If You Should Find Yourself Without a Job, Read This First

So, I haven't been posting much lately.  This is the sad truth even though blogging is one of my favorite things.  I can't blame it on lack of time, prolonged illness, or a broken thumb.  I can't even blame it on depression.

I haven't been depressed, dear readers.  I have been unemployed.

For nearly six months, to be exact.  With a full 8 months of job searching.  So basically I'm right on target with the rest of unemployed America.

You would think that being unemployed would give you MORE time to blog.  It sounds right in theory - don't you have nothing else better to do?  But the state of being unemployed takes up a surprising amount of your time.  Whatever time you aren't spending scoping Idealist and Craigslist posts is spent crafting targeted resumes and cover letters, and whatever time isn't spent crafting targeted resumes and cover letters is spent preparing for interviews, and whatever time isn't spent preparing for interviews is spent woefully eating Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Fudge Chunk in front of a Parks and Recreation marathon on Netflix.

Having eight months of job searching and half a year of earning no money (but still receiving money due to systematic privilege - see below) under my belt, I learned a few things.  One is how to get really good (or at least marginally better) at applying for jobs.  The proof is in the pudding - in my first round before I moved to DC, I sent out 120 applications in less than three months.  I had eight callbacks, three of those regarding unpaid internships I applied for after I realized I wouldn't be finding a paid job, for a record of 6%.

Resigned to committing myself to breaking through the insular DC employment world, I accepted two of those part-time, unpaid internships and took a brief respite from applications.  Two months later, however, I was back, but more targeted, wiser, and careful.  In the past three months, I applied to 23 positions, with 7 callbacks (so far - if I hear from others, I'll update this stat), for a record of 30%.  Whoohoo - nearly a 25% improvement!  But the best part, of course, is that I actually got a job - this week, in fact - and thus concludes an epic race to beat the averages.

So here I'll share the answers to what I wish I knew then, for all the poor under-compensated grad students out there who are thinking about, oh, I don't know, moving a couple hundred miles south to move in with their girlfriend and make an industry shift.  These are my gems of semi-obvious wisdom:

• De-emphasize where you live, especially if it's not in the city where you want a job.  No one needs to know you live far away, as putting that on your application implies that you will require moving expenses, special accommodations for interviews, and general all-around more hassle.  So if you don't live that city, try not to include your address at all.
• De-emphasize your education, especially if you are looking for a job that is not in higher ed or not connected to higher ed.  There is a thing in every other field but the academy called "being too academic."  You don't want to be that.  Also, there is the perception that what you were doing in the academy is "not real work."  Even though this is clearly not true (teaching sure felt like real work to me!), you need to play by their rules and minimize the role your education plays on your resume and cover letter.  This means putting education at the bottom of your resume and eliminating any degrees you are currently pursuing (so no "Phd in Chemical Engineering - in progress").  Don't use professors as references, even if they were your direct supervisors.  Actively include work you've done that isn't related to education.  Which brings me to my next point...
• Before applying, make sure you are doing a range of work that doesn't limit you to higher ed.  I was very luck to have been passed the baton on a small part-time job at a non-profit for the last two years I was taking graduate classes.  This helped me immeasurably in ways I couldn't have foreseen.  Knowing what I know now, I wish I had been able to do other internships, part-time work, or volunteering outside of academic life.  Inside the academy, however, there is an overwhelming pressure and expectation to keep it all inside the academy, so if you know you want to move beyond it, you will have to work hard to actively create opportunities for yourself.
• Be selective in where you apply and realistic about whether you will be invited to an interview.  I thought I was "flooding the market" when I was sending out ten or more applications a week, but really I was setting myself up for failure.  Once I figured out what I was actually qualified for and what I could most successfully market myself for, I received a much better response.  This means you need to know (or, in my case, have a vague idea of) what you want to do and be able to talk about it.  "I don't know" is not rewarded in job searching.  Don't apply to just anything you can do or are able to do - apply to the things you actually want to do.
• Tailor your cover letter and resume to the particular job.  This will take a lot of time - it should.  If you aren't spending at least an hour on it, you are probably going too fast.  I had different resumes I sent to different kinds of jobs that emphasized different applicable skillsets, and then the cover letters usually included similar things about my experience and background, but I tried to include a line with each paragraph that directly addressed the skills requested by the organization, in the language the organization used.  When you send in your application, direct it to someone - anyone is better than no one - especially to whoever you would be working for if you got that job.  If you know someone who works there, or know someone who knows someone who works there, be shameless and see if you can talk to that person.  This is no time for holding back.
• Prioritize relationship-building.  You may want to hide under the covers, but meeting people is really important.  You can start small - create a LinkedIn page and connect with all the folks you recognize.  LinkedIn is good because you can put everything you've done on your page without the page limit of a resume, and employers can search for you (or you can include the link with your application) and see that you are a real person.  Go to happy hours (bring a friend - it helps) and events.  I disliked informational interviews, but they were the only times I really felt like I was getting anywhere.  Even if no one was calling me back, at least I was talking to folks about my search.  Email folks you know in fields you are interested in and offer to buy them coffee, and bring pointed questions.  Remember that all occasions are possibilities, and you are always in interview mode - be kind, be polite, be assertive, and be direct.  Be the kind of worker you'd like to work with and the kind of friend you'd like to have, and people will want to help you out.

Of course, there were people that told me these things, and places on the internet that give great career and job searching advice.  But I really did have to learn the realities and nuances of the market for myself, and perhaps these are things you think you know, but you will have to learn the hard way, too.

But such "wiser now in hindsight" advice is a little too simple.  There were other things that weighed heavily on me, dear readers, and I doubt I am wiser now, and my ego has been run through an eight month car wash.  For the past few months, I haven't been much fun to be around.  Pressure, expectations, and high standards.  Proofing tests.  Writing samples.  Form rejection emails after in-person interviews.  Assured job searches were on hold when they were suddenly filled a few weeks later.  Weeks of waiting for no answer at all.  Informational interviews with predictable career advice that were only further evidence of my failure (I should be GIVING the career advice, dammit!).  Hearing "oh, I'm sure you'll find something soon" or "I'm sure it will all work out" just one more time and wanting to punch the kindhearted person in their fully employed mouth.

Endlessly performing.  Selling yourself as anything, able to do anything, willing to do anything, an expert in anything.  Losing what it is you really want in all of the pretending and the crunch for something, just something.  Anguish.  Doubt.  Self-blame.  Self-pity.  Which sounds a lot like someone else I know...in fact, it is the common state of the unemployed.  I have barely scraped by with my dignity intact.

And while the pain I felt was real and difficulties no joke, my race and class privilege still served me well through this long, frustrating period.  I had savings to sustain me.  I had Cobra I could extend so I would not be without health insurance.  I had a partner with a respectable income who could cover rent, which kept my monthly expenses around $1,000, which is rare in a place as expensive as the Metro DC area.  If you remember, I had a grandmother who gifted me $2,000 in July, and I also had parents who, wanting to not play favorites when my sister's car required a $1,000 repair, sent me a check for the same amount in October.  These might have been unasked for, but systematic privilege accorded to my  social location is granted regardless of whether I seek it out.

My unemployment situation was also probably the best possible of situations.  I have no children or other dependents.  I have a small amount of student loans, but otherwise no debt, and even then my loans won't be collected until I complete my degree, so no creditors have been calling.  I have no mortgage.  I'm young, educated, and in good health.  I'm white.  I have no criminal record.  Although humiliated and downtrodden, I am not desperate.  There was no chance of me being homeless, or losing my children, or declaring bankruptcy, or racking up credit card debt.  In the end, I was going to be okay.

The fact that I am the picture of an ideal job seeker and unemployment was STILL the Land of Great Misery, Insecurity, Doubt, and Shame speaks to the real toll joblessness takes.  I hope that I remember these lessons, that I remember just how difficult it is to get a job and how bitter and taxing it is to be without one.

And I hope it is a long, long, loooong time before I have to do this again.

Too school for cool - the coffee chronicles

Recently I've come to the discovery that I am not cool enough for coffee shops.  I enjoy coffee as much as any suburbanite with a liberal arts bachelors, and I know the basic concepts - you'd think I'd be able to get by.  My parents made a pot of Maxwell House every morning until we moved to North Carolina, when they started drinking Folgers (for reasons still unknown to me), but I never drank the stuff until I went to college.  One day a lovely woman who shall be known as "A" shared with me a bottle of what we came to refer to as "pure evil."  Coffee is easy to drink when it's drowned in cream, sugar, and chemical preservatives.  I used to drink one while downing a donut.  Oh, college.  The reckless years.

But soon that wasn't enough.  I transitioned to hot mochas with a fluffy pile of whipped cream on top, plus two chocolate covered espresso beans if I had the very nice barista at the Franklin St. Caribou.  That was just a short step away from actual coffee, which I started in half mugs with a healthy dose of flavored creamer and then moved to about two cups a day of the hard stuff with a splash of half and half.

