live from orientation!

25Sep07

i attended the college of education orientation for students of color this morning. i’m really impressed by all the cool ways offered for ethnic minority students to get connected with one another in the graduate school at uw, which paves the way for some really interesting multi-disciplinary research, as the panel of current grad students in the coe attested to. to be honest, i’m really looking forward to connecting with people who are of other faith traditions and… maybe… even learning about my own faith from them.

anyway, a panel of minority faculty members came to chat with us, and one of them made a passing comment, in the middle of another point, that really caught my attention: “you will very soon be our peers and colleagues.” huh? really? a peer? that’s crazy talk…

her point was affirming though: we’re partners, working toward the same goal of equity in the world via education. and we’ll be transitioning from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers in the program, which is a wild thought, and a really big shift in approaching school.

it was interesting too how many people of faith were in the house — many faculty members and students mentioned getting acclimated to the city by attending church, and i actually chatted a bit with a fellow quester who’s a phd candidate.

tomorrow i present a paper to my cohort mates and the faculty members of my program. during the orientation, i was reminded that in the world of academia, i need to get used to talking pretty again by using whole, complex sentences and flashing a large vocabulary. but just like the presenters said, we don’t need to be intimidated by how smart we think everyone else is, because students here are just normal people with a lot of privilege, and we need to think of ourselves as belonging.

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