“What does it mean to be a young Woman of Color studying the lives and work of dead white men? What does it mean to watch your best friend start shouting in a crowded bar on the lower east side because she can’t take one fucking class on Latin American art history and you both know, you know you’re supposed to be studying at the best university in the world? What does it mean to tokenize the work of People of Color—Frida reduced to sensuality, Basquiat just a savage made noble by New York City? What does it mean to sit in seminar and realize with a strange and sinking feeling that you are only one of two Women of Color in the room?”
—The Ivory Tower Doesn’t Yet Have a Room for Brown Girls « The Ellipses Project
Top 5 Apps College Students Need
Chegg is a great free iPhone app that is provided by the top textbook rental company. My College bookstore loves to charge double of what my book(s) maybe worth. For the last three years I have resorted to either rental or amazon student (money-saver!) With this app, you can search books by title, author, ISBN or by scanning the barcode and compare the rental prices for the textbooks you need against the sale price of the same books at stores.
Graphing Calculator Depending on your professor you may or may not be able to use this app, because it is on your phone. If you check with your professor beforehand then I suggest using this. It is a good tool to have when you are a math student. This great app to figure out all of your trigonometry equations. ($1.99)
gFlash is an app that students can use to create their own flashcards to help them prepare for exams. I am always on the go and having electronic flashcards makes life so much easier. With gFlash, you can either create the flashcards from scratch or use Google Docs to create them, saving a lot of time so you can study more.
iStudiez is an app that lets you outline your class schedule so that you never forget what classes you have on which day, or where they are. In addition, iStudiez also let you keep track of your GPA and lets you keep track of your assignments. (Free or $2.99)
Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock Do you have a 7 in the morning class? But have a hard time getting up? Well I suggest Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock it monitors your sleeping patterns through the accelerometer in the iPhone to help find out the best time to activate your alarm, during the lightest sleep phase.
Which App would you use?
“I love my job and I can’t imagine doing anything else, but doing it here at the University of Chicago has been one of the most emotionally and physically damaging experiences of my life. I return every day to rooms in which I’ve been hurt to learn from people who look nothing like me and to teach people who look nothing like me about whole theoretical worlds in which I do not exist. I sit, shoulders tensed, in classrooms as each racist, sexist, and homophobic word from the mouths of my colleagues hits me like a blow to the chest. Some of them, I imagine, actually leave the classroom feeling full of life and intellectual energy. The structural violence of this institution makes it unlikely I will ever know how that feels. I don’t know how much stronger and braver I might feel if the professor were black, or latino, or gay. I don’t know how much more capable I would feel if I could see a world I recognized in the texts we read. And as I walk home every evening past countless University of Chicago police officers and my shoulders knot even tighter, I wonder if you realize that they don’t make everyone feel more safe...Sexism, racism, and homophobia thrive on this campus and it is not a problem of dialogue, it is a problem of institutional violence...I don’t need you to implement programming to “raise awareness” about my very existence, and I don’t have the strength left to lend my energies to the project of documenting my worth.”
—as most grad students of color know, Kaya Williams is not alone in feeling this way. this is a persistent problem on university campuses nationwide.
at Washington State University, for example, where a Native faculty member was recently brutally beaten within an inch of his life and three Asian undergraduate women were sexually harassed in racially targeted violence in the same weekend, the university has responded poorly at best; they never issued an emergency alert to students in the wake of the attacks, it took several days for administration to even acknowledge the events, and the only concrete thing they’ve promised is yet another inquiry & commission on the matter. these actions obviously don’t make a dent in patterns of violence on campus, considering the same response was given a few years ago when a Black student had his teeth kicked in, a trans student was severely beaten, & neo-Nazi propaganda was posted all over campus—no changes in campus climate have occurred. the university’s disappointing response to this violence isn’t all that surprising when you remember that they have terrible enrollment and retention rates for underrepresented students of color, an even worse rate of recruitment of faculty of color, no substantive requirements for curricula that addresses issues of race, and have recently consolidated their Women Studies, Queer Studies, & Ethnic Studies programs into one “minority studies” department (which is headed by a cis-hetero white male). moreover, there is a serious problem with sexual harassment and assault on campus, that’s occurring even at the faculty level.
is it any surprise so many students of color drop out, go on extended leave, and/or take way longer to earn their degrees? these universities are unsafe on every level, and things need to change.
