a professor. You ripped the perfectionist right out of me, because sometimes, Fall 2009, there is just no freaking way to get everything done. Much less done well. Much less done well, while still showering on a daily basis and remembering to consume calories other than espresso-based beverages and the soup they serve at the student union. If there was a legal blood-caffeine limit for operating vehicles and theorizing from university classrooms, I would be in jail. I wager I could have triumphed over you, Fall 2009, if I had no life, no friends or other relationships, no feelings, and no existential crises about being a senior. Because I am a full human being; far more than my intellectual or even physical capabilities, you seem to have won this round.

You, fall semester, were hell, and I shall not miss you.

because being a senior means (at times) having no answers.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." --Rainer Maria Rilke ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ (1934)

"It is only clear to me that her waiting was not patient, not placid or resigned, and if she didn't know tomorrow's date, it was because what she yearned for wasn't coming tomorrow or the day after or even the next week, but it forced her to wait, to allow time to pass and the wind to blow." -- Laura Restrepo

Excerpts from my desk

My desk is an orchestrated chaos. It speaks volumes about who I am.

- 39 separate library books. In piles and rows. Titles include, "Ethnopolitics in Ecuador" "Sex and Revolution: Cuba" "Global Shadows, Africa in the Neoliberal World Order" "La Chulla Vida" "The Power of Mindful Learning" "Sociology and Mass Culture" and "The Child in Latin America."
- Cards and letters. Themes include: Jonas Brothers (the card sings), Michel Foucault (from a professor), Stick figure drawings (from an Ecua-friend).
- Business cards: Skin Solutions massage therapy, Jazzy Jewels jewelry, Abe's Automotive, Denison University Director of Career Services.
- Fortune cookie fortunes: In the ocean of knowledge, only those who want to learn will see the land. Listen to yourself more often. Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded. When one must, one can. Wo chi shuigito (I eat fruit).
- Addresses: California, Minneapolis, South Carolina, Virginia, Ecuador.
- Pictures: Catie. Jenny. Anna. My students. The beach. Ryan. Janelle. Jess. Laura.
- Folders, papers and more papers: Fulbright docs, Post-grad, tutoring, resumes, sophomore retreat leader binder.
- Words. "generosity. courage. self-respect."

Statement of Ethics-- Senior Research

I am a first-time teacher in Muisne, a rural island off Ecuador's northern coast. I am a researcher. I am white and female and very young. I stick out in appearance; I open my mouth and stick out even more. I am confined by my gender; in the street, I walk quickly and do not acknowledge the piropeos (cat calls). I cannot be alone on the beach. I am a teacher, but I am a friend. Children buy me coconuts and shout “Profesora” as I wave by their doors. Why do they trust me?

The teachers are buzzing before class one November morning; there has been a rape. The principal details the situation in front of four hundred students during morning formation. He yells into the microphone. He demands better conduct. A meeting ensues between the principal, the female victim, and the male accused of rape. I am invited to be present. The principal interrogates the 14-year old girl, she is silent. He evokes her sexual past, implying that she is promiscuous. Moreover, she spends time with known homosexuals on the island and he concludes that she “probably has HIV.” The accused rapist goes back to class, embarrassed but cleared of all charges. The girl is silent and looks at her hands. I am silent and horrified. The principal turns to me and says with disgust, “This is Ecuador. This is Muisne.” He assumes that I (as an American?) share his sentiments and agree with his course of action. My disgust is with him, yet I am implicated on his side. All of my roles seem to collide. Who am I? Who do I protect, and can I still protect my job? There is no time. We leave the office. The girl walks back to class and will not look at me for the remainder of my time teaching in Muisne.

As the situation I describe above implies, there are many moments when anthropological research cannot be neatly categorized as either “ethical” or “unethical.” Grappling with questions of ethics, although rarely done in public academic circles, is an integral and often unexpectedly jarring part of social research. In this essay, I would like to address ethics in my senior project by focusing on three research “phases”—the origins of research, the process of research, and the consequences of research.

You can read the entirety of my statement of ethics HERE.