Thank you, Petra

It's late, and I can't sleep. I'm too anxious, waiting for tomorrow morning when I can finally walk down to the local synagogue (my polling place) and cast my ballot--well, lock in my choices on the touch screen. I guess some people (very few at this point) might think that this election is just like any other, more of the same. But I think we all know that's not true. I can't help but feel that change in the air that Obama has been talking about for so long now. You can try to chalk it up to more empty words and promises made by politicians, but we know this year, this election, is different.

I asked my students today if they were planning on voting. Every single one of them (except one kid who's not a citizen), in both sections, raised their hand. Four years ago I asked the same in my class at the University of DE and got perhaps half of the response I did today at Rutgers. Imagine UD today, the alma mater of Joe Biden.

I've been thinking today about one special memory I have of my UD days, a class on International Ethics that I took in my senior year and one particular classmate. Petra was an incredibly intelligent (and beautiful) woman from Russia. I remember her saying such eloquent things in class discussion; I often listened to her in wonder and wished that I could articulate something even remotely as coherent as she. I looked forward to class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings just so that I could listen to her, never mind our professor: She always had the best arguments, and a better delivery. Maybe it was her accent.

What I most remember about Petra though is what she had to say one particular morning in class. In International Relations we referred most often to realists and idealists. The idealists were those people that lived in the clouds and thought that if everybody cooperated and worked together then everything would be ok and we'd have peace. The realists were the more practical ones who believed you couldn't trust anyone, every nation for itself, protect your own interests, the ends justify the means, etc. In this Ethics course we talked about the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the U.S. role in 9/11 (the first one), the coup d'état that removed Salvador Allende and installed the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. We discussed the varying international responses to these events and would try to decide if certain interventions, or lacks of intervention had been appropriate, or ethical. Or both. Or neither.

It was October, a month after I had stumbled into class to share, with shocked disbelief, what I had just seen by chance on the Spanish news: a report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and as I watched, a second one had hit. You can imagine the tone of our class discussions in those days. Petra was increasingly frustrated by the overwhelmingly conservative stances of the students in our class, including mine I guess. At that time, if I even had a stance, it leaned in that direction.

But not Petra. And this one particular morning she couldn't take it anymore. Surely that one obnoxious kid had made some bombastic statement about how the U.S. was completely justified in its invasion of that poor little island of Grenada to fight the spread of Communism. I mean, in 1983 the Commie threat was still raging, and on top of that there were 20 U.S. medical students there that had to be protected! She snapped, but in that elegant and articulate way that only Petra could snap. And she laid out the most convincing argument for idealism that I had ever heard. I can't remember the exact words, but the idea was that we couldn't afford not to be idealists; because, well, what was a world without hope and a world without the possibility of peace? What was a world without compassion and solidarity? Pointless. Nothing. Everything else just melted away. I've never turned back.

I remembered all of this today as I reflected on this presidential election. Today I vote for idealism. Today I vote for Petra and everything she taught me to believe in.

Rantings of a Flaming Liberal

One thing I credit Spain with (along with the several years I’ve spent in graduate school) is my gradual shift from high school Young Republican to present day Flaming Liberal. The impressionable young girl that believed everything her conservative parents spouted at her evolved into a free thinker who started to ask questions and to reflect about a thing called ethics. What most astonishes me about this country is the hypocrisy of the conservative discourse here. Lately I feel like talking about these issues. I’m not one to get into arguments; I don’t feel the need to defend my ideas in the face of ignorance. But it's election year. And when an American tells me that her heart goes out to all those poor Canadian people living in a socialist system that need medical care and can’t get it, a little voice inside me tells me I must say something.

Said person claims, based on her chats with fellow motorhomers from Canada over the past two months (and I suspect also based on her incessant watching of FOXnews), that routine checkups are not thorough and that people with cancer don’t get care at the advanced level that they do here in the US. She thus concludes: “The only thing wrong with Canada is that it’s a socialist country.”

I snap. Maybe instead of criticizing the Canadian system we could be a bit self-critical of our own? People in Canada who need care and can’t get it? What about the millions of uninsured and those with insufficient care here in the US?

Health care isn't a privilege for those who can afford it; it's a right to which every citizen is entitled. The government, and all of us, has a responsibility to our fellow citizens to make sure that that right is upheld. You may argue that certain things are best left up to free markets, but health care is something that must be guaranteed to EVERYONE.

The promoters of the system here want us to believe that if each person plans properly, saves, and makes an effort that they will have the coverage that they need. It's simply not true, and this is a tactic to make it seem like it's the individual's fault if they're not covered, when the fault is in the system itself.

This is, from my point of view, the discourse of one notion of the American Dream used at its worst. “With hard work and grit, you, and anyone, can be successful.” This is at the root of the Republican ideology in this country and is manipulated as a way to relinquish not only the government but all Americans from any ethical responsibility towards our fellow citizens. Because what is implicit in this discourse is its flip-side: “Oh, you just didn’t work hard enough. Too bad for you.” Come on, a little solidarity people.

grad school is all about having fun(ding)

One fun thing about grad school is being poor and the lengths to which one is willing to go in order not to be. Let's face it; most of us are older now (I'm going to my 10 year high school reunion this coming weekend), and we're fed up with living like hobos.

It all starts when you're accepted to grad school. In my case, my department offered me a wonderful "funding package" which entailed 3 years of indentured servantry: I teach Spanish, they pay my tuition and a meager salary. What wasn't made clear was that there was no way in hell I could ever finish my PhD in 3 years. Or the fact that the department wouldn’t be giving me any money beyond that. So this year, as I begin the fourth year of my doctoral program, I've had to sell myself to the English department instead. I'm teaching two sections of Expository Writing to first year students. It's amazing: I always thought that the students in my Spanish courses couldn't write well because of language barriers. Turns out, they can't write in English either!

Take this one for example, this student's stab at an introductory paragraph on the first essay:

AS time changes and media evolves new issues change. What was not possibly before is common place. Thirty years ago no one would have thought that you could have a computer that you could carry around. Now that is common. For as media expands to new fields, people will find new ways to interact with the new fields, one such thing is fan fiction. Now as fans can write they own stories based inside the world of a different origin then our own, written and owned by other people. Since the stories are written in a world that belongs to the author of the books, outdated copy write laws can come into effect.

Yes, 18 years old. Actually went to high school and was accepted to Rutgers University. Now I have to teach this kid.

The up-side to this English deal is that if I survive the Fall semester, in the Spring don't have to teach. I can just focus on writing my dissertation, and I still get paid. My plan for now is to go back to Madrid, where I was doing “research” from January to August of this year. Maybe this grad school thing isn't quite as bad as I make it out to be…

the grass is always greener... where there's grass

well, this blog is a long time coming. my friend, rach, who introduced me to the blogging world, was on me to write while i was living in spain earlier this year. but no, i had too much free time back then, and too many interesting things happening in my life. it's only now, when i'm swamped with grading, meetings and deadlines, and bored silly, that i've decided to pick up the pen (keyboard?).

i don't know if you'll find anything all that interesting here; life as a grad student in an underfunded language department at a major research university can be quite dull. on the other hand, there is much humor to be found in the daily torture that is grad school.

this morning i looked out the window onto the courtyard here in highland park, nj

and then i thought about the view from my window in madrid that i left behind a little over a month ago.

i couldn't help but think of that old, banal adage about the grass always being greener. and i thought, well, yeah, at least there's grass here.

i'm going to be here for at least another four months, so i might as well make the most out of it, and try to laugh some along the way. let's get started...