In a place where everyone wants to "meet for coffee," it's imperative to have conversational coffee-fluency. My non-coffee-drinking partner has the misfortune of making coffee runs for the staff in her office, and it has become apparent she has no idea what she's doing.  This has resulted in hilarious stories of her attempting to siphon the last dredges of a stale Au Bon Pain brew for Very Important People Who Require Coffee or getting ruffled when the cashier at Caribou asks her what size she wants her non-fat lattes to be.  ("I don't know - that's all they told me!"  "But what size do you want?"  "Oh...um, small please.")  In mainstream coffee-land, I'm set.  I can hold my own in the Caribous and ABPs of this world.

But the elite local coffeehouses are a different story.  They make me feel the same as divey breweries with $14 beers and boutique burger joints where you chalk up ten bucks for some ground beef and aged cheddar - bewildered, insecure, and staring blankly at my empty wallet.  I leave those places wondering if I was part of something cool or if I just got punked.

How do I know coffee has reached an unbelievable eliteness?  Because I am elite as hell, and even I know I'm being outclassed.  I'm telling you, I have reached a whole other level of bourgy when Starbucks, the epitome of wealthy white people's adoration and angst, becomes the "safe and familiar" coffee shop.

In case this is sounding like a white whine of sorts ("I demand to feel normal at the elitest of coffee shops!  Why can't I fit in everywhere?!" #whitewhine), I would like to sharpen the analytic lens on these spaces and my own insecurities.  Here are what I have determined are the necessary requirements for belonging into elite coffee culture:

• The right eyewear and shoes (although alternative footwear are also acceptable).
• Apple products. Not necessarily this, because that's really for the 'bucks crew, but probably this, and definitely this.
• Being white - this helps considerably, since you're almost guaranteed to be served by one of your own.  Black people are a plus since their presence reflects positively on the super down white people, but only if they are the right kind of Black people.  Asians with appropriate eyewear and shoes are, of course, welcome.  Especially if they are from the Bay.
• Seriousness about latte art. This is not to be cute, people.  It is an art.
• A high level of coffee literacy; i.e., knowing the difference between a flat white and a latte; the precise brewing temperature for oolong; a preference for smokey or honey notes; the ability to discern between national beans.
• Time.  Drip coffee takes 2 minutes, the press pot requires meticulous upper arm and palm exertion, and that citrus eucalyptus tea ought to steep for 180 seconds, too.  If they hand you a sand timer, you better know what to do with it.  DON'T MESS IT UP.
• Benjamins. Because all of this awesomeness will cost you.

If you have these components, mixed with a healthy dose of cynicism and judgment, you are golden in counter-cultural coffee land.  Since I'm pretty sure my flip phone and Keds would have been acceptable as "ironic" substitutes, I would have had it made except for all of my sociological training.  ("Confound it!!  If only I weren't so aware of how I'm perpetuating social inequalities from which I benefit, this macchiato would go down like butter!" #whitewhine.) 

Coffee shops are this intense locus of class and race culture heavily underpinned by oblivious hipster sensibilities, and it makes me feel a little woozy to go inside.  I love supporting non-chain coffee shops, but sometimes all the pretension and full-frontal whiteness is just plain embarrassing.  If we really wanted to create an alternative coffee culture, you would have thought we'd make it affordable and not have a lock to the bathroom.

At the root of all of this, however, is likely my own privileged sense of entitlement to belonging in any white-centered space.  That, or I'm just as cynical and Judgey McJudgersteiny as the folks who inhabit these spaces ("Ugh! I am sooo over local coffee shops! #whitewhine)...in which case, perhaps I'm just as white as I am socialized to be.

The skinny on skinny dipping

Public nudity.  Never really been my thing, know what I'm saying?  Like most women, the thought of public disrobing and prancing around in my birthday suit is sort of like running across a bear in the woods: you're pretty sure the bear sees you and you're pretty sure this is where it all ends.

But I have bared all, dear readers, and I am going to tell you why you should, too.

This all started when my partner had a Groupon for Spa World.  She had been before with a cadre of friends and had such a great time that when she saw the online deal, she jumped on it and asked me if I wanted to go.  Um...(nervous laughter)...let me think about it.

So a couple of weeks passed, and I didn't think very much about it at all.  In fact, I did an excellent job not thinking about it.  But then my hand was forced: the expiration date was coming up, and I had to decide - if I didn't want the free pass, she'd give it to someone else.

First came instant panic: Noo!  This will be awful!  I don't want to be naked!!!  Then came instant regret: Noo!  Missing this will be awful!!  I don't want to be so insecure!!!  It's surprisingly easy to berate myself for not doing something I haven't not done yet.

In some ways, my resistance caught me off guard.  I've certainly had my own struggles with body image, as reality doesn't necessarily match aspiration.  I've been very lucky, however, in that I never really embraced a femme aesthetic, and that has made it much easier for me to be easier on myself.  You can't fail at something you aren't trying that hard to do.  Soooometimes I have that pinched-inside feeling that I ought to wear make-up or exfoliate or thread my brows or something...sometimes.  Not watching TV helps.  But to do the naked thing, you do have to have a sense of yourself as being okay the way you are.  In my more self-righteous days, I can say that I'm generally at peace with myself.  Especially when my clothes are securely buttoned on.

I've also been extraordinarily lucky to have a partner who is maybe the most body-accepting woman on the planet.  It's pretty easy to be naked with someone who finds absolutely nothing wrong with your nakedness.  Being with someone who loves your flaws - or doesn't seem to consider your flaws flaws - makes you think your own perspective might be a wee bit warped.

But even for a generally healthy, feminist-minded woman like myself, the thought of taking it all off unearthed deeply rooted body shame.  You don't even know how DEEP that shit is until you are tested!  To make peace with your imperfections by yourself in front of your mirror is one thing; to take it on a group outing is this whole other level of "self-love."  I just wasn't sure I had it in me.  My mind began racing with various scenarios that all more or less played out like this: 1) people would stare at me, 2) people would judge me, and 3) my head would explode.

Damn it.  Why couldn't it be enough to just love myself when I was all by myself?

A few things swayed me.  One was that I didn't want to let my socialized insecurity prevent me from doing something I honestly wanted to do.  I had always wished I could be the kind of woman who could waltz into a room full of naked people in the buff - now was my chance to dance, and I knew I would regret it if I let internalized body shame win.  Also, one thing Eve had written in a list of things I should do before I turned 21 included skinny dipping.  (In fact, I believe she wrote it in all caps, so it looked more like this: "SKINNY DIPPING!!!!!!!!")  Now a third of the way into 25, clearly I missed the time deadline.  But maybe it time to say, "f this s, I do what I want," and take my clothes off.

And it was free.  So that was a pretty strong motivating factor.  I know I sure as hell wouldn't have paid someone for the opportunity to be extremely mortified and vulnerable among strangers.

I made up my mind to go.  What did I have to lose, but my dignity?  That's pretty much gone already.  So two weeks ago, we packed up some magazines and piled into the car.  As we drove out deeper into Virginia, the panic started to grow in my stomach.  By the time we got into the parking lot, I was definitely doubting my decision.  If you do this for the first time, I am sure you will also seriously reconsider once you pull up to a strip mall with "SPA WORLD" plastered across the front of a beige brick building.

But as soon as we walked inside, I realized it was all going to be okay.  There was a line of people who were all here to naked it up with me.  They were all cool with it - surely I could be, too.  After the Groupon checked out, I got a key for a cubby to put my shoes.  There.  Shoes off.  That's not too weird.  Even Mr. Rogers did that every afternoon on children's television.

Then the people with vulvas and the people with penises when into different locker rooms.  (Spa World is absolutely not trans, intersexual, or gender-queer friendly...in fact, they judge you based on your appearance as to whether you are a "boy" or "girl," which is what is stamped on your receipt and determines which locker your key will open.)  While there are obvious limitations to gender segregation, it eased my foray into nudity...just a bunch of folks with parts like mine.  No surprises.

Once in the locker room, there is nothing left to do but bare it all.  The hardest part was walking into the pool room, where nakedness is required - for some reason, it feels like a debut into a nudist colony, even though no one is really looking at you.

And that's just it - no one is really looking at you.  You realize that everyone is just there to soak in the baths and do their thing and have a nice time, just like you.  And there is something about a space full of naked women - from pudgy little girls to wrinkly old women, skinny women and fat women, Black women and white women and Asian women (actually, lots and lots of Asian and Asian-American women, since Spa World is a Korean spa), that makes you realize you feel, in a way you never knew you could feel, free.

Being naked in a multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-size space is deeply affirming in a way I could not have predicted.  Seeing what we all really do look like under our clothes makes so much more apparent the unattainable expectation of what we are supposed to look like.  It also makes apparent how very imperfect we all are...imperfect just like everyone else.  I fit right in because there isn't a standard at all - we are all human looking, real looking, looking like we've given birth or walked up a lot of hills or eaten a lot of cake or laughed at a lot of good jokes.  We all look like we've lived.

There was still the remnants of body shame happening, of course.  Some women go to the bathroom and close the door to disrobe, and then only go to the poultice rooms, a mixed-gender are where you wear an orange uniform.  I saw one woman only remove the towel she had wrapped tightly around her as she rushed into the pool.  Interestingly, I don't think I would have noticed her at all if she hadn't had the towel on.  We all kind of blur together when we're naked.  You stand out more when you are trying to hide.

