I am a teacher. Officially. Who knew?

So, for the past three weeks now, I’ve been teaching 4 sections of Introduction to Medical Anthropology. At first, I was worried that I wouldn’t have time, that it would suck, that I wouldn’t know how to generate good discussions, etc. This is an upper division class, which means that instead of cutting my teeth on freshmen (now that’s an image for you!), I’m dealing with a bunch of juniors and seniors. These are not children, they are budding adults. And they are whip-smart. For anyone who doesn’t think there is a qualitative difference between a ranked top 25 school and the rest of us, think again. 

First off, these kids are serious about their studies. For the first time in my life, I’m dealing with people who do the recommended reading. Seriously. There was a Tambiah reading a couple of weeks ago that was only recommended, and several people emailed me to say it was ‘missing’ from their readers and online. Would I find them a copy? 

I’m having the students send me a question or reflection each week before section, to help me figure out what is interesting for them, or what is puzzling them. So far, I have been impressed with the results. Good questions that link ideas together. Thoughful responses that show how they are thinking through things critically.  Suddenly, I’m not quite as worried about our ‘future’ as I once was.

My job is both harder and easier because of the level of ’smarts’ I’m dealing with here. I have to engage them, but I also have to challenge them. So far, so good.

One of my students, a bright senior who sometimes looks dubious in lecture, lingered after class and told me that it was the first time that she had ever understood the need for a section. 

“Usually, this is just about a graduate student pretending to be a teacher,” she said. “But this is different. I just thought you should know.”

I almost cried. I’m serious. Tears.

Then, a freshman that is bold enough to take an upper division class at Berkeley came up to me. She’s feeling lost. She doesn’t get it. I tried to calm her down by telling her that she’s smart, that everyone feels stupid at a place like Berkeley, and that she should have some faith in her ability. She’s here for a reason.

And, the funny thing is, I believe it – both for her and for me. 

The other night, I got an email from a student who was still thinking about what we discussed that day in our section – while walking home from class, he had thought of a few additional things he wish he had said in class. He wrote me a page-length email about the various problems with the link between vaccines and autism in the readings I assigned, and anticipated our next author’s arguments. It was a brilliant email. 

I’m a teacher, yo. And I’m truly geeked out about it. This is the best and the hardest job on earth, and I love it. I’m in love with being a professor. Cynicism be damned – I believe in these 20-somethings.

I must like blogging away the Mondays.

Because I always seem to blog on a Monday morning. Maybe that is because I am procrastinating the beginning of yet another week. Which I’m usually afraid is going to suck.

But not for much longer!

The perk of being in academia is definitely the summer break. This summer, I have every intention of finishing my second novel, about a group of western or ‘westernized’ Chinese women in Hong Kong. The plot is loosely based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, for anyone who cares. It’s more of a literary novel, but I don’t think that people who like a good ‘beach read’ would turn away from it either. It’s all about relationships and what it’s like to be a white women in a post-colonial setting. From, clearly, my own personal experience with such a thing. It should be fun, and serious, and just a good read. Hopefully, it will also be provocative of discussion about what it means to be a woman, and Chinese or American in today’s world (respectively, I only barely dabble in Chinese-American status, which I know about only from my friends in China classes).

I can’t wait to just sit down and crash it out.

That and a couple of academic articles.

I guess I plan on being productive.

But you know how that works. Doesn’t the weekend always look better on the Friday side of it? By Sunday, I think most people have disappointed themselves. They didn’t do everything on their ‘list’. That’s something that should be on “Stuff White People Like”. Lists.

Well, I say frak the lists. To-do lists outside of work only depress people. Don’t even have a MENTAL to-do list.

Instead, why don’t you try keeping a record of what you’ve accomplished during the day. Shake it up. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote an introduction to a theory paper about the so-called ‘problem’ of China, specifically focusing on the issue of science & technology. I also wrote about the ‘Science Wars’ of the 1990s for my field statement on the anthropology of science. In addition, I read an article in Chinese about China’s economy for today’s Chinese class. I took an hour walk with my lovely boyfriend. I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. OK, I just ate them and he grilled them, but still.  I also managed to call my close friend Mark and gab.

Looking at that list makes me feel pretty good about my Monday. Let’s see if it lasts. . . .

Procrastination: I’m supposed to be working, but instead, I’m wasting more of my potential.

Alas, it is a beautiful day here in Berkeley, California.

The sun is shining. I can hear the bells of the ice cream truck outside my window. The kids that live next door are enjoying their plastic pool. It’s 75° and a cool breeze is blowing.

I am inside.

Why?

Because I’m supposed to be writing my first field statement – about the anthropology of science. I know, that sounds really cool, right? Well, maybe not exactly.

