the lonely tower

The moments have started to multiply.

You know.

Those moments when you take a sharp breath inward to remind yourself that there are things to do, things to do, always things to do, and so there is no time to dwell on the rising lump in your throat, or the quivering of your bottom lip, or the shaking in your knees, or the trembling in your hands, or the burning in your heart, or the fatigue in your eyes.

I anticipated this, though, I admit that I thought it would come earlier or much, much later.

Somebody told me that it would be lonely, but not everyone in this sphere of the world is sitting on top of a literal hill, in a tower, looking out over a strange alien environment. I didn't think it would be this kind of isolation -- I've built a shell around myself, and I feel as though the world is hurtling by me with each gust of wind, and another person is married, someone else is happy, another has died, someone has moved, someone is gone, everything is swirling and changing colors, while I sit here alone, buried in my papers and journals, analyzing something that everyone around me is telling me is insignificant and juvenile.

It is no wonder that people run away or break down.

These ivory towers, they boast of having collected the most brilliant of minds, the greatest of souls, the most rigorous of thinkers, and then they break them. Through a highly bureaucratic, institutionalized process of emotional and academic hazing, they tell you all that you must do but tell you that none of it is of consequence. No matter that you came to this place with the passion and the hope to teach the next generation of thinkers and scholars. No matter that you came to this place to attempt to join the ranks of those hoping to find a solution to injustice. No matter. They will tell you that you know nothing, but that you must somehow find the confidence and the means to produce something worth publishing. All while telling you that you are insignificant and naïve.

This is academia.

They tell you that you will meet and befriend great minds. They don't tell you that most of them will try to cut you, steal from you, and criticize you rather than work with you to solve the problems of the world.

They tell you that you will learn to become a producer of knowledge and not just a consumer, a critical thinker. They don't tell you that in order to be respected as a producer, you will first be forced to bow down to the generations of thinkers before you, regardless of whether you agree with them or not.

They tell you that it is a selfish, wonderful place where you can read and learn and think all day. They don't tell you that you will actually be a pawn in other people's projects, not your own.

It is a lonely place, this tower, this view from on top of this hill.

And so, walking home late at night, after having worked for 12 hours straight on a project that I am to attempt to get published while being told I know nothing of consequence, I sometimes catch myself slowing down at the top of the hill before I descend to my place of rest -- the orange lights all aglow on the hillside in front of me. I catch my breath and move along before I start to question where I am.

There is no time to feel. No way. Pause for too long and the fears and the insecurities and the nostalgia might just catch up with me, so I will keep moving.

It is truly a lonely place, this tower.

in a bubble

I only spent three years out of the academy, but I feel a little bit shell-shocked, I must say. Perhaps it is because I spent the last three years surrounded by the most brilliant, self-aware, privilege-aware, empathetic, and social justice-oriented individuals I've ever met:

However, it startles me that some people don't seem to understand what a privilege it is to be part of this space, what a luxury it is to be able to spend the next several years of our lives completely devoted to self-betterment, self-education, and research and learning for our own benefit. We may, in our self-righteousness and mild egocentrism have dreams and hopes of using this training and research to influence the lives of others and save the world, but at the very core, the decision to come back to school for a doctoral degree is selfish, and I don't mean "selfish" in a purely negative way. 

I didn't expect to meet so many white people, white academics, mind you, who unabashedly describe things as "ghetto" without understanding the implications and the history of the word and tell me that they don't want to go to the diner on "that side of town" because the area looks sketchy (mind you, I ran through that "side of town" and there was NOTHING "sketchy" about it). I didn't expect to meet adult women who come to graduate school to start quiet catfights between themselves and other women because they fear that they have competition in securing that supposedly attractive man in their class as a mate. I didn't expect to meet so many people who don't talk about feminism with an understanding and desire to connect feminism with anti-racism and inclusion. I didn't expect to be in a space where I'd come out as bisexual to new acquaintances and suddenly regret or feel nervous that I had. I didn't expect so many people who would automatically assume that I was an international student and tell me that my English is perfect and that I don't have an accent. 

BUT

The amazing thing as that people listen. People read. People see. People (hopefully) are here to learn.

I had a PAINFUL conversation with a new acquaintance about racism, race, and wage differentials. He argued that econometric research has shown that if you hold all else constant, earnings don't differ by race. 

*clears throat* 

Two things:

1. I want you to show me that study that presents a regression model that successfully achieves an R^2 value of 1 and truly describes variation in wages so completely. 

2. Endogeneity. Tell me how that model accounts for the fact that there is a history, a legacy, a very much intact structure of racism that interacts and is woven through the labor market. There is no way that race and racism aren't connected to the levels of education attainment reached in certain communities, family circumstances, differential treatment by employers, etc., etc., etc., etc. 