A few minutes in, I turned to my partner beside me in the spa bath and said, "This is so awesome!"  I couldn't remember what I had been so afraid of anymore - at least, it was hard to believe how I could have ever been afraid of something so easy.  Why is that the place where you think you will be the most insecure is the place you feel is one of the safest to be you?

Now I'm trying to convince other women to try it, and the reactions have been mixed...actually, I've heard quite a bit of "Um...(nervous laughter)...let me think about it."  It's okay, though, because I was there once.  I know.  It takes time to take it all off.

You are not forgotten

Dearest readers - and yes, I'm talking to all three of you - I fear you believe I have forgotten about you.  Indeed, consumed with the most recent dissertation proposal draft, I have had to focus my attentions on churning that out rather than my weekly blog goal.

But no fear!  I have several heart-stopping, page-turning blogs in the works, including but not limited to: revisiting whether to give to panhandlers, my experience with semi-public nakedness, and not being cool enough for coffee shops.  So please, don't lose hope - there is still much meaningless personal detail and navel-gazing with which I intend to regale you, and you really won't be able to turn away, mostly because you, too, are not cool enough for coffee shops.  (Which is probably why we are such good friends.)

In the meantime, I will leave you with this surprisingly well-done review of women in this fall's television line up, brought to you by Sunday's Washington Post.  Not bad, you know, for a man.

The working world is flipping fantastic!

I'm two weeks into my internships and I have to say: This. Is.  Awesome.  I keep waiting for all the drudgery and angst and Dilbert-like ennui I've been hearing about from my working-world friends, but I've yet to cross it.  Maybe it takes a few years.  Wait until 2013 and I'll be singing a different tune.  But for now, I can't get over how unfathomably sweet my new life is.  It is making me think that everyone only talks about how terrible the non-academic working world is so that they get to keep all the goodies to themselves.  And people in academia keep telling us that we are waaaay better off than the non-academic working world so one day we can take their spots and they will jump ship for the goodies, too.

Clearly this isn't true.  There is no sharp academic/non-academic divide, and there are darts and laurels to both career paths.  But dang!  Why didn't anyone tell me how awesome this was?  I have so been missing out!

I get up and have my quiet breakfast in a beautiful apartment every morning.  Then I commute with my "boo," as it were.  (This has its downsides - I have to force march her up the hill to catch the 9:01 metro with a few minutes to spare, which I feel only vaguely guilty about.  I've been pretty clear all along that I'm going to prioritize making it to the metro over a companionable stroll - nobody makes Baby late for work.  Still, I can't help but feel a teensy bit badly when a sleepy voice behind me calls out every morning, without fail, "you're walking so faaaast.")

Then I'm marching up 17th Street, and it's just, wow.  This is really my life now.  Upstate New York is a faded memory.  I pass museums and homes and coffeehouses just going to work.  I use my little swipey card thingy to get in to my building and I put my lunch in the floor fridge.  At my morning internship, there is a room specifically for interns called an I-Pod (the Intern Pod), and I have my own desk and friendly neighbors.  People send me emails and want to include me in team meetings, department meetings, staff meetings...lots of meetings.  They appear to value my insight and trust my capabilities.  They give me substantive tasks and ask me to make the most of it.  When I complete tasks, they thank me.  They thank me!  Wow!

Most days, I get to have lunch with my partner, who is now generally awake.  I get to eat lunch with her!  Wow!  Then I have to go to another meeting, or, three days a week, I head to my other internship.  This one is made up of a very small staff and there are no meetings, but I have considerable autonomy over my tasks.  Sometimes I make up stuff for me to do - whatever I think might be the most helpful.  I have all this unharnessed energy that has long been missing a direction to channel it into, and now I have one.  I spend all day doing little things to make these organizations run better.  All tasks are measurable, direct, and have specific outcomes.  Even if it's just updating a database, it's enabling a more effective large-scale operation, and that is surprisingly fulfilling.  I don't have to do much to make things better - I just have to do what I do best.  My life right now is made up of full-time volunteering, I guess - I'm not paid for it yet, but I can't wait for that to happen.  It'll be like the cherry on a ridiculously delicious sundae.

Then, when it's over, it's over.  Just like that!  It's over!  Wow!  At the end of the internship, I just...go home. No ruminating over theories.  No cramming through piles of books.  No stacks of papers to grade or papers yet to be written.  No dinner consumed over my laptop.  No deliberations as to why I am where I am or why I'm doing what I'm doing or whether I really am going anywhere at all.  No belaboring what this is costing me.  It's perfectly clear where I'm going and what I'm doing and why I'm there.  The clarity is bewildering to me.  The presence of love is equally as stunning.  It really is more than enough.

Most times in life we make drastic life changes and there are second guesses, regrets, would-haves and could-haves and should-haves.  Really, when is the grass ever actually greener on the other side?  For perhaps the only time in my life, I have the rare experience of a far greener pasture.  I doubt the euphoria will last long - unbounded enthusiasm always burns out quickly.  Maybe in a few weeks, or next year, I'll be recognizing more of myself in a Dilbert cartoon, instead of Piled Higher and Deeper.  Updating a donor database won't seem so fulfilling anymore.  Nor will sending out yet another bimonthly newsletter, or attending the gazillionth meeting, or getting up on Monday to do the same thing I did last week all over again.

But for now, it's like I just got paid, it's Friday night, the party is hopping, and I'm feeling right!  With, um, the small exception of the "just got paid" part.  So it's on!  At least until the money runs out...

Should I be a tool, or a tool?

I'm 25, and I think I might be in a bit of a career muddle.  I'm not talking about one of those ridiculous quarter life crises.  I don't have a problem with mindlessly working my bum off till the end of my days, seeing as how I am currently doing that for something I'm not sure is going anywhere.  My problem is deciding which path to subject myself to mindless, endless, bum-working-offage.  I feel like I'm up against several options, all of which would credential me rather finely as a tool.

I've been working on my dissertation proposal, and as I was editing it the other day, the strangest thought went through my head: This is the last book I'll write.  I'm not sure where that came from, especially since my dissertation isn't even a dissertation yet, much less a book.  But it's true that I once aspired to be - and believed I would be - a writer.  Turns out I'm not (unless this blog counts...since it's not listed on Amazon.com, I'll go with 'no').  Nor do I longer wish to be - I had my couple of years with the tweed-jacketed, smoking hipsters pontificating existentialism for me to know I couldn't stomach any more ironic stories involving excessively dense prose or excessively minimalist prose, whiskey flasks, and references to masturbation and bowel movements.  At some point we all need to stop thinking it's cool to write about poop.

So that toolish option was checked off the list, and I started thinking I'd be a professor so I could teach and write.  After some short-lived dreams of talking about Kate Chopin for the rest of my life, I went for a more umbrella-like degree with Sociology.  In doing so, I got the master's I always wanted but would never go in debt for because I'd end up defaulting to the government - Women's Studies.  Not sure where it will get me, but sure was fun while it lasted.

I don't regret going to graduate school, but instead of confirming my career path, it only muddied it.  Turns out teaching is as awesome as I imagined.  In fact, I love it - and I think I could be really great at it if I spent thirty years honing such a rewarding craft.  But it's also a sure path to a nervous breakdown, and I just didn't see how I could keep it up for a semester, much less years on end.  Employment was uncertain unless I was content to be vastly underpaid the rest of my life, and even if I did secure a position, I'd continue to battle the profession versus what I wanted to do with it.  I still struggle with how the discipline strives to discipline me.  My dissertation, which I want to be a fun side project, is laden with so many other things that make it awfully sad sometimes. My expectations, the expectations of committee members, finances and tuition costs, question marks, a lingering sense of inadequacy, and fear, always fear.  I'm very good at being afraid, but I'm also pretty good at reading the signs.  In the end, it became clear that the kind of public sociology I'd like to do won't be happening at a university or college...at least not right now.

So the question of what to do remains open.  Like Monty Python says, and now for something completely different!  On to the nonprofit sector.  I start a part time internship with a focus on events and fundraising today.  Next week, I'll start up another internship with a focus on communities and volunteer relations.  I never thought I was much for development, but both are housed in development departments.  Maybe they will help me refine my career directives, or just cross another toolish option off the list.

I keep feeling like I should know more specifically what to do, but, like my partner says, perhaps ambitionlessness is something to embrace for a while.  We've been so goal-oriented our whole lives that maybe we need to let go of the goals, at least for a little bit, and coast, just see where the river takes us.  Sometimes, usually in the morning, that sounds wonderful.  Sometimes it sounds terrifying...especially at night.  I am one of those unfortunate people who has defined herself by what she does.  Maybe it's Americanness, maybe it's upper-middle-classness, maybe I can blame it on the way my parents raised me, maybe it's the "J" in my Myers Briggs type - whatever it may be, I like to have a clear sense of what the hell is going on in my life.

But, shockingly, I find myself at a point where I feel like I could do just about anything, with the exception of politics and finance.  If it will make us safer or more loving and won't require me to add, then sign me up.  What matters more is the salary, health insurance, a vacation package, a contained work day...and that it be on my metro or bus line.  The commute is seriously outranking the content right now.