Instead of actually writing, I’m still “researching”, which involves a lot of Google searches. And it also involves checking my email 20 times even though no one is writing to me because it’s a gorgeous day and other people have things called “lives”. Apparently, they exist somewhere out there, outside the walls of academe.

Also, it involves opening the refrigerator just to “look”. And think about eating an orange. And getting some more water, or coffee, or diet coke. And sitting back down in front of the computer with a firm resolution to: “Just write something already!”

In the back of my head, I keep telling myself that writing this is no big deal. If it sucks, I rewrite it. Emphasis on “re”, after having actually written something. Oh, I have 38 pages of notes and a complete bibliography. But no text. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

I try to trick myself into writing by thinking that at least I’m not in Haiti lining up for food. That this is ridiculous compared to most people’s troubles. I’m not a hemophiliac, right? Things aren’t so bad. So far, no cancer.

Then why am I making myself miserable?

Do I like being miserable?

I must. Because I LOVE procrastinating.

I also love thinking about all my ‘wasted potential’ while I’m doing it.

‘Potential’ sucks.

It’s overrated.

I think I’m going to dedicate a couple of postings, or maybe another whole page on “Wasted Potential”. Maybe I’ll share stories of famously wasted potentials. Or how to get over the envy that comes along with it, while you are watching other people, not laden with ‘potential’, actually out there doing things and – gasp! – succeeding. While you, me, us, whoever, are all frozen by our collective incapacity to actualize any of our so-called ‘potential’.

Oh, if only I could procrastinate the self-doubt, self-criticism, uncertainty and fear. Or FUSS, for a nice acronym.

If only I could stop all the FUSS, and get down to work.

An entire month passes in academia . . .

. . . without me noticing. It’s sad how disconnected I become during the academic year. I lose all sense of what is going on in the world, mostly because my nose is forever buried in some tome that is supposed to be teaching me more about the world.

College campuses aren’t real. Oh, occasionally the real intercedes and people freak out – like the spate of random thefts and assaults on our lovely campus during the first weeks of the semester, but for the most part college students are sequestered apart from anything “out there”. You can always spot a college town: lots of cheap eateries, vintage stores, more book stores than most small cities, video game and music stores, and oodles of young-looking, hip people walking around in a brazen fashion. They can afford to be brazen because they usually haven’t been bitten yet. They haven’t been turned down for a job; they haven’t sent out 25 resumes without one interview; they haven’t stopped being subsidized by their parents; they haven’t been sick or scared or too lonely. Or, maybe they have, but they are better at hiding it. Youth is good at hiding all sorts of trauma under a bravado exterior. That gets harder as we all get older.  I find that I can barely pull it off at all anymore. My exterior casing has begun to fade and I think I’m tired more often now. And I don’t just mean physically, but metaphysically or emotionally exhausted.

Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through this. The payoff is there – good hours, interesting conversations, potentially worthwhile work. But the drawbacks are, too – no money to speak of, an uncertain job outlook (but many of us face that these days, I know), difficulty making relationships work (it’s like being in the army- you go where there are jobs). But mainly it’s the sense that none of this is real that troubles me. It’s all constructed in our heads, like games of logic. We spar inside the ivory towers about war, ethics, democracy, but no one outside pays much attention to us. It’s like the walls are too thick for us to be heard above a distinct buzzing sound, like mosquitoes near the necks of those in power. But what can we expect? Our universities are partially businesses. They need money, they take donations from corporations, they want clear evidence of use and profit. Which doesn’t smell good for the humanities. What good are we? Really? In a crunch, if you were about to be forever stranded apart from the rest of society, who would you choose to go with you: a doctor, an engineer, a scientist, a teacher, a fireman, a fisherman, a farmer, or a – god forbid – philosopher? I’m betting that even the philosophers would flinch before taking one of their own out into the wild with them. But even they are more useful in a pinch than someone who specializes in French Literature of the 1920s as it relates to the feminist discourse of Anais Nin. Or whatever. Clearly I know nothing about that subject. But someone does, maybe 10 people do.  And they all talk about it to and for each other.

And no one – or almost no one – else cares.

Certainly the undergraduates don’t care. They care about getting good grades (mostly), getting into a good grad school (for MBAs, JDs and MDs, mostly), and getting laid (mostly). And drunk or high. But honestly, I can’t throw many stones, because I was only recently in that same glass house. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still on the same track, running the same race, that I was running 15 years ago. How pathetic is that? I’ve never moved on. I’m still trying to prove to people that I’m smart. And not everyone, just the quasi-unreal people who reside in academia, the ones who think they know so much about the world as they distance themselves from it in order to study it.

