Oh, the middle

Here we are. The middle of the semester. The time of year when I begin to wonder if everything will be completed, if I'm learning what I really need to be learning, when I wonder if I'm as impervious to stopping/dropping out as I think I am, and when I reflect with wonder on all I've learned since September.

Our 966 class session on March 2 was the most interesting, educational class I've had so far in this program. Not because of what I learned, but because of the honesty with which it was presented. I am an ally for the gay community. An outspoken one. A passionate one. However, I often wonder if I'm doing enough, or if I'm understanding what needs understanding to be most effective. The terminology conversation helped me speak openly about what I know (do I really know what I know? Perhaps that's another blog post altogether) and what I just plain have no clue about. Discussing how the readings apply to real-life practice helped me think of things in a concrete way not just "if I were a student affairs practitioner, I might do X, Y and Z."

As I research for the upcoming literature review, I wonder what the implications for lesbian, gay and bisexual communities is in the online sphere. Do they differ from the face-to-face environment? Do they differ for undergraduates and graduates?

Thanks to LJ and Julie for making me think.

Identity Development

Throughout the last two weeks as we have explored the many readings in the ASHE Reader and other various narratives, I have come to the realization that the only time my identity was ever questions was in regards to my gender. My reflections take me back to my childhood where I grew up as the stereotypical tomboy. Yes, I had Barbie dolls, an Easy Bake Oven, and a purple, flowery bedroom, but outside of those typical girly features, I was a tomboy in every sense of the stereotype. The majority of my friends were boys and therefore I participated in boy activities like baseball, soccer, football, riding BMX bikes, making wooden forts, raiding each Dad's workshop for tools to make a ramp for the bikes, playing with Matchbox cars and several other non-girl activities. I felt uncomfortable in dresses. I wore a Detroit Tigers baseball cap one entire summer. I always skinned my knee each summer doing something like climbing a tree, falling off my bike after an unsuccessful jump, or just plain falling on the cement as I ran down the street to catch a football as we played a game of tag football. My two older brothers made me tough by teaching me to "not throw like a girl." This rule applied to both baseball and football.

In summer between 5th and 6th grade, I cut my hair. Short. Boy short. And during a time when my body was changing and sneaking into puberty, I hid behind short hair, boy-like clothes, and a propensity to avoid the girls in my class. One of the hardest moments for me was at the beginning of 7th grade in junior high, when in a new school with many new faces, I got ridiculed over and over again for my looks. "What are you? A boy?" or "Nice hair BOYGIRL." It wasn't that I was confused about whether I was a girl or attracted to boys. Believe me, I had Tiger Beat and Teen Beat magazines stacked in my bedroom, posters of Michael Jackson and John Stamos on my bedroom door, and mad crushes on boys in my classes. I just did not feel girly. I identified with my female gender, but just not with the girls that "looked" more female.

The change in my gender identity to others happened between 7th and 8th grade, when I grew out my hair a bit, died it blonde and started to dress more like a girl. It wasn't that I was forced to do so by my mom, it was that my interest in boys started to blossom and my desire for attention back from boys overshadowed my uncomfortableness with looking like a girl. In 8th grade, I had my first real boyfriend, as much as you can have in 8th grade by "going" together. But I was still the one that hung out with the odd ball girls and got along with the boys.

At age 37, there are still very distinct things about me that can be recognized from my childhood as a tomboy. I have a shortcut to ESPN on my Droid phone, I have played fantasy football for the past 10 years, I wear hockey skates, I have no fear of power tools, and on the weekends you'll find me in jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and Merrill hiking shoes. There is no doubt about my sexual identity, but I bend the gender norms and have no identity issues with that at all. Some people call it low maintenance, I call it the flexibility to relate to men as well as women on an equal footing.

Recurring Themes

According to Chickering and Reisser in the ASHE reader, college students "live out recurring themes: gaining competence and self-awareness, learning control and flexibility, balancing intimacy with freedom, finding one's voice or vocation, refining beliefs and making commitments." (Wilson and Wolf-Wendel, 2005) While perhaps intended for undergraduate students, I find myself living out these themes in the PhD program as well.

Intimacy and freedom plays into how close I choose to get to my cohort, and I refine my beliefs about higher education's role in society, as well as the strengths and weaknesses I perceive a little more each semester. I exercise control and flexibility each week in how I complete my assignments and how well. I assure you, the quality control switch is more refined some weeks than others. Competence and self-awareness are the aspects I see the most change in, which strikes me as a surprise. As a 32-year-old woman, I entered this semester feeling like I knew myself, my strengths, weaknesses and tastes pretty well. Each reading, each exploration of my learning styles and beliefs, each classroom debate shows me I'm not quite as entrenched in my prior knowledge as I thought.

The Chickering and Reisser article made me evaluate my identity, what I know of myself, what I think I know of others, and wonder what others think when they see or talk to me. This leaves a question: do we ever fully establish our identities? Or are they as shifting as the tides, as fluid as a waterfall, as churning as the rapids below? Water metaphors aside, at what point do we cease the process of identity establishment and become who we are? Or, is who we are an amorphous, changing thing? Food for thought.