Have I reached that level of toolishness that I am more invested in avoiding a metro transfer than the particulars of what I do all day?  Dear readers, I'm afraid to say I am.  Because my priorities are actually less and less focused on what I do for a living, and more and more on what I am able to do with the rest of my time.  I spent three years trying to get here - to be with my partner under the same roof, waking up in the same bed.  To be within driving distance of my parents and friends.  To be back in warmer weather, where sweet tea is the default tea and no one is from Suffolk.  To at last nurture my soul and my heart and my community more than my mind.

Goal-setting and goal-keeping was what made me being here and all of these beautiful moments possible.  It's hard to let go of something that I needed so desperately for so long.  Now that I'm here, I am afraid to waste this time, as if I've only earned it if I do something amazing with it.  But now I'm also beginning to realize that clinging so tightly to goals does not keep me from being a tool - as that much is pretty much assured no matter which path I choose - but it does serve to keep me afraid.  Since that is probably the most damaging way I could spend this precious time, I will settle for being a tool and striving, through fits and starts and falls along the way, to live and love as fearlessly as I can.

Being the wife

I'm over a month in to my six-week stint as a housewife, and I think I rock at it.  While my partner makes the big bucks, works late, and juggles meetings, my responsibilities have been focused on hearth and home.  What with trying to offload the old apartment and move into a new one, it's unclear how anyone with a full time job would have been able to do it all.  For most of July, my part-time job was to conduct apartment showings, set up contractor estimates, and clean, clean, clean.  Then, it was to unpack boxes, find a place for everything, and clean, clean clean.  And organize.  I've been doing so much organizing, I feel like my second home might be the Container Store.  My life is bourgeoisie-fest summer 2011, and we are sleeping indoors on freshly laundered sheets.  You're welcome.

So I know I got the second shift and emotion work down - what can I say, I'm from North Carolina and I had strong housewife-modeling.  And for the most part, being a housewife is as compatible with my introverted personality as being an academic.  In our big, scary world, sometimes it's easier to just stay home and clean out the linen closet, or bang out a dissertation intro (and in case you were wondering...check and check!).  My cancer sign tendencies also incline me to be a homebody, nestled into my safe, warm, color-coordinated crab shell.  It's quiet in here, and I know where the ice cream is.

But being a privileged housewife is also as remarkably underwhelming as Betty Friedan diagnosed several decades ago.  I love solving the puzzle of where all the pot lids will go as much as the next professional Elfa installer, but it's just not very stimulating.  Of course, coming up with a grocery list and running the dishwasher are all necessary and vital tasks to a fully-functioning household, and I would never begrudge any person who takes on housework as their full time duties.  Lots of people (especially women, especially women of color from Global South nations) do this for their careers, although vastly under-compensated and under-appreciated.

But seriously...there really has got to be more to life than this.  I may be glorifying the masculine work sphere when I say this, but I liked the second shift work better when it was actually my second shift.

So now I'm wondering...have I internalized the paternalistic attitude towards housework?  It's not like my partner is putting any pressure on me to do any of this...God knows she wouldn't care if I waited another week to sort the Tupperware.  (In fact, I should accept the fact now that I'll probably always be the one to sort the Tupperware.)  I have that dual identity pulling me in both directions - the socialized training that has inducted me into the ways of sorting Tupperware (and you must sort it!  Not sorting it is not an option!), and the socialized training that has me utterly convinced more fulfilling, stimulating, and important work rests beyond my front door.  Fulfilling and stimulating...probably, unless I do Excel spreadsheets all day.  More important?  Now that's the socialization talking.

Or it could be that, just because I'm super awesome at something, it doesn't mean it's something I should take on as my life's work.  Like most things, it's probably a bit of both.  I read the Dykes to Watch Out For collection over the past few days, and while it's made me a little anxious about all the future issues I have to look forward to in my relationship (why do they always end up in couples' therapy?!), it's also reminded me of how complicated our problems are, and how applying our intellectual neurosis to them is usually more comedic than effectual at solving them.  We all have to balance social justice inclinations with salaried work, our obligations to others, and, in the end, someone has to do the dishes.  You're welcome.

Bugs

I am, all things considered, a rather fierce woman.  My mother, whose parting words to my sister and I every morning as we left for school, were "kick boy butt!," carefully cultivated me to say "pardon," to write thank-you notes, to aspire to financial independence, and, most importantly, to not take shit from anyone.  A dutiful daughter, I have tried to embody these formidable guidelines for life.  Although "pardon" has unfortunately been replaced by "what was that?" and my financial independence is at present anchored to unearned wealth, I still do write thank you notes and, at all possible moments, don't take shit from anyone.

Except bugs.  When it's me against the bugs, the bugs always win.

Even writing this is making me a little anxious, like my life is a horror film and the things I type into my computer will suddenly start happening in real life.  But I am sorry to say that my gender socialization has left me woefully incapable of dealing with bugs.  (Can I blame gender for bug-phobia?  I blame gender for lots of things, so I might as well.)

I spent the last two and half years living alone in an attic apartment that turned out to have some...pest problems.  My mother once described it as "a sieve for bugs."  There were cracks and holes everywhere, especially in the bathroom, which had a fire escape door that, when I moved in, had a one-inch gap between the warped wood and the door frame.  A bit breezy come winter.

Although I fixed that problem with some insulation tape, there was really nothing I could do to keep bugs out.  I wasn't even sure where they came from, just that they did.  The first year I was there, it was more of a spider issue, ones that were big enough to be slightly concerning to me.  They'd pop up in the corners of the ventilation units, and as soon as I took care of one another one would move in.  The next year I had mice, which only exacerbated the bug issue.  Once the mice were dead and gone, I started to get flies.  I never really had a problem with flies before, but now I think flies are a bit possessed.  Sometimes I'd find two in a row in the same spot, and I was sure they had come back to life after I killed them.  In a month's period, especially the spring and the fall when the season's changed, I would kill upwards of 20-30 flies, even with my windows closed.  I started keeping a paper towel, cleaning spray, and a shoe beside me at all times.

By the end, I was killing strange bugs I'd never seen before.  Beetles with funny flat feet.  Some kind of six-legged freakish spider hybrid.  And then I think some little momma spider had little babies in my bathroom, because I had to start squishing little spiders a couple times a day.  Randomly, I killed two bees in my bathroom, both of which I presumed had come through the poorly-caulked window on the poorly-insulated fire escape door.  I covered the corner of the window where the pane wasn't meeting the frame with eight layers of packing tape.  My showers got shorter and shorter.  I picked up the technique of shampooing with one eye open, just in case.

Over the time I lived there, I killed many of God's creatures, but it had to be done.  There was no way we were going to co-exist in that apartment, although I was pretty sure by the end that the bugs were collaborating to slowly drive me to the brink of insanity.  I know I was averse to bugs before I lived alone (especially tree roaches, which I have never been able to stomach, and have always reacted to with shrill helplessness), but I have memories of blithely killing pests when I was under 22.  Now, I'm dangerously neurotic.  It's like I have PTSD, except instead of scanning the room for potential assailants or land mines, I'm looking for dark spots that I might have to disable before they jump me.  I literally do a room scan whenever I walk in.  The sound of a fly buzz now instinctively makes me hunch my shoulders.  I have jumped when people come around behind me to ask me a question, and not because I didn't know they were there, but because, for a fleeting, terrifying moment, I thought they might be a bug.  I have come to associate all movements out of the corner of my eye with panic and horror.

So I killed many things, in an exhausting, adrenaline, profanity-filled battle that often ended with me having my arms wrapped around my chest, rocking myself back to normal breathing.  I just don't have the masculine bravado required to do the deed with less shame.  I was especially reminded of this when I encountered something I simply couldn't kill - a hornet.  Or at least I thought it was a hornet, it was that freaking big.  This hornet, for it shall forever be a hornet in my mind, was the Hulk Hornet, because one day I was heading to clean the bathroom, toilet bowl cleaner in hand, and I heard the sharp sound ripping tape.  I peeked inside, and oh my god, the Hulk Hornet had busted through the eight layers of tape.  Like the Kool-Aid man with blood lust, the Hulk Hornet was going to make me pay for trying to keep it out.  I could see no other reason for its presence in my bathroom other than that it had been sent to kill me.

I tried to kill it first.  First, I slammed the door shut and prepped for battle.  I steeled myself, trying not to cry with panic.  You have to take care of this, I kept saying to myself, you have to do this.  But when I opened the door and took another look at it, I decided that this was where I draw the line.  I was simply not fierce enough.  Someone else was going to have take care of this for me.

And so, with very little pride and rather a lot of desperation, I opened up my phone and started phoning anyone who I thought could come and kill the Hulk Hornet, preferably someone who I felt I could be extremely vulnerable with, as I wasn't sure how much longer I could feign holding it together.  Turns out this was four people.  One was out of town.  Three didn't pick up.  I began to reconsider the depths of our friendships.