The amazing thing - is that though economics is often demonized as a dismal science that oversimplifies everything and leads to faulty conclusions. But the tools are there, and I was somehow able to convince this die-hard economics-lover that there are other interpretations and life facts that must be considered before he can embrace this (ridiculous) conclusion. And so he fell silent, not in anger or in protest, but in reflection and in consideration of these points. He said, "that's a good point." 

I cannot lie and say that I didn't feel like I had won a battle, but it wasn't about that. It was about the feeling that yes, I, we, here in the academy are stuck in a bubble, but we can make that bubble permeable. We can bring in our experiences and our truths and our interpretations from our other lives and bring them in, and it is our responsibility to hold each other accountable to the world outside. 

It is a privilege, a luxury to be stuck in this bubble, and I intend to make the most of it, regardless of how bizarre of a place it truly is. 

the view from the hill

Greetings!
Welcome to "the view from the hill." I've decided to start writing in a blog because in the past, it's been a very effective way to communicate my experiences to those I love and care about, in a way that feels a little less egocentric and in-your-face than sending mass emails about my life. I want to document this experience, this adventure that I am embarking on now, in this effort to make new friends, develop new skills, and gain new knowledge that will hopefully equip me with the tools that are required to make the change I want to make in the world around me.

Why the title?

Well, academia is often described as "the ivory tower" or some other description of a secluded space protected from the rigors and circumstances that often characterize everyday life. A hill is secluded (and also suggests elevation, hinting at the egotism and self-importance that can also be found in the academy). Plus, the academic institution where I will be spending the next several years, Cornell University, is literally on a hill. A massive hill that feels like a mountain and is a rude awakening each morning when I have to walk up it to get to my class...

...but it's beautiful :)

 

Why a PhD?

I've been asked this question so many times by others and have asked myself the same question so many times now that I can answer it quite easily now. It's a fair question. A doctoral degree requires 5--8 years of foregone wages, the duration depending on life circumstances and the nature of one's field of study, it requires hundreds, thousands of hours hunched over problem sets and esoteric or insanely theoretical literature, and a level of endurance and commitment to research and academics that I believe even the most education-oriented and geeky of us will struggle to maintain.

But I want to do it and I will do it. In the three years that I spent recently as a social policy researcher, I learned a lot of things. I learned that the acronyms ACS and RFP stand for "American Community Survey" and "Request for Proposals," respectively. I learned that it's faster to code a recurring command in STATA using loops than to manually type in the code for each variable. I learned that the progressive movement is not as unified as we like to think it might be and that feminism has a long way to go before it becomes as committed to racial equity as it is to gender equity. I learned that there are lots of people out there who want to tell you how to do everything and will yell/gripe at you even if they're wrong, whether it's out of pride or sheer ignorance. But the things I learned that led me down this winding path into upstate New York were:

• Until I develop more subject matter expertise and technical analytical skills, I will not have the opportunity to answer the questions or attempt to answer the questions that I find to be the most interesting or among the most important, and
• I love mentoring and teaching. I want to teach. 

I think most people would agree that with these motivations for continued education, that the PhD is the way to go...I guess we'll see! 

My hope is to be able to better understand and help policymakers and communities to better understand the wide range of factors that affect the transitions of young adults to financial independence from their parents (the "the transition to adulthood"). In addition to the standard demographic variables such as educational attainment, gender, race, ethnicity, state of residence, health factors, family type, etc., I would argue that there are major cultural differences in how different communities and families approach the stage of "adulthood" or how they interact with the credit industry, financial institutions, educational institutions, and other agents in the infrastructure of adult responsibilities and milestones. Identification of these differences would provide a basis for making policies surrounding such things as credit reporting, mortgage-related decisions and allowances, etc., more sensitive and considerate of the varying ways in which people understand the systems. 

Please feel free to check back on this page anytime to keep abreast of the boring details of my time here in Ithaca :)

light (orig. Mar 14, 2013)

I think far too much. In a bad, unproductive way.
Analytical, critical, hypothetical, wistful, regretful...all in ways that complicate or confuse whatever actually exists in the present. This is something that I've picked up from my recent yoga practice. I only started about 2.5 months ago, but I really enjoy it so far. It's the one activity in which I cannot be competitive with myself or anyone else; I can only do what feels right in the moment. If I don't, well, I'll hurt myself.

One thing I'd like to try to counteract the pessimism, fear, and critical eye that I attach to so many of my experiences, thoughts, and feelings, is to enjoy some of the beautiful or the moving things that I find. In this context, it will be internet content, I guess.

So, here's an attempt:

LIGHT.