“This time, I took a look at what the article had to say about my major and while it’s true that English majors are slightly worse off than those with other degrees, I can’t say that I regret my choices. I’ve seen the data that shows that unemployment rates differ depending on one’s college major, but I’m not sure what students can take from these lists. Should they really choose their major based on the unemployment statistics and prospective salaries? The statistics listed for my major were not necessarily frightening: an unemployment rate slightly higher than average, a median salary for recent grads of $32,000, and a “likelihood of working in retail” at 1.4 times the average... it seems strange to include the likelihood of working in retail to rank the majors, as if retail workers should be ashamed of their jobs - is this the new 'flipping burgers?'”
—I Won’t Apologize For My “Useless” Degree
This is a really great article that any college students feeling pressure to major in something they can’t stand to be “employable” might enjoy.
“Universities, particularly those supported with public funds, exist to serve society. Asking students to choose a future based on a salary scale does not serve society and, often, does not serve the individual. Students need freedom and encouragement to find their passions and strengths. Framing decisions about college as a cost-benefit analysis will not encourage the creativity and risk-taking that has made this nation great.”
—Higher education is more than a ‘return on investment’ - The Washington Post
“Employers plan to hire only 2.1 percent more new college graduates this year than in 2012, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Last fall they thought the increase would be 13 percent.”
—Things Aren’t Looking So Good for the Graduating Class of 2013“Nearly half of the college graduates in the class of 2010 are working in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree and 38 percent have jobs that don’t even require a high school diploma, according to a January report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. The report called into question whether too much public money is being spent on providing students with degrees that make them overqualified for the only jobs that are available.”
—284,000 College Graduates Had Minimum-Wage Jobs Last Year
“I kept going back to that one negative comment, especially the word in all capital letters: POWER. That’s what it comes down to. There were no comments about my male colleagues’ power in the classroom because owning that power is expected of them. It’s okay for them to use “public humiliation” because that is their right. Being an asshole is a good thing. My power made students uncomfortable. Not only am I a female teacher, but I am a young female teacher. I am not much older (and sometimes younger) than my students. This certainly was a factor. Some of the males in the class did not want to take instruction, let alone discipline from a young female teacher who could be their peer because in most situations with females their age, they are in that position of power.Many of the females were unsettled by my authority in the classroom because they are taught not to seek power. More importantly, I realized that my power in the classroom made me uncomfortable. ”
—How Female Professors Can Deal With Sexist Students“What shocked me the most, I think, was how many students flat out denied the existence of stereotypes in advertising. Of course, I am used to some skepticism on this topic but rarely have I ever had students deny the existence of racism and sexism in advertisements. One particular advertisement that ruffled my students’ feathers was the Nivea Re-Civilize Yourself advertisement, which was part of their Look Like You Give a Damn campaign. The advertisement features a black man tossing away a mask of his former “scraggly” self with the words “Re-civilize yourself.” The mask is not just scraggly – it also has an afro. The message seemed obvious to me. To my students, not so much.”
—Are Students Afraid of Discussing Stereotypes?I find white people's relationship to AAVE so fascinating
You’ll shake your backs to AAVE over a beat in the club
Before you decided to insert ratchet into the popular vernacular you’d pester black folks as to it’s meaning when we used it in conversations with each other
but let a nigga suggest that the grammatical structure of AAVE is obvious enough that teachers should be able to bring that into the classroom to aid in their instruction of standard american english to native AAVE speakers
and you lose your fucking shits like I’m saying we should force it on y’all
I really can’t with some people in my language class
the lack of cultural sensitivity and understanding some of these motherfuckers are gonna bring to their future classrooms is just about non-existent