When I ran out of names, the panic started to take over, but a friend saved me by calling back.  Turns out she couldn't come over (she was with her parents, who were visiting that weekend), but her roommate, another male acquaintance of mine, could.  Even though he didn't meet the "I can fall apart around you and still look you in the face tomorrow" standard, I was so desperate at that point that I didn't care.  Yes.  Absolutely yes.  I'm sure I'll never live down the guilt of this, but please send the man friend in.

I had all of the necessary catching and killing instruments ready by the time the man friend arrived, a bit sweaty, twenty minutes later (he had jogged over, since he was already out for a run...killing the Hulk Hornet was but a mere diversion from his daily dose of cardio).  He glanced at the battery of weaponry I'd assembled, and said, "hmm...do you have a container?  I don't really want to kill it."

I stared at him in shock.  Not kill it?  Not kill it?!  What the heck other option was there, keep it as a pet?  But I gave him a Tupperware container, stood twenty feet back at the edge of the kitchen, and pointed vaguely at the darkened, closed-door bathroom.  "It's in there," I whispered my B horror movie line.  "And I can't look while you do this."

He opened the door, glanced at it, then - and I'll never believe this except I saw it happen with my own eyes - he turned around to tell me that it wasn't technically a hornet while the door was still open.  Man friend turned his back on Hulk Hornet, and lived to tell the tale!  Masculinity, apparently, makes one invincible.  Also well-versed in bugs, as he told me it was actually a wasp.  "Not even a very big one," he added, rubbing salt in the wound.  "More like a small to medium sized one."

I'm telling you, readers.  That thing was the Hulk Hornet, and I'll never take that back.

"Whatever you say.  It's definitely a wasp." I nodded.  "Yep, yep.  Just please get it out of my bathroom!"

And in the time it took me to say that sentence, he had caught it in the container.  I opened my apartment door for him, and he wandered down my stairs to the bottom floor, where we headed outside.  He walked down to the street, just a few yards from the front door.  Man friend removed the top of the container and, with all of the delicacy of launching a wedding dove, he released the Hulk Hornet into the sky.

The next day, I had a hard time looking him in the face.  How could something that rendered me completely useless be so effortless to him?  What kind of feats could I conquer if I had such unshakable nerves?  Why the hell didn't I get those?  And where I could I sign up to get me some?

The answer is to try to deprogram myself, but I even I know my ephemeral tactics and pre-kiling pep talks aren't fundamentally changing my response to bugs.  If anything, I'm getting worse.  Although I used to regularly kill house centipedes when I was a senior in college, now I am completely undone by them.  They are pretty useless bugs and I know they can't hurt me, but I lose it when I see one.  Anything with that many legs has got to be the work of the devil.  One friend, a fierce woman who had a roach problem when she and her partner first moved to their current apartment, told me that the secret is a combination of force and speed.  She described it, lifting her hand over an imaginary roach, "You get your paper towel ready, position yourself, and then..." She slammed her palm on to the table. "THE WRATH OF GOD!!!"

I know if she can do it and my partner can do it, I can't blame it entirely on gender socialization.  I have to be an adult, take care of business, and start exacting the wrath of God.  But that seems unlikely anytime in the near future, since I don't think I'll even be able to re-read this post.

This is What Someone Who Benefits from White Privilege Looks Like

You know those t-shirts that say "this is what a feminist looks like?"  Sometimes I want to make one that says "this is what someone who benefits from white privilege looks like."  I doubt they'd sell well, but that's not the point - the point is to call out whiteness where whiteness is present so that it doesn't remain invisible, taken-for-granted, or normative.  So I'll say it now - being white is a huuuge leg up...seriously, if you're not white, you're missing out, because this shit is thoroughly good.

Case in point: I returned last week from a trip to Canada with my family to see my grandmother.  Bear with me through this walk down patrilineal lane.  My sister flew in from Georgia and my mom and dad drove up from North Carolina to pick us up en route north.  My dad had gone up last spring to help my grandmother move out and sell her home, and he had taken a scenic route he wanted us to see.  Oh, readers, I can't begin tell you how significant were the many moments during that trip when the benefits of our whiteness was starkly evident.  But, as this is blog where I try to tell you everything you never knew you wanted to know about me, I will try!

As promised, it was a beautiful drive, even given the overcast weather.  There were lots of lovely rolling hills with clouds settling in the background, and plenty of gently winding roads that can make road trips so romantic, at least for the first few hours until your bum starts hurting.  There were also a number of small towns we passed through, some quainter than others, others a bit worn down.  My dad is a fan of local cuisine ("Why go somewhere new and eat what you can get back home?" is his travel philosophy), so he prefers to stop at roadside places and grab a quick bite.  On the way up, somewhere in Pennsylvania, he spotted a little family restaurant in an older, wood-sided building with a hand-painted sign, Finn's Family Restaurant.

Inside Finn's, of course, were only white people.  Mostly white people over 60, but definitely just white people.  I knew we were already a bit out of place (as any visitor is to these roadside restaurants) as out-of-towners, but I wondered...what if we were a Black family?  Would we stop at a roadside restaurant?  Would we even feel completely at liberty to take the scenic route?  Maybe it would just be easier to stick to the main highways and pick up McDonald's...at least the people serving us would probably look like us.  It reminded me of the time my Asian American partner and her white friends stopped in tiny Calypso, NC, on their way to the coast, and a little white girl who was definitely old enough to be past the staring phase stared at her the whole time she was in the gas station.

Even more broadly, crossing the Canadian border itself is always an act of white privilege.  My dad, who's very well versed in such things, is usually pretty nervous and sometimes bumbles what he's going to say.  A few years ago, when asked if he had anything to declare, he said "oh, just some materials."  The officer looked up sharply and asked, "What kind of materials?"  My dad hastily explained that he was referring to some ornaments and chocolates or whatever it was, but I have no doubt that people of color would have been stopped right there for such a gaffe.  Especially if they looked, um, non-Christian.

This time, there was no word faux pas, but the officer called attention to the fact that my dad has had a Canadian/British greencard for twenty years while the rest of his family are American citizens (my mom naturalized about fifteen years ago).  Would this have been more suspicious if we weren't a nuclear white family?  Likely.

When we reached my grandmother, we drove up to her new residence at a graduated assisted living facility.  (It's not a nursing home, my grandmother keeps telling me, because they don't have nurses and she can do her own laundry...but it's basically a glorified nursing home).  As we walked through the halls, my grandmother knocking on doors - usually the wrong ones - and waving to everyone, I wondered to myself, where do the old people of color live?  Certainly not at this facility.  This may be tied in part to class privilege - more on that next - but Canada has a healthcare system that actually takes care of all of its citizens, no matter their income.  Were assisted living facilities segregated by choice or by happenstance (or what Berube calls unintentional whiteness, where the whiteness 'just happens' because no on thinks about including anyone else)?  There were certainly no gay couples there, either, which made me wonder where they live, too.

Our white privilege became most evident to me on this trip when my grandmother sat us down in her living room and handed us all envelopes.  Enclosed, in my envelope at least, was a check for $2,000 in Canadian dollars, and my parents had a much, much larger check (let's just say theirs had a lot of zeros).  In April, my grandmother had sold the house she and her husband bought in 1956 for $13,000 for a whopping $360,000 - that's an impressive profit even accounting for inflation (which would have made the house worth about $110,000 today).  Due to my grandfather's pension and other state/personal income sources, my grandmother is more or less making money for the rest of her life.  She decided she didn't need the profits from the home, so she wrote a check to all five of her grandchildren and a very large check to each of her two children.

Three words, dear readers: White privilege much?

The brilliant irony of all of this is that my grandmother's check came at a time in which I am finding my privileged white ass unemployed.  (Well - more like about to embark on four months of working for free, yippee!).  This fall, I will be networking and conducting field observations for my dissertation research on white privilege, and there is no money in that.  In short, my grandmother's check - acquired through white privilege and race-based historical access to the transformative assets of home ownership - will be subsidizing my research on white privilege.  As the elders say, if you aren't using your privilege, you're wasting it!

So I can cross national borders, stop at roadside restaurants, and be pretty sure my nursing home will filled with folks who are as pale as me.  If I have no job, no worries!  An elderly relative will sell her house and cut me a share.  And while my cousins are buying new couches and roofs (all valuable investments), in a hilarious twist, I'm going to use my part of the proceeds to study white people.  Oh yes...this is definitely what someone who benefits from white privilege looks like.

How to Sell Yourself

So phase one of the multi-step moving process is over.  I have relocated with one backpack and one piece of wheeled luggage to my partner's apartment just outside of D.C.  Ten boxes of my Stuff arrived last week at our soon-to-be new place.  The rest is packed and ready to go when we motor it down in just over a week.  Huzzah!

Life is much improved.  The stress of teaching is over, the worst part of my own packing is complete, and at last I have left upstate New York and am in a climate where the summers are appropriately sweltering.  I feel as though I have escaped something.  Indeed, I know I have.  I just haven't spent much time dwelling on the magnitude of what I have just escaped, and I won't be dwelling on it in this post.

Instead, I'd like to talk about another emergent dilemma.  Unemployment.

