Week 9: Going to miss my blogging weekends 🙁

I’m just sitting here thinking about how to start this. These are the last blog posts of the program. I mean, I write all the time privately, and I think no one really reads through others’s blogs BUT BUT BUT this was like the bright spot of the weekend. The informal type writing assignment of the weekend where we can just spill our minds and not worry about academic diction. These posts could be anything we wanted them to be. So I’ll definitely miss this and also reading other students’ blogs. I was that person who read through some of your blogs…

So I guess I don’t really know what to say that I’m already going to say for the Paper and Rock posts. Scissors was always my favorite because I got to talk about my personal life a little bit, even if the personals coincided with Rock most of the time. Here are just some random thoughts. I think Paper I’ll write about Paper Bullets (lol) and Rock I’ll write about the currents with my paper and how that’s been going.

I overall enjoyed the program despite being hit with some personal issues in the quarter. This program surpassed all other programs and classes I’ve taken that hit me so hard. Forgotten Country did that to me – it did something I never thought I would do: reach out to my brother and sister who I have not talked to in years. Right now things are pretty awk with us as we have not met up since I sent the message. I pulled back from acting on getting us together, I feel like I’m so scared to be disappointed or have the whole thing blow up in my face if I make all these plans and try to get us together only to have it not happen. I was always scared of some “you did this to me” blaming battle that can happen when people hold resentment waiting for the time to strike. I’m not here for some digging of the past. Why I think that would happen anyway is my own insecurity, my own barrier I’m putting in front of me. But I want them to do some of the work too, I made the initial call, let’s see who picks up. But it would just be so like us to leave things where they are and not progress. I also dealt with some health and emotional issues that hit me around week 7 and 8. That made it hard to write my second draft. I’m still feeling the effects of it all. Yesterday I had a killer head and stomachache and my stomach is fine today but my head’s still in pain. Ugh. And Jackson’s been going through it too. So we’re both miserable. There’s just been a lot going on.

But anyway, back to the program… I could have done without the casual and not-so-casual sexism in some of the films and books but I guess there’s just seriously no way to ever escape it ever ever ever. And then like be “expected” to rise above it and be able to critique it and look at the nuances, the context, and the culture. Moving on… I’m very satisfied with the amount of female writers we got to read from. I learned quite a bit about Asian history and culture just by reading them and it inspired me to learn more. I did some extra reading on Operation Babylift, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War. I’m glad that I got to learn more about erased Asian identities and the positives and negatives of representation. I’ve always had a problem with Hollywood and it was interesting to notice how it has fucked up in regards to portraying Asians on TV and in movies. But I guess it didn’t “fuck up” since Hollywood was never about inclusivity. Hollywood can keep its hypermasculine, white, racist, sexist shit. I’m just looking to support POC, especially, QTPOC and BI+WOC, created content. Also one thing that I got to practice more is enjoying forms of media while also critiquing it. It’s easy for me to write something off and not pay attention to it, like I started to do with Better Luck Tomorrow. But in watching other films and reading some of the books, I practiced pointing out positives and criticisms.

And I have to include, how I had to establish boundaries on how much misogyny I can take. I think I’ll write more about that in the Paper post.

To end this off, I’m super glad I took this program. I’m proud of the personal growth I gained from it. I got to meet and work with some incredibly intelligent people who I learned a lot from and there were two great instructors who I also learned a lot from.

Week 8: Constantly widening my worldview to include marginalized communities and culture that are more meaningful and rich than U.S. “culture.”

This week we saw Kumu Hina. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It shows the importance of telling the stories of people in their native culture, teaching that culture to the younger generation, and the personal lives and struggles of those people. I got to learn more about native Hawaiian culture, which is something no one gets to learn about. It makes me think about misrepresentations of Hawaiian culture and the things I heard about Hawaii when I was younger: it’s a vacation spot, it’s paradise, it’s where people go for honeymoons, for getaways, and to surf. It’s not a big mystery why we don’t know about native Hawaiian culture. I think of colonization, capitalism, different types of oppression, and US exceptionalism. But I always tend to focus on the oppression side of things, thinking back to previous seminars I’ve been in and the papers I’ve written last year. Most of my comments and paper topics were about colonization, white supremacy, and forms of oppression. So right now I want to focus on more positive stuff, just for this post. Although in the back of my mind I do think about how I know nothing of Pilipinx culture and that is also something no one gets to learn about. But anyway… Kumu Hina reinforced the notion that there are many ways indigenous communities are continuing their culture and fighting back against colonization by reaching out to the younger generations and teaching them about the meaning and pride of their culture. The film also focused on gender identity, which is so so sooo important. It gives us all an education on what mahu is and hopefully as more and more people watch this film, can let go of their obsession with the gender binary and focus more on people’s spirits, energies, and freedom to express their authentic selves.

