The PTSP Blog

After 6 years of enrolling, 70% don't make it out of Community College

2010-10-27T11:22:00.001-07:00

An article about community college and being what the famous student activist and current SPACE Director JP Bareng Schumacher calls, "transfer-stuck"

San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Six years after they started college, more than 70 percent of community college students are failing to earn an associate's degree, get a certificate, or transfer to a four-year school, according to a study released Tuesday.

It also found that black and Latino students fare even worse than the general population, with only 22 percent of Latino students and 26 percent of black students reaching their academic goals within six years.

I felt mighty uncomfortable adhering so strictly to the "Pilipino" in Pilipino Transfer Student Partnership while outreaching. I don't think were all balling or anything, but I think the word tended to obstruct any initial access. I used to say we were "based" on Pilipino groups, and would emphasize in the next sentence how we outreached to whoever.

"Sometimes I feel like school is making me more stupid because I'm wasting time learning obsolete information I'll never use," said Sam Wouters, 22, of Azusa, who is in his fourth year at Citrus College.

That's what my Anthro degree feels like at times with so much of the UCLA focus on theory and reading. I wish I learned SPSS, GIS, some kind of computer application something to get me in the door of fitting the research demands.

So I'm in Grad School Now

2010-10-27T10:42:00.001-07:00

And looking at the Decisionmaking-tracking thing, wow, I am a total fucking idiot.

I was totally aiming to go to the Rutgers program because any topic I'm interested in they have there, but I was in a relationship that I thought was the greatest fucking thing in the world, and ended up not applying.

Now that relationship is done, I'm at Cal State Long Beach's Anthro program, which isn't bad and is local, but...oh well, I think it's an opportunity. I'm still connected to UCLA and can use their libraries.

I think I needed an M.A. program to get my feet wet for this whole academia and research thing. One grad student with an MA already told me that you shouldn't even go to grad school if you don't get funded 3/4s of the way. Thank god Long Beach is dirt-fucking cheap. Plus, I got grants to pay for this year!

As to the actual content of this program, the Department head said something to the effect of "you come in, you do your thesis, you're done." Accordingly this experience as a springboard onto something.

Keywords to my topic at this juncture: cops, cognition, decisionmaking, episodic memories, public engagement, justifications, argumentation, the metaphor of ownership.

So I'm interested in two topics: either message boards and police and community relations. I got interested in message boards because I post on basketball ones all the time, and police and community relations.

What kind of job am I going to get? I still don't know. Adjunct professor, researcher? Professional blogger?

I'm just hoping that the Census calls me again sometime within the next 2 years and asks me to interview people full time.

Scholarship Researching Woes

2009-06-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

So when my cheerios got pissed on and remembering what the non-traditional student mom was posting about, I decided that I was going to look up ways to fund another round of edumacation without taking more loans.

I stumbled upon the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation's scholarship for undergraduate transfer students. This would be incredibly good stuff to know for Bayanihan students.

Then I look at the Sallie Mae website, and it has scholarships for black and Latino students exclusively but none for the middling Model Minorities who are yellow and brown, including another Community College Scholarship Fund. I think it's really important that black and Latino students have those sources of support, but what are the networks that help other students?

Right Down Our Alley: The UCR California Community College Collaborative

2009-06-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

UCR Via SoCal Minds

UCR's Community College collaborative holding a forum about the Critical Issues facing Community Colleges on June 10th. See here for details.

I didn't know about UCR's Community College Collaborative before 8:00 AM this morning, and now I know and what they do sounds like its right down our alley, except supported by older people with suits and all kinds of brag sheets. They've got some interesting current projects including an investigation of under-represented graduate students and promising practices for transferring.

We should keep a CBS eyeball on them.

In context of promoting the event, they brought up an interesting stat about community colleges:

Dropout rate of the California community college is 75%. ! ? Had never seen a stat like that before.

Perhaps a bit over-inflated to me, but still, given the fact that only 25% of people actually do transfer, and the reality that I almost expect some Filipino, black, or Latino dude that I might meet randomly by the unity that is basketball to be dabbling in some job they hate, it's probably not that far off.

But on the other hand, maybe it's not so grave as these academicians want you to think. There are probably lots of reasons why people drop out and sometimes maybe it's for the better? What good is all this education and degree-achieving if you can haul in some money more quickly and sustainably via other means?

Pissing on My Cheerios

2009-06-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

Running through my head is an ongoing war between two types of quotes:

The concept of school seems so secure. - Kanye West

vs.