It's not the joblessness that's bothering me...at least, not yet.  And I've been in the game long enough that it probably should be bothering more than it is.  I've been flooding the market with my cover letter and resumes since mid-April, but beyond a few phone calls, I've yet to have any biters.  (In an ironic twist, I started to have more luck once I turned to unpaid internships, but this has only exacerbated my dilemma.  Do I commit to an unpaid internship for several months and risk not securing paid employment, or do I risk losing any possible job experience at all and ensuring I continue to not secure paid employment?)  I crossed my 120th application mark a few days ago, and I feel surprisingly at peace with it - a bit of a dark chuckle directed at myself, perhaps, but at peace.

Really, once I arrived here, the pressure to be employed suddenly lifted.  Money is worrisome, but it's not worrisome at the moment.  I have some savings to subsidize the next couple months if need be, and my partner is prepared to cover most of our overhead for a little while.  Gaps in employment histories are inconvenient, but I really don't know if I ought to be working right now; quite frankly, there's been so much to do lately that having a job would really get in the way.

It's not so much the getting a job part that is bugging me, but rather the process of getting a job.  While a fully competent and capable worker, I have found myself to be completely ill-prepared for the unique subculture that is the D.C. job search.

My first problem is learning how to spin it to win it.  I was at my partner's annual office party in May, about a month into my job search and still in the middle of my final semester of courses.  I struck up a conversation with a very nice couple who inquired about "my story."  Hm...my story?  What does that mean, exactly?  I told them about being originally from North Carolina, but now I am a grad student, how I was planning to move to D.C., find a job, work on my dissertation...

By this point I could already tell "my story" needed to be shortened.  They don't really want to know the full scoop, just the bullet points.  But there are some details they do want to know - and you are supposed to magically know to provide them.  When one of the women asked me what kind of job I was looking for in D.C., I just said, "Oh, you know, advocacy work."

"But what kind of advocacy?" she asked.

"Well, social justice advocacy, I guess.  Like in terms of women's issues, or LGBTQ issues, or anti-racist work."

"But what specifically do you want to do?" she inquired.

Um...hell if I knew.  All I wanted was a job.  You know, one of those things where you show up and do stuff and they write you a check.  I hadn't really gotten to the part about what kind of tasks I thought I ought to be doing.  I realized then that one does not only need a "story," but also to be able to provide a genre of employment.  Here, there are code words for the kind of work you do, and you are supposed to know where you fit.  Code words like policy.  Lobbying.  Communications.  Programs.  Outreach.  Membership.  Events.  Development.  She was looking for those words, words that help people in DC make sense of each other, and I didn't know to say them.

When my partner visited me last month, she helped me draft out a quick way to say what it was I wanted to do.  Well, first she helped me figure out what it was I wanted to do, then draft out a way to say it to other people I might meet at, oh, say an an office party.  Now, when I say things like, "I'm interested in transitioning out of the academy and exploring new opportunities," everyone seems to know what I'm really saying (whatever that is...I'm still not entirely sure, but they all seem to get the cues).

The second major problem I've encountered are qualifications.  I have some, but minimal, non-academic work experience.  On the other hand, I have considerable academic work experience that I see as directly transferable to non-academic work, but this isn't how employers see it.  Having a master's and being in a doctoral program means my application gets tossed out very quickly.  The expectation is that I will use my higher education as leverage for better pay or a better title, and in the ideal world, I could do that.  It's hard to do that when they skip that minefield by just not offering me a position.

I've adjusted my tactics to try and trick employers into seeing my work experience first rather than my credentials by moving my education to the bottom of my resume, and switching my graduate student work with my most recent non-academic job.  They still aren't deceived.  I have been told by several leads that I'm just too overqualified to be considered for their positions, and I was repeatedly cautioned in one recent unpaid internship interview that the work I'd be facing would be far too "mundane" and "not challenging" given the rigor I'm accustomed to.  (The rigor of what...grading papers?)

After all that time and dedication and abysmal compensation, my higher education is now working against me.  I might have more of a shot if I was just fresh out of college, or even if I'd been working for the past three years.  But if I had been working, I'd probably be thinking I need a master's right about now...so this is one of those gambles with a payoff I won't really know until the years to come.  Right now, though, it's kicking my ass.

My third, most recent problem are my clothes.  D.C. culture is extremely conservative as far as workplaces go, and I knew all of this going in.  I'm not a bad dresser, but I haven't had the funds to invest in a power wardrobe beyond some select Clothes Mentor purchases or Christmas presents.  Still though, I have decent taste and nice pairings...I thought.

I'd like to think I know what is appropriate workplace attire, but this morning I had that awkward moment at a temp agency where I was offered a flyer for a reduced price monthly business clothes sale.  Sadly, I was wearing one of my more professional summer outfits at the time - I suppose I made the mistake of dressing for the humid weather, rather than to be on L.A. Law.  The temp agency placement worker told me, in the nicest way possible, that sweaters were to only be worn with sweater sets (I was wearing a sweater, but I did not buy it in tandem with my shirt), that I could only wear business pants (I was wearing business capris) or formal skirts or dresses, and that I should invest in a matching suit, or at least a blazer, for interviews.  She added, with a glance at my flats, that I should wear heels...I told her, in the nicest way possible, that I do not wear heels.

Bless her, she also told me I was extremely overqualified for the agency's positions....overqualified and under-dressed, apparently.  We hit it off, as she took a maternal approach to my woeful wardrobe decisions. I had also made the mistake of not bringing in my resume because I'd already emailed it to her (I guess I'm supposed to bring my resume everywhere, like a flyer for a yard sale), so I think she took pity on me as a recently relocated charity case from upstate New York.

Sociologists tell us we know are breaking social norms when we encounter resistance, and I keep stumbling along headfirst into these gaffs.  Tell us about yourself, but in the right way.  Tell us what you want to do, but in the right way.  Tell us about what you've done, but in the right way.  Do business attire, but do it the right way.  Don't be too educated or too inexperienced, be just right.

When so many seem to tell you (as politely as they can) there is something wrong with you, it can be difficult to keep a healthy perspective on what really is right and wrong.  So far, I've been more or less zen about the rejection.  Today's clothing potshots stung a bit (I thought I looked so good today!), but I know they are part of a long, bumbled and brier-strewn path of learning how to sell myself.  I've been through the 'professionalization' machine of other sorts, and this is just a new version of the same old shtick.  Except this time, instead of publishing in the top tier journals, I'm supposed to rock Anne Taylor and summarize my resume in twelve seconds.  I just have to keep in mind, just like before, that professionalization is far less about me and way more about what they want me to be...and some rules you can bend (heels), while others you can't get away with not following (blazer...once I find one of those).  It doesn't take much to figure out what those are - people seem to have no problems telling you.

I should also conclude here by saying I brought this all upon myself.  This full-frontal confrontation with deficiency-inducing judgement is entirely of my own volition (another chuckle in my direction).  I came here for this.  I came here, I should say, to be with my partner, and to take on whatever repercussions that decision brought with it.  So this is a path willfully chosen, a path I've bought into for the time being, even if it's not yet sold on me.

The Rental Market, Capitalism-Style

We - my partner and I - are trying to get an apartment.  She currently lives in a two-bedroom, and with her roommate moving out to live with her partner, and me moving down there to live with my partner, it doesn't make economical sense to stay in an $1850 a month two bedroom with an exorbitant amount of space for young professionals.  Especially since I am, as of yet, still facing unemployment once my class ends.

So even though "moving" is probably a lot what hell is like (that, and maybe a never ending visit to the dentist or gynecologist), it is ideal from both an economical and a personal perspective.  My partner has lived with her Stuff for three years in one place, and I have lived with my Stuff for three years in another place, and combining our Stuff (probably more of hers than mine at this point) may necessitate a new stage in our relationship.  One where we are in neither her space nor my space, but a smaller, shared space that belongs to us both.

All that is easily said.  So, as we've recently discovered, is saying "let's move into a one-bedroom!"  How hard could it be to move from a two bedroom unit in one complex to a one bedroom in the same complex, you might wonder?  Surely it's like all other apartment searches we've ever made (between the two of us, we've done this probably four or five times...that's plenty of experience, one would suppose.)  We don't even really want to move anywhere - just to a smaller unit in the same place.

Oh, dear readers, how wrong we were.  Nothing could have ever prepared me for the pure batshit irrationality of the rental market in this greater-DC condominium.  There are many things that fuel this irrationality.  Part of it is because my partner lives in a lovely garden condo complex where each condo is owned by someone different. So there is no overarching condominium office where you can put your name on a list or coordinate multiple showings.  Instead, every negotiation is with a new owner, which means there is no regulation or bench line for pricing.  One 630 square foot unit can be priced at $1450, while another 530 square foot unit with comparable specs can be priced at $1550.  I'm pretty sure they just price it based on their mortgages.  Or malicious whim.  It's hard to say at this point.

Dealing with multiple owners also means there is no standard for each apartment.  Some of them have hardwood, some have carpet.  Some have had their bathrooms redone, some are still in original form.  Some original features have been worn pretty hard, some have been better taken care of.  Some have new cabinets and granite counter tops in the kitchen, some still have the original oven and dishwasher.  Some have new windows, others don't.  Some renovations are professionally executed, others are a little homemade.  With every unit being so variable, you really don't know what you are getting until you see it.