In other life news: I’m so ready for the break. See you in Week 9.

Week 7: There’s no room in the education system for students to take care of their academics, health (whatever that means to them) and everything everything else going on in their lives. It’s like we’re expected to be scholarly robots, able to handle anything and everything – we’re reading and writing machines, consistently capable of turning everything in on time, not expected to be perfect but fulfilling every guideline, and creating creative content each week. How can I write more in these weekly blog posts than the actual current draft of my paper? How does that even work? LOL

All my blog entries have been extensions of my journal, just with more content about this program. It’s Week 7 and I’m completely exhausted and completely not okay. This week has been super tough. I didn’t even finish my second draft and right now feel like I have to change a lot of it. With my topic so close to me, so personal and tied to my identity, it’s been hard to keep focused. It’s been hard to keep going when I’m thinking about being a woman and being Pilipina and reading sources about gender and ethnic stereotypes, the “Comfort Women” of WWII, family obligations/expectations, and how US colonization essentially fucked “”everything”” up (ugh I know that can be written off as an exaggeration even though it’s really fucking not but I really don’t want to go into detail about it). It’s draining, it’s pretty traumatic for me. I read this really well written, brilliant source I want to use and a couple of times while reading it, I had to stop and just take a breather. Some of this content is preventing me from staying focused and it’s hard to separate processing this content personally and academically. And that’s what happens when you choose to write about something really personal, something I have never explored before. I guess I should have known that writing about my ethnicity was going to be difficult. But that’s why I did it.

Also I’ve been going through some other stressors like the tiredness thing and some body stuff. We don’t have class on Thursdays so we had a four day break. I took three of those days just laying around and that still doesn’t feel sufficient but I know that a lot of this has to do with what I just wrote. There’s a part of me that’s like I don’t know how I’m going to finish this paper the way I want it to and there’s another part that knows what I need in order to hone in and focus and that’s the hard part. Because like I’ve been crying over this and sometimes I just don’t want to cry anymore. But because I know what it’s like to be home, I know that crying has always brought me closer to it.

You know those times when you just want to finish something but mentally you just can’t do it when you want to and you just gotta wait for the feeling or the time to pass to actually do it… I mean, I hope that this is what it is. I don’t think I realized how tired and drained I’ve been. Starting all the way at the end of summer when things started getting difficult. It’s so easy to minimize the pain and stress you’ve been through because the passage of time can bring the illusion that we’ve gone past it. *shrugs*

Week 6: In before the weekend rush

It’s 8:39PM Wednesday. Since I’ve been home I have stayed on our sofa chaise wrapped in a blanket with my computer on my lap. I’ve been at this for a while! And I figured that I should do a post…you know, do something productive during this time. So this weekend will be pretty full. I won’t be in class on Friday because between Thursday afternoon – Saturday morning I will be at a student governance retreat in…Tacoma? I think it’s in Tacoma, pretty sure it’s in Tacoma. I’m pretty excited to go on this trip. It’ll be like a break from the daily life. It’s just that there won’t be a lot of time for me to work on my paper. Saturday night Jackson and I are going to this ACLU fundraiser dinner in Seattle. And then on Sunday we are inviting two friends over for a potluck type thing. We met our two cool friends at Highline College while working at the Center for Leadership and Service. One of them is a student at Evergreen and the other goes to St. Martin’s. So yes, busy weekend. Jackson and I also have to buy food for this thing and clean the apartment. LOL yeah that has to happen. Here are other things that are going on in my mind…

1) I am SO craving noodles. Jackson and I had salads for lunch today and he wasn’t feeling well so he went to the bookstore to buy a cup of noodles. While he was eating that, I was thinking about making noodles for us next week and just thinking of all the possibilities. I really think I can do it!

2) And for hours now I’ve been on YouTube watching vegan recipe videos, like I’ve been doing all quarter. It started in the summer with the Astig Vegan which is a Filipino  vegan channel. Lately I’ve been watching Cheap Lazy Vegan (hosted by Rose who is Korean-Canadian) and the Viet Vegan. And you know what I don’t even like follow recipes but they’re all giving me ideas for what to do. There is so much vegan content on YT, I can just get lost in it and that is why this post is taking me such a long time.