Years ago, I thought I could change the world by becoming a journalist. Then, I realized that might happen, but probably wasn’t going to happen. Writing about the local school play doesn’t really change much. Last year, I was hopeful that I might help change something by writing about bird flu, China, my experiences, and I remain cautiously hopeful. But I’m not as arrogant as I used to be; I no longer think that I have to “save the people” or that I have anything particularly special to say. My job is to analyze, to point out the problems, to suggest potential avenues for further inquiry. From now on, I think I’ll leave the CPR to the professionals, stick to my theories, and try to get my head out of my books from time to time. After all, there’s only so much you can learn in a book or on a college campus.

More stupid teenagers, early 20s coolsters . . .

In light of the Miss South Carolina debacle, I thought it would be fun to post this.

One man went in search of ‘young people’, aka college students, to ask them what year 9/11 happened. This might have been entitled, “Man goes in search of people to make Miss SC look smart”. Surprise, surprise! He found some here in our very own self-titled “best state in the union”. Wow, I think, sums it up. Double wow.

The good stuff is about 30 seconds in. I’m tempted to go out to the local campus and do the same thing, just to do a spot check. My guess is that it would be a better result, since this is technically one of the best schools in the country. But, you never know. . . .

Another Semester Begins

Another semester begins next Monday. Yuck. Yeah!

In honor of my mixed emotions, I’ve put up a new page, where I encourage people to weigh in on an issue that isn’t in any danger of being taken too seriously. It isn’t the Iraq War, it isn’t about human rights or the environment, it’s basically just poking a little fun at what we all do for a living. Or barely a living, as the case may be.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll give out a prize for the best, most insightful comment. Like P.J. O’Rourke’s book about careers, or What Color is My Parachute?, or Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Something in that vein anyway.

Bird flu article is finished!

I just put the finishing touches on my article for Language and Politics, an academic journal which is publishing a special issue on avian flu. This afternoon, I sent it off to the editor, two days ahead of schedule. So, in other words, I’m feeling pretty good and largely carefree right now.

The article is entitled, “The Politics of Bird Flu: The Battle over Viral Samples and China’s Entry into Global Public Health”. The basic premise is that viral samples are not just about biology, but about politicking. Access to viral samples has been a big deal over the past few years, with both Indonesia and China withholding theirs from the largely ‘Western’ epidemiological community. However, the WHO recently issued a report requesting that all nations who request samples from donor nations give those donor countries full access to the benefits (i.e. vaccines, drugs, etc.). Also, any work already done by the donor country’s scientists must be credited. My article discusses this from the vantage point of the overlap of public health and politics. I suggest that there is a new kind of diplomat on the scene – a health diplomat. I’m not the first to suggest this – in fact, I went to an entire meeting concerning the possible future training in ‘health diplomacy’ – but the article is still saying something fairly fresh and interesting.

Not that I’m biased. I’ll keep you posted on where you can find the special issue and when it is available.

Back to Bird Flu – Politics and Public Health

I’ve been asked to write an article on the political language of bird flu, specifically as it relates to the recent battles over viral samples from China and Indonesia. I’ll be focusing upon China, and discussing how public health is pretty much synonymous with politics these days. Basically, everything about global public health as it concerns bird flu has been turned into political maneuvering. It’s a fascinating and completely muddy topic. Just slogging my way through the media accounts is difficult.

For anyone interested, there is a site which lists all the stories and blogs about bird flu. You can find it at :

http://www.birdflubreakingnews.com/

It’s up-to-date and exhausting. Even without the hype, the stories are endless. Bird flu is a topic that seems to have entirely captured our imaginations. What does it stand for? Our fears about globalization? Our discomfort with “others” and anything “foreign”? There is actually a headline from the BBC not long ago that read “Duck with Bird Flu Not from UK”. Really? Even ducks have nationalities now? Do they need passports, too?

Pardon my skepticism. I’m not saying that bird flu as a real biological entity doesn’t exist. Clearly, it does. I’m also not saying it doesn’t have the potential to harm a lot of people. Obviously, it does. What I do question, however, is the language of risk, danger and foreignness surrounding it. I’m concerned that localized outbreaks are being made into global events by a collusion between media – eager for a story, and government – eager for a reason to broker power and scare people. Disease is a very effective weapon for terrifying a populace. And terrified citizens are more likely to approve of increased spending in order to “protect” them from the latest bogeymen. Bird flu being just one case-in-point.

So, this is what I am working on now. I’m knee deep in it, and I have no idea how I’m going to wrestle this down into something readable and understandable. It’s such a big topic, I’m not sure I can make that much sense of it myself.

