Queenkv’s Brainpickings

Your boyfriend is Riley.

Who is your Buffy boyfriend?
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don’t worry Mark! It’s only a game! I still love you!

I started thinking about this episode of
Sex and the City after I got my last story back…..

“Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been given and accessorize what we’ve got. - Carrie“

In this episode - Carrie get’s her story back from a Vogue editor - and it was “bleeding” - with a crap load of re-writes….So, Carrie - I understand.

I got my first F today.

I started to freak out. What the hell am I doing here? All the money I’m pouring into this program and the best I can do is an F on my god-damn story…..the same one I had to re-arrange my telecommuting schedule in order to attend the city council meeting. The same story that convinced me to head over to campus by 8:30 AM, in order to start writing. Same story I missed a lecture in order to “keep digging” for an elusive contractor’s report. The same story that keep me on campus till 6 PM, that day.

and I got an F.

Since I’m still so damn pissed about it all….the only major factual difference I can between my story and the better ones (oh, yeah - my instructor felt compelled to share with the class the great work turned in by other students, kicking me while I’m down - and I’m assuming “me” simply because I don’t think anybody in class could have done worse) is one damn fact, one that I left out.

I’m 2300 miles away from home. I’m doing my best to support myself in this program - working and studying - I can’t ask my parents for help. Everytime I turn in something, it seems like I’m doing worse on that writing business.

I know this is all in my head…..and they’re doing a great job at messing with it. I have to get them out of my head - or else, I’ll start believing that I really don’t have any business being here.

worked out this morning…..at 8:30 AM - all the elliptical machines were taken. Folks are either incredibly dedicated to their cardio efforts….or Northwestern doesn’t have enough machines for its population…..

This Chicago Tribune story reminded me about the time I saw Small Voices.

” By age 12 or so, their educational years were effectively over, stunted by the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when classroom teaching was replaced by virulent political indoctrination. Many teenagers were banished to the fields as slave laborers.

Their working lives ended disastrously early as well, in their 40s, when they were laid off by their antiquated state-run factories as the old socialist economy was usurped by the dynamic new private enterprise system.”

For some reason, this passage made me think about the Q/A period after the Small Voices screening. The producer was on hand to answer our questions and take our comments. One Filippina protested the films portrayal of Filipino parents living in the countryside. This film showed parents who were reluctant to allow their children to keep going to school past the 6th grade because they needed the extra hands to help with out in the fields and with raising the younger siblings. This lady insisted that all Filipinos valued education so much and they would do anything to ensure their children could stay in school.

Maybe this is simply representative of where this lady is from. I don’t think this was the case for my father and his siblings. My lolo loved working on his farm. He wanted his kids to quit school by eighth grade so they can help him. My lola knew how much my dad and his siblings wanted to go to school. She had some extra profits from her little sari-sari store that she used to help them go to high school (all high schools were private and required uniforms). On hot days, she liked to sip on her coca-cola while working in the store. She encouraged my dad’s desire to go to college, behind her husband’s back. But my dad had to take it upon himself to get funding from his richer relatives - he had to push himself to get his engineering degree - it came from within….and not necessarily with my lolo’s blessing. I was never clear if my lolo was happy for my dad’s education. Sometimes it’s difficult to get these details out of my parents.

So, after the dicussion, I went up to the producer to let him know that the parents in the film, they’re not so far off from what lolo and lola did when they raised their children in the Philippines.

As for this Tribune article, I think it highlighted that theme of missed oppertunities - due to circumstances and politics - this “Miserable Generation” never got the chance to go back to school……I wonder what would have happened if my lola decided to follow her husband’s lead and didn’t offer my dad some hope at holding on to his high school education.