But the point, we've found, is not to see it, not even to care whether it's worth the money or whether the features are ideal or whether we really want to hold out for hardwood or an eat-in kitchen or whatever.  The point is to sign a lease as soon as freaking possible.  It doesn't matter if you really aren't sold on a place - you must convince the owner that you and only you are the destined future tenant for the unit.  Why?  Because there are at least a dozen other winsome and articulate and appallingly rich young professionals just like you trying to do exactly the same thing.

Basically, one of these apartments can be posted on Craigslist at 3 p.m., and if you email them half an hour later, you are number five in line.  That's how high the demand is.  But even your placement in line doesn't matter much - these apartments don't go first come, first serve.  What counts is you making it to the designated showing decided based purely on the convenience of the owner.  That might mean Saturday at 2 (sorry if you had plans this weekend - if you don't make it to the showing, you're utterly SOL).  It might mean tomorrow at 4:30 (oh, is that usually when you're at work?  Guess you'll have to leave early on less than 24 hours notice!).  If you make it to the showing - and you must make it to the showing - you will be obligated to sign an application and authorize a credit check on the spot, plus make out a check for $25-$45 for your own credit to be scoped.  My partner's had hers run through whatever magical system they use upwards of four times in two weeks - it's so great to pay for the privilege of repeatedly being assured that you are a respectable, bill-paying citizen.

Making it through the application stage is nothing.  There are probably still ten other people, maybe more, who have done the same thing.  This whole securing an apartment process might involve four stages where you see the apartment, have a phone interview with the owner, have a personal interview with the owner, fill out a credit check/application, have your references called (and they will call your references), and then possibly still not be offered a lease.

You might get really, really, really close - a verbal agreement on the phone, a written agreement through email, even set up a time to sign on the dotted line - when capitalism body slams you against those sweet hardwood floors.

The problem is, as you might suspect, ka-ching ka-ching, a case of the Benjamins.  Being both desperate and in a high-income tax bracket makes people do strange, strange things.  Such as bidding on rentals.  Yes!  To secure a one bedroom, one must bid on it like it's the Queen Jewels at Christie's Auction House!  And this means, of course, that the most desperate and most wealthy always wins.

Let me tell you, dear readers...I now know there are some very desperate and very wealthy people out there.  One who will, for example, bid on a $1550 apartment for $1800 a month, a full $250 over the listed rent, plus covering painting costs.  Or another who will offer a full 12 months rent upfront, somewhere around a $16,000 one-time payment for one unit.  (Why they don't drop that on a down payment for condo of their own, I have no idea...the market is not logical, only driven by the principle that s/he-with-the-most-cash-wins.)

Desperation for housing inflates these units to obnoxious, impossibly high levels.  There are two sides to this capitalist inflation - one side are us prospective renters who stomp on each other and wave our wallets around to entice future landlords.  The other side are the owners, who take advantage of the irrationality of the market and ride out the capitalism for all its worth.  In our experience, owners may even narrow down their list of applicants to a handful of those who's credit checks have cleared and who made similar bids, and then ask them to name their "best offer," thereby ensuring the price will go up even more than the original bids.  Sometimes I feel like we're trying to get our kid into a NYC nursery school.

Clearly there is no way this can be sustained - at some point (I hope), people are going to realize that $1800 for a one bedroom without a washer and dryer in unit and no covered parking space is absolutely outrageous.  By bidding against each other, we create a ridiculous housing bubble that ensures only semi-wealthy people live in the condos, and pretty soon not even semi-wealthy people will be able to afford to live there.  We are not just pricing ourselves out of the market - we are pricing everyone out of the market.  I'm not sure where the invisible hand is yet, because the market hasn't self-corrected as far as I can tell - even if it all comes crashing down a few years from now, there will still be suckers like us paying inflated prices for months on end.

Capitalism only works because everyone is participating, competitively bidding on a supposedly scare product - myself included.  It also feels like there aren't any other options - surely if we want an apartment under these circumstances, we have to play the capitalism game.  We can't tell the owner, "You know, I think your original rate is already inflated, so I'm going to price you a little lower since it reflects the actual value of the unit," and we can't call a meeting of all the prospective tenants and say, "Alright, y'all - who really needs this place?  And let's agree to cap the bidding, okay?  It's us versus the owning class!  We need to work together in collective solidarity until we all have homes!"  If I thought Marx could really spare us from what we've had to do thus far, I would have tried other tactics.  But resistance doesn't work on an individual level, and this is a clear case in which I'm totally pwned by capitalism.  Part of the sinister logic of capitalism is that it shuts down all other paths, and leaves no option but playing Monopoly.

Consumption

After nearly three years of waiting, waiting, waiting, the end is almost here.  In just under three weeks time, I will be leaving upstate New York and relocate at long last to someplace where somebody loves me and where winter is about four months shorter (like it SHOULD be!).  And that means, of course, just like when I'm raptured into heaven, all my stuff cannot come with me.

Now, I'm not one of those people who is super attached to stuff.  I don't generally keep Things I don't need or use.  I do not hoard.  In fact, I may have a more serious problem of the opposite.  Last year, I read an article about an emerging urban simple living movement - not urban simple living in the sense of inner city poor people who are minimalist by force (bwahaha - who in the world would write an article about folks who have to limit their consumption as experts on limiting consumption?!), but white professionals who independently and of their own free will choose to abscond with Things.  I'm with the latter.  Inspired by such calls for limiting consumption to necessities, I've routinely purged my attic apartment of excess books, clothes, and sundry knickknacks.  The only time I ever feel any guilt is when I pull out something someone I care about gave me, usually my Mom.  Sometimes, dear readers, I am not strong enough to let it go...maternal obligation and projected guilt is an unconquerable force, but I do try.

And I'm not much of a Thing Purchaser, either.  I find the mall horribly depressing.  I get a very powerful urge to go, oh, four times a year, usually when the seasons change.  Suddenly it becomes very important that I get some shorts, or new canvas shoes, or a wool coat.  But then I become incredibly sad on the bus ride home with all of these bags of Things under my seat, over half a day lost to the great mall vortex and a credit card bill to look forward to, and I've maxed out on shopping until the next solstice.

Don't think that my resistance to Things is due to some Gandhian-like qualities.  It's not.  It's more because I am extremely cheap.  Like my mother, I adore a good 'deal.'  I abhor paying full price for anything.  As a rule, I shop sales racks (sometimes I pretend to look at items at the front of the store because zipping back to the sales feels a tad rude...but it's all for show, sales staff, all for show).  A few years ago, I discovered Clothes Mentor and have been a devoted convert ever since.  Basically you bring clothes you don't wear anymore and they maybe buy some of it (I'm generally told my style is "too mature" or the tags are too old) and donate the rest to charity, and then you can get bourgeois brands for cheap, cheap, cheap.  All you need is endurance to look through the crowded racks and a hunger for the unfathomably low prices.  (Although, after you buy high end slacks for $10 a pop, it feels even more criminal to be charged $120 for them in a mall store - hence, beware that Clothes Mentor will rapidly erode your already low tolerance for buying full price items.)

But I digress.  The Things in my apartment are a bit different than clothes or mall shopping or resale stores that only narrowly allow me to opt out of fueling the oppressive sweatshop industry.  (Buying second hand is better, but in no way perfect...cheap Banana Republic is still, sadly, Banana Republic....but seriously, y'all!  Pants for $10!!)

The Things in my apartment are furnishings I've acquired in part to make my home more homely.  They have both a utilitarian value and a chosen aesthetic.  All together, they 'represent' me, or whatever.  And for three years, they've more or less remained constant.  My dresser has dutifully held my clothes.  My bookshelves have lovingly buckled under my books.  My toaster has cheerfully toasted my toast (with the exception of the time I ran the toaster and the microwave at the same time and blew the fuse).

Due to high gas prices and U-haul's low mileage, however, my partner and I have decided it is best to Do Away with the Things.  I am taking this far better than she is - somehow she is more attached to me being attached to my Things than I am actually attached to my Things.  After a moment of, "what?! not my Thiiiiiiings!," I was pretty much over it, taking photos and making a Picasa page to send a mass email to about 120 graduate students advertising my wares.

Surprisingly, demand was high, and now the Things are departing, slowly, a few at a time.  The other day was the first big batch - a toaster, a knife block, a floor lamp, and my laundry hamper.  Even though I rarely used the floor lamp, I keep turning around from my desk and wonder why it is so empty behind me.  In a few hours, my six foot bookcase and rolling kitchen island will be leaving me.  While I know there is probably some part of me somewhere that feels a little sad to let things go - a little pinch as I load them in the back of someone else's trunk - mostly I just feel lighter.  "Good," I think every time something goes, "now I won't have to post that on Craigslist!"