The Negative Side of Having “Potential”

Summer is stretching its long arms out in a near mind-crushing expanse of potential. Classes are over, the days are longer, and I have a summer stipend which means I have nothing but time and sunshine in which to write. I have no deadlines and no one expects me to show up for work at 9am. I don’t have any reading or writing assignments, which means that I ultimately get to choose what I read and what I write. I am absolutely free of constraints.

This sounds nice, I know, but really it is crushing. There is nothing as depressing as having “potential”. If I were to die tomorrow, my epitaph would most certainly be, “Here lies Theresa Marie MacPhail. She had so much potential.”

po·ten·tial (pə-těn’shəl)
adj.

1. Capable of being but not yet in existence; latent: a potential problem.
2. Having possibility, capability, or power.

n.

1. The inherent ability or capacity for growth, development, or coming into being.
2. Something possessing the capacity for growth or development.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the quality collectively known as “potential”. I believe it was my second grade teacher, Mrs. White, that first officially labeled me as “having potential”, and she was quickly followed by my mother and other various members of my family. Teachers, it was true, loved me. I was (and this is taken directly from my report cards, which my mother saved in a special folder): bright, eager to learn, a good reader, above grade-level, a pleasure to teach, and perhaps a bit too talkative. I was good in math, science and English. In sixth grade, I was the first girl to win the math award (which is, surprisingly, not as cool as it sounds for a gawky 11-year-old). My first year in high school, I was the only freshman in a sophomore geometry class (again, they didn’t think I was half as kick-ass as my father did for this accomplishment). I got placed in an advanced English class my senior year – there were only 10 of us. Unsurprisingly, I was ranked 9th in my class (and I went to a high school with a campus – so you can do your own math here). My chemistry teacher tried to convince me to become a plastics engineer (seriously), and I wanted to be a journalist (past English teachers were all-too ready with the “potential” comments). I was a geek. Better yet, I was a geek with potential.

I still am. Clearly, since I am a graduate student with a summer reading list that includes Kant and Baudelaire. But, that damned potential keeps lingering over me like a dark cloud, ready to burst open. And yet it doesn’t. Down here, at my computer, it remains the Gobi desert. Each year, the potential encroaches, taking more space and reducing visibility. Some days, I can’t even see one week into the future, it’s that thick with potential disaster.

While at Stanford the other day (a place brimming with potential), I picked up a copy of a book by Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, called “Stumbling on Happiness”. I was feeling depressed because I was in a bookstore filled with literally tens of thousand of books and I was thinking about my own stalled writing career. I was in the China section, reading the back cover of a book about China by a journalist who was at least five years younger than me and it was his SECOND book. In addition, he was the China correspondent for the New Yorker. Did I mention he was five years younger than me? I felt like crying. Here I was, with all of my POTENTIAL, and there he was, out there in the world, with all of his fulfilled book contracts.

It is Mr. Gilbert’s interesting opinion that we are, and have always been, bad predictors of what will make us happy. We also, interestingly enough, think about our futures for approximately 12% of our waking hours. This is not the future as in “What will I have for lunch, tuna or chicken salad?”, but the future as in our potentials. Will we have enough money for retirement? Can we afford a house in two years? Should we have a baby? Will we be fat and wrinkled at 60 unless we go to the gym today? Potential, it seems, is something that human beings are programmed to bear. Potential is, however, not what we think it will be.

Now, I am only on chapter one of this book, so I can’t claim to know the end or explain the details of Gilbert’s point. However, I have already felt a bit relieved to know that I am not in this “future” boat alone. Misery really does love company. I worry. All the time. About everything. So does everyone else, it seems. Even that guy in China who has published two successful books. Right now, he’s in Beijing wondering if he’ll ever fulfill his potential. The potential that his 8th grade English teacher told him about; the potential that his wife is always bragging to her friends about; the potential that he knows he has inside of him, sitting there like a flame ready to ignite.

Year One is Over

The first year of my PhD program is officially ended. I turned in my last paper this morning, and now I am free to do and to read whatever I want. This means that I actually have to begin writing that second book. Ouch.

Back to the 500 words per day daily grind, people. But, it’s amazing what you can actually accomplish by having a goal to write each day. At least I won’t have trouble writing my dissertation, when it comes to that. If it comes to that.

My final paper is attached, but I warn you, it’s theoretical. It’s on rumor and narrative. For those of you unfamiliar with my creative writing, I promise you that it is nothing like my academic writing. Honest. I almost never use the semi-colon in my fiction writing, I swear. But I seem to love it in my academic writing – it’s a must-use. Rumor in Veena Das: A Narrative Form for/in Crisis?