If there's a will there's a way - Somebody

You can pay for grad school if they really want to. - Anybody

Do what you love and the money will follow. - Everybody, especially those tasked to give commencement speeches

Ya'll just saw how giggidy I got when I posted about graduate school.

Well, that was temporary and I am considerably more tempered.

I'm in the middle of reading this.

20 pages+ of people getting strangled in college loan debt. Failed marriages, money, and all kinds of identity crises of people who went THROUGH grad school.

Ouch, Charlie, that rilly huwt.

I'd been sure since I transferred that I wanted to do some kind of grad school, but I also kinda like to save money and NOT waste my exchange medium on stuff I could learn at home.

Grad School Decisionmaking Tracking

2009-06-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

I posted this on my site dedicated to talking about my general academic interests, and I think it's kind of relevant here.

I'm coming at full force...at one of you. Maybe all of you some day. You, meaning you, higher institutions of learning.

So its that time of the year where everyone's graduating and/or moving up and catching up. My mom keeps talking about how old everyone is getting and how accomplished (or not accomplished) people are becoming. She mentions my cousins in the Philippines who are doctors, little cousins becoming nurses, how she moved to the United States at age 24...how everyone's becoming a nurse...hmmmmm...

Meanwhile, I'm at age 25 still sitting in the purgatory of the demography known as "unemployment and post-bachelor's."

I've got an aversion to the GRE, mainly because part of it requires fooling around with the Arabic symbol system we call numbers and I'm hoping I'm not to get badly mangled by that. If I eff up there, I'm going to pretend I never took it boost up my profile at a grad school with no such GRE reqs at a History or American Studies program and try again the next year.

I've got my eye on the big picture while simultaneously zero-ing in on what I think I might want to write for a dissertation some day. Something to do with the narrow topic of memory, learning, culture, networks, spaces, ecology, and expertises.

OK, well something to do with how societies remember things, everyday people's knowledges and memories, reasonings, logics, indigenous people's knowledges and memories, metaphors, reasonings, and logics.

But who the fuck would pay for that outside of people in academia? How the hell is that relevant to really making a difference and getting mine?

I've been reading a ton of books and my decisions have been swayed accordingly.

One of my favorite books of all time is James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. This makes me think I should just settle down, become an American History teacher.

Oliver Sacks' books have me thinkng that I want to work at a clinic as a medical anthropologist either domestic or abroad. His stories are the stories I want to encounter and those that I myself want to find and tell. Strikes me in the same T.Kuhn revolutionary way that Guns, Germs, and Steel moved my perceptions.

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes is making me guilty of all this armchair academia and is inspiring me to learn a whole different lifestyle.

Metaphors We Live By is giving me the vague nudge to become a linguistic anthropologist.

Cognitive Justice in a Global World is making me believe that I too can be a fuckin' warrior in the "science wars" and help towards a more critical inspection of knowledge and epistemology. I believe that health, medicine, science, technology are far too important to leave to scientists from the West.

My mind's been scattered, but here are the four most recurring programs I keep looking at.

Rutgers Sociology Culture and Cognition Program: Not really a fan of the exclusively sociological approach, but I love the work on time and memory from this department. Best fit because I actually read some of the works from people at this school. One of the works inspired a post here.

University of Connecticut, Cognitive Anthropology: Sounds like every subject I could want to study in is in place there from talking about evolution, cognition, and culture to medical anthropology to do what I need to do. Far away and different from LA. Encourages brown people to apply to university!

UCSD, Psychological and Cognitive Anthropology: Sort of like UConn, possibly the most well-rounded college and also much much closer than UConn. Also I love the work on metaphors by some of the cognitive scientists there. Raph Nunez of Where Mathematics Comes From, mother-effer. Already familiar with the UC system, perhaps that'll give me a boost in this school?

Cal State Fullerton, American Studies: Convenient, would give me the opportunity to work on a Master's and see if I like things enough to do a Ph.D. I go to a lot of the California Studies stuff and there's a lot of representation from CSUF. Probably would be my best bet to study both the development of science and urban demography in California.

MIT, History Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society: I always thought they were cutting edge and I'd like to be part of that cutting edginess some day. And perhaps play some black jack along the way. Would probably give me the best education in the war against the hegemonies of the infallibility of science.

I'm quite satisfied that I only need be concerned about this. On to crackin'.

Help me pick a program!