3) This program is more than halfway over… we have two books left to read… draft number 2 is due on Tuesday. I get that feeling of I wish we could do more even though we’ve done a lot already. I’m just thinking… next week is week 7 and we don’t have the Friday class and then it’ll be week 8 when we have seminar again and week 8 is soooo close to week 10 which is the definite end where we do evaluations and academic statements.

And then it’s going to be 2018 and I’ll be graduating. SO a bunch of scary stuff is happening but I have to put the scary stuff in mind otherwise I wouldn’t make post-grad plans. Ugh. Anyway, I’m super tired and there’s a sink full of dishes I have to clean because I’m also a housewife (rolls eyes). Until next time 😉

Week 5: The day my Pumpkin brought home a Pumpkin

Seminar Thoughts: At the end of my Paper post, I noted how I thought it was funny how no one in my seminar named Filipino culture as a theme. I didn’t even name it even, the thought came to me when the time at the chalkboard was “over.” It didn’t have to be over, I could have cut in and said we forgot a huge fucking theme. But I didn’t, I kind of just let it go and a took a second to be amazed how no one else caught it though it’s not that amazing not that surprising. In seminar we ended up talking about masculinity and connections across texts and symbols and character development and war and family relationships and the role of women in these stories… I don’t think we talked about the Filipino American experience enough. But I don’t know how we could have gotten to that point if we didn’t know much about Filipino culture to begin with. We’d just be asking a lot of questions? But then a question could even be what did you learn or notice about the Filipino American experience… or something along the lines of that. I think the same could be said about the weeks prior where we discussed several themes in our books but didn’t go in depth about the specific ethnic group shared by the characters in the story. If we don’t ask these questions and if we don’t talk about it beyond a surface level then what are we achieving in this program? And then there are ways I can push this forward but I know that when students have asked questions we kind of shy away from answering and getting to the dirt about it (the what is racism question comes to mind specifically). So I’ll now ask myself a question I commonly ask to try to move things forward: where do we go from here? How will I push for this in seminar, how will I deepen my reading to incorporate this… to maximize my learning… to go beyond the surface level?

The Debut Thoughts: Seeing all the food I recognized definitely tugged at my heart. When I first heard we were going to be watching this film, I was excited because I assumed the film was about a young Pilipina getting ready for her debut and all the drama that gets attached to it. So yeah I was in for a surprise while actually watching the film to see that it’s actually about the brother and all the things he goes through. And again the female character gets pushed into secondary character status and the other leading female actor is the love interest in a *gasp* terrible abusive relationship. Okay, I won’t get into it on this post so instead I’ll write about other observations of the film:

The relationship between immigrant parents and US-born children: now this is something I relate to because that’s how my family is structured. It’s probably a common thing with families of color for parents to want their kids to be a doctor/nurse/lawyer/accountant/*insert high paying career here* because they just want the best for their kid. Think of the sacrifices, the hardship, the struggles that all come with leaving behind your home country and moving and raising a family in a country that sells you false dreams, hopes and opportunities. Okay, that last part was mine but you get the point. So personally for me, my parents tried to push NURSE on me back in high school but obviously that didn’t work. My upbringing was definitely different than you’d think if you’re thinking stereotypically which is another conversation. And lately I’ve been more sensitive to the struggles my parents have endured so me and my siblings could at least have a chance in this (stolen) country. So I understood it when the father got frustrated and violent with Ben in the beginning of the movie. You have to understand that this is an ongoing thing… meaning Ben has been stepping away from his family for a while. Not helping his family prepare the food or practice the dance for his sister’s debut was just one of the things he’s done to make him seem like a disappointment to his parents (probs just the dad since it looked like the mom just lets it go but that’s also a typical thing for moms to do I think). And Ben is a teenager so of course he’s going to step out and try to do his own thing and that definitely conflicts with what his parents want. It’s interesting how Rose was like the opposite of Ben (with how little we know of her) in that she got along great with her parents and… well that’s about it from what I gathered. She ended up being like the “voice of reason” type character which gets reserved for the female characters right.

Anyway…

It was really nice seeing a whole bunch of Pilipinx people in one film. And they didn’t all look the same. There were people of different skin tones and faces and I really appreciated that.

There’s a lot of things I could say but I didn’t want to turn this into a long post…

Other Life Thoughts: Today Jackson came home with a pumpkin and that was the sweetest thing. LOL. Today is Saturday and I have spent the day doing laundry and now I have my blog posts done. I am also going to read 60 pages of the book for this week and I am also cooking a spaghetti squash.