Poland is My Heart and Soul, America is My Mind and Spirit

As I was reading Leah Lee's writing, I found myself thinking about my Dad throughout her narrative. That is why I used her title for this reflection, but inserted "Poland", taking the place of "Korea." My father, born in 1931, second eldest son to Polish immigrants had one foot steeped in the traditions of Poland and one foot in his American experience. As a child, my siblings and I heard stories of the responsibilities thrust upon him while his brother, the eldest, was sent off to expensive boarding schools for high school and how college was paid for my uncle. Dad, the one left behind, learned how to cook, clean, work side jobs by 14 as an accordion player with bands, and still get all A's in his coursework because that was what was expected of him. My grandfather, a World War I veteran, had epilepsy and worked odd jobs. My grandmother, Babci, worked for the city of Hamtramck, but when my dad was 10, has a nervous breakdown and was bedridden for 2 years. Dad's responsibilities and his duty to his family started early.

In her narrative, Leah speaks to duty and responsibility to family above all else. My dad, spoke to the same things as we were growing up. Being Polish American meant honoring the traditions of his parents and his Polish heritage, but striking out to be the American kid that young adults around him were allowed to be. But he always came back to tradition and respect. He would go out and flex his independence with his friends as a teenager, but came back home to do the laundry and give his share of earnings to support his family. Like Leah, my Dad grew up in a culture of Polish America in the city of Hamtramck, where Polish was spoken at home and in church but among his friends and at school, English was embraced.

Like Leah, I have struggled with my Polish heritage and my American upbringing. Although we are second generation, Dad wanted my siblings and I to honor the Polish traditions and we fought him all the way because it made us different from our friends. In the end, the respect that we were taught to honor for our parents and heritage won out and we did what we were told to do because it was the right thing. Wearing the traditional Polish dance outfit meant a little bit of standing out to avoid the "the look", much like Leah described when her mother disapproved of her conversations with her sister.

As I think about my educational experiences, from K-12 through my new adventure in doctoral work, I owe much of my success to my father and his demand to always do your best and persevere. He wanted more for his children than what he experienced growing up and his parents before him. At the toughest moments during this new adventure in doctoral work, I draw upon thoughts of my Babci crossing the Atlantic Ocean at age 18, alone on an ocean liner to a new life in America. I think about my father and his brother, picking garbage in the alley's of Hamtramck to have extra food to eat and how they went from that image to my uncle being a high school chemistry teacher and my father, with his M.B.A. degree and Naval career just shy of Rear Admiral. Most importantly, I reflect on the idea that if not my father's insistence that I respect my Polish heritage and my American privileges, I wouldn't be the person and student that I am today and strive to be.

Lastly, I wish my dad was here today so he could read this narrative by Leah Lee and I could ask him about his experience as a Polish American growing up. I have a feeling he would nod his head and agree with many of her feelings and then go on to talk my ear off for hours, teaching me more things about my heritage that only now as an adult, do I appreciate and understand.

(EAK : February 28, 1931 - October 5, 2003)

PhD Persistence

I'm a part-time student, full time employee, wife, friend and dog owner. I have no graduate assistantship, I am female and I am 32-years old. I am the "changing face of graduate students" Polson speaks of. I am determined to finish the HALE PhD program. Is determination enough?

Nettles and Millet researched PhD persistence on a variety of levels including financial support, gender, ethnicity, focus and more. What they did not investigate was student motivation and determination. My critique of this article lies in the power that such motivation can hold. Regardless of whether I receive the coveted "three magic letters" or not, I find it difficult to group students into such black and white demographic boxes. I know of the necessary, but really feel that people are more than what they appear on paper. This research is certainly informative, but I find it to be one-dimensional and wonder if it would be more useful as a mixed methods look at the whole student, not just their race, gender and bank account (along the lines of Polson's work).

Perhaps I'm still trying to get the hang of this whole PhD thing, but quantifying people is a huge challenge for me as a researcher, as a student and as a person. I think I'm a qualitative gal.

Tinto Appendix B - Brief thought

According to Tinto in Appendix B, if I make it through the HALE doctoral program, it will be a miracle. Of course, that is an overstatement, however since he brought up the fact that married women with children that work full time and attend school part time are the highest risk group for departure, I feel compelled to prove the research wrong.

Ask me in 5 years if I am statistic the defies departure or succumbs to it.

Campus climate and self-efficacy

I like to blog after class is done for the week and my understands and reflections on the readings can come full circle. Otherwise, my mind is cloudy with a mix a theory, reflection, ideas, references and ideas that look like a bowl of alphabet soup in my brain.

That being said, a day after class number four, I find myself thinking about the reflections during class discussion on campus climate and student self-efficacy as additions to Tinto's theory. Modification could also be a term that applies to those two ideas.

When I think about my own undergraduate career post-transfer to MSU, I had clear goals and a determination to succeed. And the campus climate at MSU and in the college of my major, Telecommunications, we such that I felt enabled to succeed. I went to an information session on student organizations during welcome week. I sought out opportunities with certain groups related to my major as soon as I could. I also engaged with other students in my major courses to make friends and find common activities. So while I was a transfer student that roomed blind in Holden Hall, had no friends upon entering at the start of my junior year, and had my nose in a map to find my way around campus like an 18-year-old freshman, I made the system work for me to persist and succeed.

In relation to our class discussion, I found myself looking at Tinto's model and wondering how some of these factors can be ignored. Or at least, not included in the model. The Bean and Metzer model, although one of the nontraditional student, applied more to my situation as a transfer student at 20 years old. Family background, boyfriend back home, finances, parental relationships, and other various factors played a big part in my life at MSU and whether or not would persist. I think that the same would have been true if I had entered MSU as an 18 year old.