Maybe the reality of having fewer Things will settle in later, but I doubt it.  Letting them go is perhaps the best way to realize how unimportant they really are.  In some ways, I feel like they hold the energy of the past three years and perhaps should stay here, anyway, so I can make a clean break of it.  It's always nice to give your Things to someone who is really excited about them, so your life can end just like Toy Story 3.  But I also realize that, as the Things go and leave empty spaces where they once stalwartly stood, I don't actually feel more empty.  Fewer Things means fewer worries.

And pretty soon I'll probably have to get more Things to replace the Things I'm letting go of now.  (I'd like to say I can live without a dresser, but who am I kidding?  I reiterate, I'm no Gandhi.)  But for the moment, I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to de-Thing.  It is a rare opportunity and a beautiful lesson about consumption, about importance, and about meaning.  So right now, I am just going to try to embrace this period between Thingyness, that quieter, less-cluttered, lighter, more open space when my love and attention and attachment can be devoted to the Things people that really matter.

Making it Better for Everyone

This was written for a class assignment, but I was hoping to get it to a larger audience.  I may have missed the boat on timing, though, so at least I can post it here!  This is my contribution to the critical commentary of the It Gets Better Project, not to tear it down, but to point out the limitations of addressing LGBTQ youth suicides with a single-axis framework.  With a special thanks to Caitlin Breedlove for answering questions and S.I.H for asking them <3.

UPDATE: A wider audience happened sooner than I thought!  Thanks to Caitlin, the article is now posted on S.O.N.G.'s website.

Making It Better for Everyone: A More Careful Look at LGBTQ Youth Suicide

First it was Justin Aaberg.  Then, just two months later, Billy Lucas. 

What both young white men shared besides their age – they were both 15 when they died of suicide – was that homophobic bullying destroyed their lives. 

Dan Savage, the gay white journalist behind the popular syndicated sex column, Savage Love, was frustrated and saddened by the loss of Aaberg and Lucas.  So he started an “It Gets Better” YouTube channel to reach out to those who are terrorized for their perceived or actual sexual identity.  On September 21st, 2010, Savage and his partner, Terry, posted the inaugural video directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth contemplating taking their lives, promising “it gets better.”

The next day, 18-year-old white gay Rutgers college student, Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge after having been cyberbullied by a roommate who streamed Clementi’s sexual encounter with another man online.  His body was recovered a week later. 

Due in part to the publicity around Clementi’s death and the growing media attention surrounding gay male youth suicides that month, the It Gets Better (IGB) project went “viral.”  Savages’s original goal of collecting 100 online video posts offering encouragement to LGBTQ youth was shattered almost overnight.  The project has since swelled to over 10,000 video submissions, including high profile celebrity endorsements such as Ellen DeGeneres, the cast of Glee, Perez Hilton, and Hilary Clinton, all echoing the “it gets better” message.  Even President Barack Obama posted a video advocating for the end of LGBTQ harassment.

The widespread popularity of the project is undeniable – the original video of Savage and his partner has accumulated over 1.2 million hits.  “It Gets Better”-themed events have sprouted up across the United States from California to Maine.  A purple “It Gets Better” t-shirt is available through American Apparel.  And a collection of stories, The It Gets Better Book: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life worth Living, hit bookshelves in March and shot up to the number one spot in Amazon’s “Coming Out” section.

With a cacophony of voices – celebrities, politicians, and regular folks alike – insisting that “it gets better,” such certainty begs the question, does it really?

Beyond LGBTQ Identity

The groundswell behind IGB is clearly responding to a pressing social tragedy.  Suicide is the third leading cause of death for all youth ages 10-24, outranked only by accidents and homicide.  It is estimated that LGBQ youth attempt suicide at rates four times higher than that of their heterosexual peers, and this rate may be even higher for transgendered youth. 

To look at statistics for LGBTQ youth suicide alone, however, only paints a partial picture.  When youth suicide rates rose in 2004, the largest jump was for young girls.  Although young men were almost four times more likely to die from suicide than young women in 2007, young women were almost three times more likely than men to attempt suicide.  In other words, although girls are less likely than boys to die from suicide, they are more likely to try to. 

Nationally, Alaskan natives and Native Americans have suicide rates that are 70% higher than the overall US average.  Latino/a and Black youth are also much more likely to attempt suicide than white youth, with Latino/a youth being the most likely to consider attempting suicide.  Although less data has been collected for Asian American youths, Department of Health and Human Services data shows that Asian American women ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rates among their age and gender group. 

Suicide rates vary by economic status as well.  Poverty, while not directly correlated with suicide, is a high stress condition linked to depression.  LGBTQ youth are overrepresented among the homeless youth population, and in one study of homeless LGBTQ youth, over half reported that they had considered or attempted suicide.

Given the complicated reality of suicide rates, focusing on homophobic bullying alone does not address the gendered, racialized, and classed pressures that lead many LGBTQ youth to see their lives as unlivable.  The suicides that achieved the widespread publicity were those of white boys, but there were likely many more suicide attempts by white girls and youths of color, especially those living on the street, that never caught the public’s attention.

It Doesn’t Get Better For Everyone

Following the release of the It Gets Better Book, David Michael Connor of the Advocate critiqued IGB for privileging the attractive, masculine gay white man.  Indeed, life might not get better for gay white men who do not meet exacting beauty standards, and it certainly is a false message for gay white men like Connor, who struggles with persistent depression.

Beyond the hierarchy of gay male beauty and gender presentation, however, is the privileging of white men, period.  While IGB has made significant and meaningful contributions to LGBTQ suicide and LGBTQ bullying, the project further invisibilizes non-white and non-male LGBTQ youth by only responding to, highlighting, and constantly invoking suicides of mostly white men and boys.

Life may have ‘gotten better’ for Dan Savage and other white gay men with money, but the future of “happiness, potential, and positivity” promised by IGB is not as easily accessible for many LGBTQ youth who are women, low-income or poor, gender non-conforming, and people of color. 

Gabrielle Rivera, a self-identified queer women of color, defied the “it gets better” message in her video contribution to IGB.  “It doesn’t get better, but what does happen is you get stronger,” she said, adding, “Don’t give into this myth that it’s going be fancy and amazing when you’re older and that everything’s going to be fine.” 

Rivera’s video has accumulated 16,000 views, and a transcript of her contribution was included in the It Gets Better Book.  In a recent Time Magazine article, Savage names Rivera’s video as one that “surprised him,” saying that IGB put her video in the top viewing spot even though some thought he would not post it. 

That this video stands out so strongly amid the thousands of contributions speaks to the importance of Rivera’s voice, as well as the rarity of her perspective.  It also points to how the hyper messaging of “it gets better” has left very little room for alternative messages.

The Difference between it Getting Better and Making it Better

Many have challenged the core “it gets better” message as a reactive, rather than proactive, measure to help LGBTQ youth.  Implicit in the ‘it gets better’ frame is that LGBTQ youth should endure bullying until it ends, presumably when they graduate high school.  Encouraging LGBTQ youth to hold out for a better life eventually doesn’t do much for them in the meantime. 

One community group that has addressed this shortcoming is Southerners On New Ground (S.O.N.G.), a social justice group that centers the experiences of southern LGBTQ, low-income people of color.  S.O.N.G. co-director Caitlin Breedlove says, “The idea that "it gets better" suggests that young people should wait, and should not organize.  It intentionally or unintentionally erases the history of struggle in LGBT communities while also not confronting the realities of how deeply our world needs people and youth to fight for gender justice, racial justice, environmental justice, and against systems of oppression.” 

San Francisco’s Gay-Straight Alliance Network, among other organizations, shares this framework.  They created “Make it Better,” a project that aims to empower LGBTQ youth and adult to create immediate change in their schools, neighborhoods, and communities. 

Savage has answered this pervasive criticism by noting that IGB does not prevent people from taking action.  This response, however, does not address the core concern voiced by critics – IGB might not be holding anyone back from taking action, but it is not actively encouraging it, either. 

Reflecting on the strengths of IGB, Breedlove said that it has provided a valuable “space for anguish,” particularly through “access to storytelling through the internet.  It also meets the longing that LGBT adults have to protect youth from homophobia and transphobia.”  But, she adds, “To think about liberation is messy and complicated.”  What IGB proposes is too simple, too neat, and too easy of a response to LGBTQ suicide.  It does not address the far more complex realities of all LGBTQ youth.

Homophobic bullying alone does not define the lives of those who experience racism, sexism, and classism.  In order to truly make life better for LGBTQ youth, we cannot treat LGBTQ bullying as something that is separate from other forms of discrimination and harassment, but rather as something connected to larger systems of oppression. 

Making it better for all LGBTQ youth requires addressing school harassment, yes, but also ensuring adequate food and housing for low-income youth and adults, a living wage and job security, as well as integrated and well-funded schools, for a start.  We also cannot forget that LGBTQ bullying is intimately connected to sexism, and that anti-gay bullying is just as tied to sexist oppression as lesbian-baiting, where women who defy gender expectations are pejoratively called lesbians, regardless of their sexuality.  Addressing LGBTQ bullying without addressing gender discrimination is to miss the forest for the trees.

The It Gets Better Project has provided a valuable space for LGBTQ folks and allies to speak up in support of LGBTQ youth.  But we must remember that the It Gets Better Project on its own won’t necessarily make it so.