November 2009
1 post
October 2009
2 posts
Lessons learned
I have learned a lot about myself every time my heart gets broken. And in the almost 30 years that I have been on this earth, I have had some doosies. It all started in kindergarten—yeah, we’re goin’ there—with a boy who instead of sharing his crayons with me, would rather run around during recess pulling my skirt up in front of the other boys in class. Sometimes,...
And we're off! An ode to Fall.
Fall is in full swing and I am back after taking a much needed mental break. Blogging, at least when blogging about one’s life, can become really involved and exhausting. And after facing some of my hidden fears and anxieties in the first few entries, I was already eager to return to my hidey hole, where it’s warm, safe and full of denial. I do have a reputation to live up to which...
August 2009
10 posts
Grand narratives
This week I spent a lot of time talking to my students about critiquing grand narratives, like the Enlightenment, for example. The movement of writers and thinkers and artists who brought to us reason and science, also gave the Western world the ideology to justify colonial conquest, all for the sake of saving little brown and black brothers from thier savage selves. Grand narratives are...
4 tags
Writing onward
For a long time I wasn’t able to write any part of my disseration. At first, I thought it was because of brutal prospectus defense, and I guess for a while that was the reason. I was working on this dissertation proposal for so long and the whole process, punctuated by the trauma from the defense, left me physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I allowed myself a little vacation...
2 tags
5 tags
Life is beautiful.
This escapes me more often than I care to admit. In fact, I forget so much that I have become a genuine curmudgeon. (Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in a sentence before.) But who can blame anyone for being this way when it seems as if our world is falling apart at the seams? When we are inundated with “bad” news at every turn, when hope and change (remember...
2 tags
A hot mess!
That is how I describe the state of my dissertation. I have a draft of one chapter on a Filipino film and novel, considering nationalism, global capital, the New World Order, colonial legacies, etc, etc, etc. It’s okay, not the best, but for a draft, it’s fine. The problem is that I don’t know what the rest of the dissertation is going to look like. After I got over the...
Entry One: Diving head first
Dating and being in academia is sorta like the same thing, like standing on a diving board, un-tethered, looking down into the great unknown. Granted I have been a grad student longer than I have been dating (serial monogamist, yep, I’m one of those) but I’m convinced both produce the same feelings of incredibly high highs and ass-bottom lows, often leaving me lying in bed late at night,...
“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy;...”
– Socrates