Eerily Similar?

2009-05-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

I see Ivan Penetrante and I see Mike Brown, but I've never seen them in the same room at the same time. Could they be...ONE AND THE SAME?!

Ivan Penetrante says he's always busy in San Diego doing community work...

Mike Brown says he's always busy coaching professional basketball...

In addition to their strikingly similar physical appearances, both share the same noticeably vague responses when probed about their whereabouts on various occasions.

Something is eerily similar about these two...there seem to be more than a few "coincidences" linking them

Both of them have the virtually the same physical characteristics as evidenced in the photos above, but the Ivan Penetrante identity bears a much lighter skin pigmentation and stands a conspicuous 5 foot 4. They wear glasses styled from Versace, though the Mike Brown character tends to diversify his selection which is coherent with his identity as a multi-million dollar professional basketball coach while Ivan Penetrante, a self-styled community organizer, holds steadfastly to his brand of Versace glasses. Both claim to have attended Mesa Community College in San Diego, with Ivan Penetrante attending almost exactly 15 years before Mike Brown. The most striking similarity however resides in the both over-explanatory San Diegan dialect, also witnessed in Tony Gwynn.

Both of their identities could not seem more divergent, but this is exactly what Mike Brown/Ivan Penetrante wants you to think. There is a mountain of evidence with a multitude of underlying threads that proves that Ivan Penetrante and Mike Brown are...ONE AND THE SAME!

Let's review the facts shall we:

-Mike Brown, previously an unknown scout in the NBA, assumed the position as NBA Head Coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers on June 2, 2005

-Nine days later, a previously unknown student at UCLA, surfaced at the UCLA PTSP Debut on June 11, 2005 to the surprise of many PTSP members. His name was Ivan Penetrante, introduced as one of the PTSP Bayanihan Project's Peer Advisors. Why was he unknown until then?

-In a chance meeting on Janss steps on the afternoon of June 27th, PTSP Bayanihan Project Director Brian J. Delas Armas encounters his new mysterious Peer Advisor Ivan Penetrante. Ivan Penetrante seems evasive in answering questions strenuously attempting to avoid eye contact with said project director.

-After 2 months, extensive talks, and teeth-pulling Ivan Penetrante finally became Assistant Director of the first full-year of the PTSP Bayanihan in August 2005. Could it be that his coaching job as Mike Brown was holding him back?

-On June 2, 2007, Mike Brown, coach of the Cavaliers leads his team to the NBA Finals

-Having mysteriously "graduated" a quarter before everyone else, Ivan Penetrante resurfaces for the 2006-2007 PTSP debut on June 3, 2007 in decidedly "happier" spirits than usual, even managing to wear a shirt and tie, which he normally does not do. Or does he? Perhaps he was just too drained from travelling to Los Angeles to change from his suit?

Mere coincidences?

I think not.

We have not heard from the likes of Ivan Penetrante nor Mike Brown, but were hoping one of these characters will make an appearance at the 2009 PTSP Debut.

Imported Filipino Teachers

2009-05-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

If we were on Family Feud and we talk about jobs people from the Philippines migrate to the US for, we usually talk about nurses and engineers.

Now the survey says teachers as well.

From Teresa Watanabe's article in the LA Times via the Angry Asian Man:

More than 100 school districts, including at least 20 in California, are recruiting from the Philippines, said Los Angeles immigration attorney Carl Shusterman.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has hired 250 to 300 teachers from the Philippines -- the largest contingent among more than 600 foreign exchange teachers overall, a district official said.

...Filipino teachers are lured by far better pay in the United States. Most teachers in the Philippines earn $300 to $400 a month, less than one-tenth what they can pull down in Los Angeles.

It's great that Filipinos can make their money here and get their own form of self- education here, but dang, I can't help but feel a combination of frustration at myself first and foremost for not preparing myself that adequately after graduation, and still somewhat betrayed that as a Filipino-American with an American education and a B.A., it feels like there's still a bunch of hoops I have to jump through just to get a job as a teacher. I could still teach at LAUSD if I really wanted to, but it feels like it might get in the way of other stuff that I might want to do.

Meanwhile, they're importing people in droves who have to get used to all this kind of cultural stuff inside and outside of the classroom. Sounds like the Peace Corps in reverse.

Anyhow, there's a documentary called The Learning. It's about the experiences of these teachers imported from the Philippines teaching in...Baltimore. Baltimore! Bodymore!

