I hate train tracks

Last night I made plans for a long (for me) bike ride this weekend. I'm a little rusty in my biking skills and nervous about biking so far so I decided to ready myself by pedaling to work this morning. This helps me get used to riding in traffic and gets my bum used to the saddle again. I also was worried about falling on the long weekend ride and being to scared to finish the ride. I figured if I fell on a short ride, I could get my nerves together better and just generally be used to falling. Yes, I am that uncoordinated that I anticipate falling all the time.

I pumped up my tires at midnight, fixed my fenders and filled up my water bottle, ready to go. This morning I hoped on and pedaled over the bridge, under the highway, and on the Embarcadero. Vroom vroom vroom or whatever the noise is that bikes make. Three-quarters of the way there I fell. Hard.

My bike flipped over as I was crossing a set of train tracks. I fell off and bruised my legs up really bad. Thank goodness I was wearing jeans and gloves as that saved my knees and hands. A cop stopped and started to ask me questions about how I fell, even though he obviously saw the whole thing/ I was too disoriented to answer, super flustered, embarrassed, scared (that for some reason I was going to get a ticket for falling off my bike) and in a lot of pain. I jumped up off the ground, put my shit back in my basket (which was really bent from the fall) and said incoherently, "the tracks... train.. crossing...". The cop just shook his head and sped off. I as relieved that I didn't get a ticket (why would I worry about that tho?) and then was sad b/c I realized I was too scared to get back on my bike and could have hitched a ride w/ the cop.

I made it to work but was wobbly all day long. My bike basket was crushed; my legs ached; my pinky was bleeding; and my wrists were really sore. To top it off, a piece of my pedal even broke off! So scary.

At the end of the day, I had to gather up all of my energy and courage to bike home and cross those same tracks. My bike commute requires me to cross train tracks 8 times one way; 16 times round trip. Very, very scary. On the way back, I rode over tracks 1,2, and 3 just fine. When I got to 4 though-- the set I originally fell on-- I couldn't do it. I had to fully dismount my bike and walk it across the tracks. Yes, I was that shaken up. Yes, I am happy I fell today so that if I fall again on the weekend bike ride, I will already be an expert.

I am also happy cuz my bike was so messed up I had to take my bike to Alameda Bike to get it adjusted. There I learned some new tips on how to avoid falling on those damn tracks. yay bikes! boo train tracks!

how we sit in class: part deux

White Female
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Female
Black Female
Korean Female
Latino
Latina
Pinay
Pinay
White Female
Latina
Latino

bad student!

in high school i was a slacker. yes i had pretty good grades, but honestly, i just knew how to work the system. when i think back on it, i'm amazed that people didn't call me out on my bullshit. i'm even more amazed that I, a child of korean immigrants who have very little cultural captial, was able to move through and manipulate the white and economically privileged world of my school. how did i pull off that shit? incredible.

in undergrad and in my masters program, i was totally different student. i readily consumed everything that was assigned to me and found almost everything intellectually stimulating. i was very torri torri-- almost running around finding more to read, think about, and do. no more bullshitting.

today, as i push through my third semester of my doctoral program i realize i am de-evolving into the unmotivated student i was in high school. i am not engaged at all this semester. i can't even get my shit together to fake it. must be one of the most undisciplined people i know. BOO!! :(

How We Sat In Class- U Shape

White Female
Asian Female
Latina
White Female
Asian Female
Latina

Latino
Asian Female
Black Female
Latino

White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Female
White Male
White Male (Instructor)
White Male (Guest Lecturer)

Mehn-su,1992

Mehn-su,1992

I looked down and saw a small stain on my cartoon-printed underwear. Panic rushed over my body. What is this? Am I dying? I yanked up my pajama bottoms and sprinted towards my Unie’s room for help. I stopped at her door, waited for her to look up, and said in a small, scared voice, “Unie? Something’s wrong.”

At ten years old, I didn’t know what it meant to have a period. All I knew was that my mom would buy gigantic Kotex pads would wrap them neatly in tissue before depositing them into the wastebasket. The year before I started my period, in fourth grade, the girls had a day of “Sexual Health Education.” My parents checked the “NO, I do not consent” box on my form. My um-ma and ap-pah grew up after the Korean War, when there was certainly no such thing as Sex Ed. The letter from my elementary school explained the purpose of Sex Ed, but my parents spoke limited English and they only needed to understand one word: SEX. So, while all the girls learned about periods, pads, and puberty, I sat with the boys and watched “Big Ben”, a movie about a brown bear.