Week 4: When it gets colder…

What an emotional week. My Rock entry turned out to be longer than I thought it would be and it sums up my week pretty well so I think I could keep this one short. It is Saturday 3:24PM, I’m alone in the apartment comfortable on our sofa chaise while Jackson is at the school doing some video taping and editing for his program. It’s raining outside and super cold inside. There’s broth simmering on the stove right now and it’s really hard not to drink all of it while he’s gone. We’re attempting to make pho with a premade soup base we bought at Capitol Market last week. It has such a great flavor I wish I could just drink it all and make more broth before he comes back but… (that means I’d have to get up)

We watched a film called Twinsters on Tuesday and it got me to think about my relationship with my sister and the guilt I feel for ignoring my mom’s pleas for us to stop ignoring and pretending each other doesn’t exist. Seeing the two sisters in the film long for each other’s presence and how much they bonded through their screens and while together were really sweet to watch. It was a great, light film (much better than the one we saw the previous week, tbh) and I’m glad it was made. I hope that it reached a large audience and other adoptees were able to see it.

Now that I’m here, I really want to express my thoughts on this “guilt.” Because I don’t really feel guilty for the past… I think 10 years of being out of my sister’s life and her being out of mine. I understand why things happened the way it did. I don’t blame her for anything that happened, I don’t blame anyone. I feel worse about knowing that it has hurt my mom all this time. I know I made a promise to reach out to her and my older brother this weekend. Well, the weekend is right here right now and I haven’t done it yet. I know I will, just like I knew I was going to do this post today, it’s just a matter of time. I just want to be in the right mental space.

A while ago I think I wrote about how I wanted to enhance my learning and maximize my experience here… this quarter has been pretty stressful emotionally and physically since the start and I haven’t been able to do all the things I planned to do. The graduate school fair earlier this week hit this idea in my face. IDK WTF I’m doing with my life after I graduate. But that’s a lie. I know where I want to be… but figuring out the steps on how to get there is paining me. Sometimes I feel like I want to take a break from school after this and then I remember my big ass stack of student loans is just waiting to me at the end of this. SO. IDK. I feel like I need to talk to someone but I just end up wishing they would make all the decisions for me even though deep down I know that’s not want I need and not what I want. AH.

Week 3: Tip of my Tongue

Seminar Thoughts: Towards the end, the topic came to defining racism. And like I WISH I had said what was on the front of my mind. At Highline College, I took my first class with a social justice focus. It was a coordinated studies course and on my transcript it was split into two classes: Critical Thinking for Equity and American Diversity. Each week we read a chapter on a form of oppression. During the first week they defined racism for us. How I understood it was this: all white people are racist because they benefit from racism. That’s how I understood all the forms of oppression, by pointing out who benefits from the system and who doesn’t. Now, my thoughts on these definitions have changed. Because to say all white people are racist assumes a pretty rigid boundary and it leaves little room for nuance. Or maybe “white people” is used generally like when we say “I hate white people” or something like that. (For example, I always say I Hate Men and I don’t mean I hate each individual men personally and I don’t treat and look at men with absolute hatred. I mean, I wouldn’t be partnered with a man if I hated men unless if I just wanted to marinate in the hate every single day.) Anyway, I wanted to share that definition in seminar because I think it gets people to think in many different ways and I just wanted to throw a definition out there. And hear people critique it, react to it, disagree – dissect – unpack it. But I didn’t I kept my mouth shut like I usually do lol. It’s a problem because I had that urge to speak and I just held back. Sometimes in seminar when I actually do speak it just feels like a performance and I’m not being authentic. Also in life in general and specifically in this class I feel like I share a lot of the same views as other students but they all just words things much smarter and better than I ever could. It’d take me a long time to share my thoughts in a clear way.

But that’s just a prime example of me diminishing myself in an accepting and open class. Like ugh. My goal is to actually say something, I’m not even going to put a time deadline on it because I know I’m working towards it. The discomfort feeling is absolutely real. I just wish I could believe in my words more.

Anyway, this week we read Donald Duk and I really enjoyed this book. I felt like this could/should be made into a movie. The imagery, the storyline, the history packed into it would make such a riveting story. The dream sequences and the dialogue would just come alive onscreen. The character of Donald was so real in his thoughts and behavior, he wasn’t someone to root for but you wanted him to be okay in the end. By the end, when he stood up for himself to his racist teacher and recognized the contributions of his ancestors closed the book real nicely. It was great. When life happened over the weekend and we were gone for the most part of Sunday I was behind in my reading. But on Thursday I practically read the whole book and I just had a good time. I’m glad I got to finish it because it was a nice wholesome story with a focus on family, heritage and coming of age.