Should be especially resonant, especially for you fans of The Wire.

Issues with Remediality and Falling Behind

2009-05-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

The crossroad between complete failure and success,
It’s so necessary you pay attention in class
Never tell you the conditions in which to apply to math
Only 65% of your peers freshman year are still here
And half that total will move on
But three out of four will drop out in two years
Add it up and it equals some shit has gone wrong - Geologic, Blue Scholars

After having once been an honors math student, I finished high school kind of behind in my math skill building, placing in Precalculus. "Behind" is a term of relativity And my high school was/is the type where 99% of the graduates went to a 4-year university.

Part of the reason I avoided math, throughout high school, I didn't want to be stuck in the "remediality" of precalculus at UC-Santa Cruz. Of course I knew it wasn't remedial and taught all that I would need to know for the next level, but it felt like punishment for not getting it right the first time.

Punishment is exactly what the remedial classes sound like in this NY Times Article, which draws a link between remedial classes and community college drop-out rates.

More than a million college freshmen across the nation must take remedial courses each year, and many drop out before getting a degree. Poorly run public schools are a part of the problem, but so is a disconnect between high schools and colleges.

BTW, the high school drop out rate in LA reached 34.9%!

Based on my own experience and these stats, my hunch says that there is an explicit and implicit pressure on "failure" and "being behind." Like I said earlier, it seems like a punishment for not doing something earlier. As mentioned in the article, it's a double kick to the shins that you don't even "earn" credits for "remedial" classes. Nobody wants to really hear that they're behind, yet again. And if they are, why bother if you're not really sure you're going to get a pay off from what seems like a "swimming against the tide"?

Under that pressure, students are saying "fuck it" and not going through with anything.

As I have been reading in articles about the consumerist-mindset that has pervaded and perverted the student mindset:

As Rinehart (1993) argues, "Students cannot be considered the primary customer of education for the purpose of educational quality, for this simple reason: students have no conception of what they must learn; they are, after all, students" (p. 59).

Arrows vs. Nets

2009-05-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.

If you could pick one tool to use to survive in the jungle, which would use choose as your tool of survival? The bow and arrow or the net?

Anyone remember when Forrest Gump began that shrimping business, what did he use?

During my freshman year of high school, my English teacher took a paper I wrote as a class-wide example of how NOT to write. He made 30 copies of the first page of a paper we wrote on the Pearl for all other students to read, and proceeded to verbally crap all over it to the amusement of the class and my head-in-hand, foot-in-mouth chagrin. One of his quips that sent the class over the edge in laughter was his imitation of my paper's writing pattern. Apparently, it had been in the same pattern as the automobile driving of an enebriated individual: all over the place, unwieldy, and messy.

That was over 10 years ago, and you could say the same about the last 3 years of my career trajectory. All over the place. At home a lot. Half-the time employed, half the time, not. Been in government, non-government, non-profit, corporate, temporary, permanent, contract, part-time.

Careers I've thought about: water engineering, teaching history at a middle school high school, tutoring, fucking it all and going anarcho-primitivist, the Peace Corps, Real Estate Appraising, basic computer programming, technical writing, urban planning, GIS mapping. The part of my mind focused on the future is an internalization of the externality that is ITT Tech.

In my drive to graduate school, I've been looking at Anthropology programs and similar. Browsing research areas and interests, I also look for these students and professors having gaps in education. Looking at these pages, I've been trying to spot the same unwieldyness, and messiness in their education.

To my chagrin, I don't usually find any, which sometimes gives me a case of the Fuckin' A's.

From an outsiders' perspective, the regularity in these professors' career trajectories has been straightforward and tunnel-visioned, as if they were automatons created in a factory, specifically made for the purpose of doing what it is they do, accomplishing stuff only remote, snobby academic circles care about, and intimidating me.

They are arrows getting at their targets, and hitting it right "on point."

But arrows are only good for the kill.

All over place, unwieldy nets can help you make killings.

Community College Transfer Students Make Less Than 4-Year University Students

2009-05-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

...According to Natalia Kolesnikova, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, calculated the data based on the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, a joint project of the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Science Foundation.

USA Today Report via the awesome Community College Dean blog.

[sarcasm]
So, basically the lesson is, just go to a 4-year university straight out of college! Duh! Why can't everyone else just do that? I mean, come on!
[/sarcasm]

Ahmad: Rapper/Transfer

2009-05-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Ahmad, the guy who hip-hopped this:

Transferred to Stanford from Long Beach City College just last year.