The morning that my period first started, my sister handed me one of my mom’s bulgy pads and showed me how to use it. I secretly wondered why there was no “belt” as my only exposure to periods and pads was from an outdated version of “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” in which Margaret and her friends yearn for their periods and practice fastening belts to a pad. I also wondered, How often should I change my pad? How should I take a shower? How long my period would last? Why did I have it? And most importantly, How could I keep everyone from seeing the outline of this bulgy, extra-long, overnight Kotex from the back of my Bongo shorts? This was my introduction to my period: many questions and no answers.

My um-ma didn’t find out that I had started my period until three days later. I didn’t know how to say “period” in Korean. In true tradition, she simply asked me if I had started my mehn-su. I had no idea what mehn-su meant but from my um-ma’s tone, I could guess that she was talking about my period. I slowly nodded my head and she yelled in exasperation, “You’re so young! Why are you starting so soon?!” I clearly did not have the answer, so I silently added it to my growing list of questions about my period.

It wasn’t until sixth grade, when I slyly moved the checkmark from the NO box to the YES box, that I finally got some answers.

in My Little Red Book

Thank you Ron Takaki

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/education/31takaki.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/01/BA7B17T6TQ.DTL

Like many students at Berkeley, I first heard of Ron Takaki in my Asian Am 20A. Strangers From a Different Shore was one of the many books we were assigned to read but it was the book that had the biggest impact on my life. Two years later in my junior year of college, I had the honor of taking a small research seminar led by Professor Takaki. We met in a dark classroom in Wheeler Hall once a week. Creaky chairs, too small tables, dusty blackboards. The 15 or so of us, including Professor Takaki, sat in a small circle every class period sharing our research. Professor Takaki opened up the semester asking us his famous question, “How do you know you know what you know?” and we spent the first three weeks of the class sharing our epistemologies. Riveting to learn from him. Riveting to learn from each other.

Professor Takaki’s discussion of his epistemology deeply resonated with me and still does. I was moved to hear him share his experience entering academia, publishing his first book, and going home to Hawaii to his family. His uncle said to him, “Hey Ronnie, it’s good that you did all that but when are you going to write something for us? Something that we can read?” And that shaped the rest of his career as a historian, writer, researcher, and teacher. He told us this story at a time when I was struggling to reconcile my own identies as a student in Asian American Studies and as a daughter of Korean immigrants. Every time I went home to San Diego, I left something behind in Berkeley. Every time I left to Berkeley, I left something behind in San Diego. At that point it was something I had never talked about and instead struggled alone in this constricting binary paradigm.

But I digress.

Professor Takaki invited our class to his house for lunch. He took us on a tour of his study which was really a basement room with a bunch of filing cabinets. On top of the file cabinets you could see plaques and awards collecting dust. An after thought. He proudly showed us the paintings that he and his wife Carol made (I don’t remember what the style is called, one was a mallard duck though!). In the living room there sat a piano that was cluttered 40 photos or so of their children and grand children. The only thing that could make you think this man was a big deal was a picture of Professor Takaki and President Clinton taped to the wall. No frame. Just tape.

In that seminar, Professor Takaki was so supportive of me and my writing. Even though we were just undergrads, you could tell he really cared about our writing and storytelling. Out of his class came my paper Yuhl-Sheem, which is captured in this blog as a series (See Tag: Yuhl-Sheem).

In the past year I have thought a lot about Ron Takaki. He has been on my mind as I identified my dissertation topic and did some preliminary work in the spring semester. Even more so, in the past few months, I have come to a strong realization that Ron Takaki has influenced me beyond academia and into my work as an educational practitioner. The work I did in Richmond and the way in which I did my work was deeply rooted in working with my students to shape, name, and tell their stories as young folks who live on the margins and to find ways to develop fluency in multiple Discourses so that we may retell our powerful stories.

I was so saddened when I read about Ron Takaki’s passing. Short of breath when I read how he passed. I send my deepest condolences to his family and the thousands of other people who have been profoundly touched by his work and life.