General Life Thoughts:  It’s Saturday 11:20PM right now and on my mind is just kind of fried. I drank so many cups of tea it has lost its flavor. I still need to read and then I can go to sleep. Tomorrow I hope to do more reading and research. Also tomorrow Jackson and I are going to clean the apartment and that’s going to be an adventure. I just hope that like I can get a couple of episodes of Days of our Lives in before the weekend is done. It kind of sucks how the NBC website/app deletes episodes after a certain amount of time. Ugh.

Week 2: “I’ll take two times the misery and half the glory, then learn to be the champion of the story.” New Fears by Lights

Seminar Thoughts: I’m a shy person so speaking up in class without raising my hand was always difficult. It’s so funny, thinking about raising our hand to speak like “yes teacher give me permission to exercise my voice” but I get it because we all can’t speak out at once and it takes practice to let others speak and while we listen before responding. Every time I’ve been in seminar or in a seminar-like setting, my shyness gets in the way. And then my unprepared-ness gets in the way. And then my “I’m tired and don’t want to talk” gets in the way. And then I end up not saying anything. But I’ve been trying to step out of that, it takes a lot out of me mentally to speak because I’ve been so used to not speaking and diminishing the thoughts and the voice I have. In knowing that those neg thoughts don’t serve me, I’ve been trying to do the opposite. But I still need to feel comfortable in the environment to open my mouth and participate. I know I got to push myself though, dive into the discomfort because it’s really not as bad as my distorted thoughts make it so. But last Friday I was kind of uncomfortable. It felt good to focus on the voices of the people of color in my seminar and relating to what they’re saying because I see things the same ways too. I diminish my own voice by thinking they can word their thoughts better, more powerfully and effectively than I can. I also said to myself that I need to read better so I can synthesize the text better. I’m just thinking of ways I can enhance my experience here, asking myself what can I do to maximize my learning.

General Class Thoughts: On the field trip this past Tuesday, it was important for me to not isolate myself from my peers, especially the other women of color in the class. It’d be so easy to walk around the museums on my own, go to lunch alone, sit by myself on the bus, be entirely by myself thinking no one notices me. And that’s the way I’ve lived life and lol I didn’t want to do that. So I had lunch with some very cool people and it was just a comfortable calm time. One thing I hate that I think I have to do is overextend myself and do more than what I’m comfortable with in making conversation. All I got to be is myself and it’s funny how it’s such a simple thing to say and also very hard to do in action. One thing struck me throughout the week, it’s something I have felt for quite some time. I feel intimidated being around other woc, especially if they’re API. There’s absolutely nothing they are doing to make me feel this way. It’s something within myself, my own insecurities on not having a very strong cultural and ethnic identity. Being so Americanized I just feel like I’m not “good enough” to be around other people. I’ve been in a workshop with other Pilipinx people where they knew more about the history and the culture than I did and I literally had to leave because I felt like I didn’t belong. I was/am too American, not enough “Asian.”  Something that is hard for me to understand is that a lot of other people have this same experience. It’s not just me.

Life Stuff: I always don’t like it when people ask me what my major is and what I’m doing after I graduate and what are my career plans. I always say I Don’t Know and it’s both true and a way to close the conversation so the person hopefully stops talking to me. That always annoyed Jackson but Friday night I told him my future-career-life plan and he was like Awe Richelle thank you for sharing that with me in that voice he does (awwww). I remember talking about my future for the first time with my TRiO advisor and just completely crying and blowing my nose. It’s such a sore thing to talk about, I never EVER thought about my future, but now it’s like right here. And this is why I’m asking myself what can I do to enhance my experience here, how can I maximize my learning. Also I need to think about what I’m going to do after I graduate. Haha, because it’s going to come quick. 2018 is just around the corner.

And that is why this blog post is called New Fears. It’s a song by Lights from her new album Skin & Earth. This song has been playing in my head throughout the week.

Week 1: Thoughts on the Run

WHAT A WEEK. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people I know and have seen before this program. That’s cool. I hope that my shyness doesn’t get in the way of connecting other people.

We had our first seminar on Friday and it’s kind of surprising to find out that it’s only an hour long. The funny part is we were on the first floor for mini-lecture, then the third floor for seminar and then back to the first floor to finish out the afternoon session. But anyway I’m excited to read the books and see how much I will learn. Also, this is my first blog, which is cool.

When I saw this program in the course catalog I knew I had to register. I have never learned Asian American studies as its own subject before. Funny how when I have learned of it it’s just been a secondary subject under the big one. Never a focal point. There’s just so much richness in the history and culture that education doesn’t get to unless you get into the college level. So now that I have my chance in studying what I’ve always wanted to study, I’m going to keep my mind open and absorb as much as I can.