First reported here in the LA Times.

I first heard his song when someone in my godsis' 6th grade class said they were going to present it during class as the song they could most relate to. Didn't think too much about it, but I love the actual original version.

That song is still in my rotation, especially now that I've found out my academic interests revolve around all kinds of reminiscing. The most resonant line in the song: "Wishing all I had to now was finish homework." A wrinkly, throw-away lyric, anyone find the "iron"?

The dude's 33 now which is still damn young, but the fact that he's done it at that age and still plans to get a Ph.D is a bit inspiring.

A Sneak Peak at the Past & Future of PTSP

2009-05-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

This blog has been long due as I wanted to write it immediately after I returned from Hawaii at the end of April. But alas, the life of a graduate student always makes it seem like there's always never enough time....

I attended the Annual Conference of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) in Honolulu last month. As part of the many "to-do's" for scholars-in-training, I presented a paper on Pinay Nursing Students. Being that that was my first ever solo presentation at an academic conference, I was quite anxious and nervous about not knowing who will show up and throw unanswerable questions at me. It didn't help that Konrad Ng, the brother-in-law of Barack Obama, was presenting next door as well. Long story short, my twelve minutes in the hot seat went well. And the reason why I wrote this blog is really because I want to share about the folks I met in AAAS and how attending the conference was simply inspiring and empowering.

As you all probably know, PTSP was founded in 1997 by Dawn Mabalon and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, both of whom are now faculty at San Francisco State University. I met both these women at the conference and learned about the incredible work they are doing for the community as academicians.

Allyson founded PEP (Pin@y Educational Partnerships), "a teaching pipeline and a space for the development of critical Filipina/o American curriculum and research." Simply put, it's a group of SF State undergraduates and grad students who go out to low-income high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, to share critical cultural curriculum that focuses on Filipino/a studies. It's a pipeline because once the K-12 students have been taught by their SF State "teachers", they go on to teach the younger ones (i.e., middle school teaching elementary school, etc.). Allyson started this in 2001 as a service-learning project and PEP has now expanded to six sites.

Interestingly enough, Dawn was one of the four presenters in my panel at the conference. Yes, I was truly honored to be sitting next to our PTSP founder. She is a historian by trade, whose work significantly contributed to the restoration of "Little Manila" in Stockton. Her presentation covered the "Lost Filipinos in Angel Island". When I told her I was part of PTSP in the early 2000s, her eyes lit up and was really delighted to know that the legacy has lived on. For alumni folks like Dawn (and now myself too), when someone knows when we were active participants in our college student org, we become very aware that our age can no longer be kept a secret. Let me tell ya, the woman is hilarious.

And before I forget, I also wanted to share my surprise when I attended the one-hour Filipino Caucus. I had no idea that there were that many Filipino scholars representing in various universities across the country. While I fully recognize that our institutions are still predominantly run by WASPs, I was quite excited about meeting at least 25 Filipino tenure-track faculty members gathered in one room at the caucus meeting. For a Pinay like me who rarely encounters fellow Filipino graduate students in the social sciences, that experience was incredibly empowering. They weren't stuck-up faculty members like the ones we usually encounter on campus. In fact, they're fairly down-to-earth, not to mention, loud, individuals who are just happy to serve as mentors to junior scholars. It was inspiring to hear and see them speak briefly about which institution they're from, what their field of expertise is, and how they've just recently been granted tenure. It's almost like an implicit message directed to a graduate student like me, telling me that I, too, can be in those shoes in the near future.

With that I'd like to end this blog posting. For anybody who is interested in sharing their latest and greatest academic work (i.e., research paper, poster, scholarly paper), AAAS is a great avenue to do so. Their proposal submission deadline is usually some time in the fall, so if you have a stellar paper you've written in any of your courses, check out the website for the submission guidelines. It's a good way to get your feet wet with one of the "must-do" things for graduate school and academe. AAAS conferences are also small enough where you don't feel too lost, but large enough where you have several fascinating research presentations to choose from. And they're usually in fun places like Waikiki. :o) The 2010 conference will be in Austin, TX.

College Isn't For Everybody, But Junior College Is

2009-05-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

My last post spoke about knowing your population. Though this does not respresent all community college students, it does touch on many relevant topics. I know a lot of folks who are in this same boat. Brian previously posted a clip of this emcee in a battle. Dude is off the hook.