Light in movement.

Light at dawn when we wake up in the morning.

Light in sound.

mental health (orig. Feb 5, 2013)

I often find myself unable to articulate what I'm thinking -- if my eyes could follow my thought process, they would dart around a space, a room, the world at lightning speed, making connections between a sound and a song and a phrase and a book and a talk and a person and a place...there'd be invisible threads connecting virtually everything. It's perhaps for this reason that I find data, statistics, analyses so interesting; they create connections and ties between things in a way that's understandable.

Well, here's another link, another connection:

Our country seems to like to use mental health as a scape goat. An easy way out to a more deeply-seeded policy, societal, legal, or structural issue that we don't want to face.

Take, for example, the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. We were so quick to talk about keeping those deemed mentally ill away from weapons, of the mental health of the shooter. Certainly, this is an issue. I personally don't see why people need guns at all, but that is just my personal opinion. But this nagging, blind focus on mental health...just a distraction, an easy way out compared to examining gun policies, putting up the good fight against the National Rifle Association, to re-evaluating what we mean in our interpretation and protection of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. We seem quick to demonize those suffering from schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and all sorts of other mental health challenges, quick to rule out the possibility that bad policies and crazed protection of gun rights might be somewhat at fault.

Take, for example, the tragedy and the unflagging pursuit of Aaron Swartz, internet freedom activist, technology genius, my friend's partner in life and love. The media and some others are so fixated on Aaron's supposed battle with depression as the cause of his death (I say "supposed" only because I did not know him well enough to presume that I would know anything about his health). Out of fear of the work and constant pressure and persistence that real change requires, we run to blame the deceased, we run to blame those who are not here to defend or explain themselves. Instead of asking ourselves the deeper questions: should education be free, do we need reform to our mechanisms of legal prosecution, do we need more checks on the judicial system...instead of asking ourselves these important things, we flit our eyes away and point at whatever moves first.

Let us not presume to know what once plagued those who walked the Earth yesterday -- let us embrace and support those among us who grapple with mental illness and mental health, and let us be brave and step forward, seeking to make laws, systems, rules, the world, better in earnest.

death and laws of physics (orig. Jan 17, 2013)

I do not observe any religion.
I was not raised in a praying household.
I do not currently believe in any deities.

It is not that I reject religion; I am simply unable to find understanding or comfort in a system with which I am not familiar.

In times of loss, however, I find myself grasping for an explanation, or at least some sort of intellectual poultice or tourniquet to quell the endless tear-stained streams of thoughts and errant analyses that emerge in the night. They always seem most active in times of stillness: upon waking and opening our eyes in the morning, when we first contextualize what we see and hear and feel, remembering what has happened, remembering what is or is not; before drifting into the unconscious, as the mind often runs through what has changed in our understanding of the world that day.

But I have found something familiar and scientific to explain it all, to tell me where the breaths go, where the spirits go, what comes next:

Conservation of energy.

It explains why our love for someone can still hurt so badly years after they are gone, why a memory can still bring tears to our eyes decades after it has taken place, why someone may leave us but never quite seem to disappear completely.

That emptiness we feel, the way we turn into ourselves to see if we are doing enough and if we are enough, the refocusing of our eyes on the priorities we now find hold a renewed importance...these are all manifestations of this conservation of energy, the transformation of the magnificent and powerful force that a beautiful and full life contains into yet another force, unnamed, unperceived, that changes us all and thus changes the world, forever.

In some cases, as one we have lost now rests in peace, millions, perhaps billions, of us walking these grounds have woken to a blinding truth, a white light that exposes what he has seen all along. His light has not been extinguished; it has only exploded and multiplied into millions, perhaps billions, of lights around the world, changing and passing through bodies that will manifest this one person's force in a million, perhaps a billion ways.

Yet in other cases, the one we lose may leave us with a discrete aching of the heart that burns more acutely some times more than others, reminding us to be good to one another, and to reach out to those we feel are slipping away. His heart has not stopped, it has merely passed on its warm and generous drumbeat to those who carry his life in the form of a message of friendship and love.

As time passes and as we age, we lose more people who we loved or held near to our hearts, and no matter how stoic we are, such losses stab us in the gut. The cancers, the suicides, the accidents, and the years; we can know it's coming all our lives and still, with the last breath, we feel only shock and sudden cold.

It is not that I need confirmation of an afterlife or a reincarnation, but I refuse to accept that a life force, any life, beautiful, vibrant, full of experiences, lessons, stories, and character, can simply disappear into thin air.

I know where we go now.

fear (orig. Jan 16, 2013)

I am generally anxious person, a worrywart of sorts. I follow most rules and get nervous when I don't, and I am often concerned about how others might perceive me and think a lot about the implications of my behavior or my decisions, often to a fault.