Dumbfoundead- I Love Junior College

Dumbfoundead's version is a remix of Asher Roth's "I Love College."

Asher Roth - I Love College
Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup

I don't know about y'all, but dumbfoundead's version is a lil more relevant to me. I know we all party in college, but really, like that??! Is this a good way to portray higher education? My friends and myself included didn't have the luxury to party like Asher Roth. Do you think it has anything to do with the color of our skin, our social status? What privelage do Mr. Roth and his bros have that allow them to party like this??

Social Investigaion: The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

2009-04-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

I heard through the grapevine (aka facebook status updates) that El Camino will be the new outreach site for PTSP next year. This is great news and I am happy that the organization's work is progressing. Congratulations to all those who made it happen!!

With that said, I want to stress the importance of knowing the population you serve. Though we our exposed to great diversity at UCLA, the community college takes diversity to a whole 'nother level. Remember, the majority of CC students do not have the mentality of a typical university student or university bound student. Many of them were students who did not do so well in high school. Many are not sure of what they want to do. Then you have elder students who are returning to school and may not take so well to younger students trying to help them out. These students have a different mentality and may not be very receptive to certain practices or ideas.

Knowing the needs of the population you are serving is crucial. You can't just go some place, set up shop, and expect things to go smoothly. Remember that the methodologies we are trying to share with others are very unfamiliar to them. There is an idealism that comes with being student leaders/activist which sometimes causes one to assume that everyone will take heed to the knowledge you are trying to share. Sometimes we take for granted the fact that the people we are serving have not been exposed to the knowledge we have. Know the people you are trying to reach, do your best to put your self in their shoes, relate to them and know their situations before trying to share your knowledge with them.

"Non-Traditional" Student Mother says more...

2009-04-05T01:26:00.001-07:00

As I watch candidate speeches for the new USC Social Work Student Org, I can’t help but feel a little bias as to how a man running for president will address issues that address the needs of parents or women. To my surprise, Nelson Calderon, a candidate running for Social Work Student President, was posed with the question, how would you resolve conflict as student president? Like most candidates, he spoke about mediation, communication, coming to a common ground where both parties are satisfied, compromise and so forth (which are a quality of any good leader). What stood out to me, was the fact that as former undergraduate sociology president at his former university, he took the initiative to address the needs of student parents who complained that they needed childcare in order to go to school. Thus, Nelson Calderon helped to implement a Head Start Program, which is a program funded by the government for low-income parents to take care of their children while parents go to school. That’s a beautiful thing folks.

From what I’ve researched, I understand that a head start program does exist at USC, but I believe it’s still part of the childcare system at USC that had outstanding prices even when subsidized, since I called one time to figure out where the head start program was at USC and was directed right back to where I started.

Graduate students are older and currently life cycling through life. Meaning some are married, balancing a family, or like my colleague, is at the hospital having her first son. The reason I want to emphasize help for the parents is because parents face the additional challenge of taking care of another life, while balancing a career, a family, and school. It’s an additional challenge. They can’t do this if no sufficient support is offered and when people don’t feel supported, there is less motivation there. Let’s face it, graduate school is hard. I’ve heard the “I can’t imagine how you do it” words from other students, but maybe people just have to--to realize and ultimately feel the reality of the situation.

Just in the past two months, I’ve had to call students affairs and talk to the vice president in order to see if subsidies could be available, for example, for part-time students. It took them about a week to finally respond and what they said is, “No,” There are certain guidelines to what is considered a part-time student. For example, they’d have to be a research or teaching assistant... As I was talking to the vice president, who was actually wonderfully polite, I asked her, first of all, there is a reason that part-time students choose part-time, it’s because they are juggling a professional career, graduate school and family. I don’t know about you, but that sure does sound full-time to me. I said, so you expect them to be a teaching assistant or research assistant on top of everything else they do. Unfortunately, “it is what it is.” They expected part-time students to pay $800 for two days per week. How reasonable is that, seriously?

And it’s just the challenges that you face, I found myself writing in my field placement “reasons” to prove why I need a stipend for my internship. I wrote things like “I have a child and I have to pay for his food, clothing, and shelter.” I mean, duh, should I really be writing this right now. I feel that parents should also have priority in regards to reserving open slots for stipend opportunities for field placement at our school since it is basically stipends appear to be awarded to anyone based on need. I couldn’t help but think what were the other justifications of students wanting the stipend? Possibly a sick family member and so forth, which are just as equally important.