My thinking of late has made me consider deeply this notion of fear, fear as a driver of action.

My conclusion is as follows:
Fear cannot drive us. Actions and decisions coming from places of deep-seeded, irrational, or uninformed fear lead only to bad things.

I ask you to consider the following events and pieces of information. All things discussed or things that occurred in what I feel is quite recent:

• The death of Aaron Swartz, computing genius and internet freedom activist. With the charges filed against him and the massive sentence that awaited, he was pushed to take his own life. It is out of fear of Aaron's message about free sharing of information and knowledge, a misguided and disproportionate fear for the implications of his movement on intellectual property, and a fear of losing control and reach in this "white collar crime" space that it seems that the judicial officials in question
• The killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old African American boy. An innocent, unarmed teenager was killedfrom fear of a stereotype, fears based on lies and suspicions that draw from a history of racism and criminalization of an entire subgroup of the American population. 
• The gang-rapes of women in India. The subjugation and violent and ruthless attacks on women in India, which sadly also happen all around the world on a daily basis, stem often from a place of fear of losing control, a fear of feeling weak or emasculated. 

We cannot operate on fear, swinging wildly from one disproportionate reaction to an extreme solution, from a bulging funhouse-mirror reflection of an interpretation of a situation or another person to an oversimplified blanket response that leads to nothing but further confusion, further pain, further insecurity, and more destruction.

Instead, a quest for truth, a search for clarity. A desire to understand and an intent to listen. We cannot operate on fear.

I am having difficulty being as eloquent as I would like, so I will leave some quotes about fear to close this entry.

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeeed." - Albert Einstein

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril." - Harry S. Truman

action v. balance (orig. Jan 14, 2013)

I do not think that these two are necessarily mutually exclusive or opposed, but I often find myself struggling between the two.

Action. 

The clenching in my gut, the stab to the heart, the fear and the fury that make us squeeze our eyes shut and furrow our brows hard, the rapid pounding in our chests, the wailing in the distance or across the water that makes us snap our heads in that direction, our eyes wide, wondering, scrambling to see if we can do something, anything to calm or eradicate the source of the pain that we empathize with but will never truly know ourselves. It is these sensations and feelings that spur me to action or the need to take action. I often feel and know that I am not doing anywhere near enough, not doing anything. It is not enough to feel sorry, to feel bad, to cry into a pillow at night holding to prayer beads for the well-being and the peace of another. It is not enough. And so we whirl ourselves into action, waving our arms, screaming, running, sprinting, jumping, drawing, writing, speaking, dancing, singing, fighting, hurling ourselves into action as if our lives depend on it. 

And through all of the whirling, the spinning, the reaching, the pushing, the screaming, I at times find myself drained and exhausted and immeasurably sad and miniscule in this world of dark swelling waves that devour innocent people, this life in which there is inevitable loss of life, where the beauty, value, and joy of everything good are measured and detected only by their contrast against the evil, pain, and destruction that we humans seem so set on generating. 

In these moments of feeling so infinitely tiny, I struggle to recover my stance, teetering at the edge of a perspective that once seemed so concrete and justifiably self-righteous.  

Balance. 

So, in the midst of fear and dizziness, I seek fresh air, a deluge of cold water, someone to set me upright and out of my cowering stance, heavy with unproductive thoughts and worries and sorrows and pains of others that I strap onto my own back out of guilt and a feeling of helplessness. It is difficult to relearn to breathe, to learn once again how to sleep, to draw our shoulders down from our ears, to keep our eyes directed forwards and stop them from darting around a room like skittish insects in the night. And in centering myself, I find my gaze turn inwards, losing my place in the hurry and the bustle of the things happening around me. 

“You will find that it is necessary to let things go, simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.” ― C. JoyBell C.

But is it selfish to turn inwards? To let things go because they are heavy? To close my eyes and focus on the sound and depth of my breaths because I cannot swallow or stomach the terror and the gravity and the breadth of all there is in the world to change and solve and fix and question? Is it selfish?

After all, they do say that you have to be healthy yourself, help yourself, be well yourself, before you can help any other person, thing, anything get better. But is that true? 

I meditate and pray for peace and solace. I try to wish away the murmurs in my heart and the endless connections and complications in my mind that leave me feeling so weary and tiny in the evenings. But it only leaves me feeling selfish, inadequate, petty, and wrong. 

If someone could tell me how to forge ahead while standing tall, open my eyes without blurring my vision with hot tears, understand without then cowering under the heavy burden of new truths or knowledge, if someone could tell me how to act while maintaining balance...