It’s really hard to find student’s who are parents here. A classmate of mine who is pregnant actually expressed to me that her field instructor had told her when she got pregnant, “Why would you do something like that?” In addition, she feels that childcare is not even an option for her because of the costs. She is worried about next year as to how it will turn out. She is extremely smart, but I’m sad that she cannot even look at our own school for support when she is basically dedicating or sacrificing herself for the school, which in turn does nothing for her to help her situation. Instead, she feels “it’s her own problem” and even gets comments like that from an instructor? I found myself giving her referrals or baby sitter numbers in the area she lives only hoping they would given her an affordable rate. I felt the questions, her self doubts, and her feeling torn between school and her baby. Sacrificing time with her baby was the chance she was willing to take to go back to school and what was the school going to give her, inconsiderate comments and no childcare? I never really believed in the theory or had the mentality that when you have a child, your life is over. But it appears that institutions are really supporting this. I hate it because I’m at odds with my the institution that I thought I would be proud of.

There’s no better time to advocate for parents than now. It’s now a matter of finding them first in the social work school, then in the larger school. I did enough talking, it’s just time to shut up and do it.

Dom commented below on my earlier blog explaining the importance of personal experience. It's a powerful thing since you are integrating your personal experience to the realities of life. Everyone has personal experiences that makes them see through a totally different lens. It's one thing to complain, talk, read, or write about it, it's about having the guts to take action and actually do something about it. My GABNet sisters, who have really taught me this, have been so persisent with ACTION no matter how far the solution maybe, it's always working towards hope...So remeber that there is.

Goodnite. On a good note, I just came back from LA LIVE and had great spicy jambalaya creme brulee (I don't know how to spell that). It was heck good. Yummy.

--Aileen Malig

Paying In Full As The Ticket to College?

2009-04-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this article from the New York Times and I wanted to share it....

PAYING IN FULL AS THE TICKET TO COLLEGE
Source: New York Times By: Kate Zernike, March 30, 2009

Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year.
Institutions that have pledged to admit students regardless of need are finding ways to increase the number of those who pay the full cost in ways that allow the colleges to maintain the claim of being need-blind — taking more students from the transfer or waiting lists, for instance, or admitting more foreign students who pay full tuition. Private colleges that acknowledge taking financial status into account say they are even more aware of that factor this year.
“If you are a student of means or ability, or both, there has never been a better year,” said Robert A. Sevier, an enrollment consultant to colleges.

The trend does not mean colleges are cutting their financial aid budgets. In fact, most have increased those budgets this year, protecting that money even as they cut administrative salaries or require faculty members to take furloughs. But with more students applying for aid, and with those who need aid often needing more, institutions say they have to be mindful of how many scholarship students they can afford.

Colleges say they are not backing away from their desire to serve less affluent students; if anything, they say, taking more students who can afford to pay full price or close to it allows them to better afford those who cannot. But they say the inevitable result is that needier students will be shifted down to the less expensive and less prestigious institutions.
“There’s going to be a cascading of talented lower-income kids down the social hierarchy of American higher education, and some cascading up of affluent kids,” said Morton Owen Schapiro, the president of Williams College and an economist who studies higher education.
And colleges acknowledge that giving more seats to higher-paying students often means trading off their goals to be more socioeconomically diverse.

Some admissions officers and college advisers say richer parents are taking note of the climate, calculating that if they do not apply for aid, their children stand a better chance of getting in.
“They think their kids will have more options,” said Diane Geller, a college counselor in private practice in Los Angeles and president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, a nonprofit group that represents private academic counselors. “And anecdotally, it would seem that that’s the case.”
“I do think the colleges want to give aid where they can,” Ms. Geller added. “But we all know the economic realities.”

Only the wealthiest institutions traditionally have been need-blind, admitting students without regard to what they can pay. But the definition has often been fuzzy, and this year, it may be more so. Bowdoin College announced plans to expand by 50 students over the next five years, which Scott Meiklejohn, the interim dean of admissions, said would allow it to accept more transfer and waiting-list students, whose applications are not considered on a need-blind basis.

Brandeis University, which is need-blind except for international, wait-listed and transfer students, accepted 10 percent more international students than usual this year, and Gil Villanueva, the dean of admissions, said he expected that the university would take more wait-listed and transfer students, as well.

Middlebury, which is need-blind and pledges to meet students’ full financial needs, will require students on financial aid to contribute more of their work earnings. It has cut its financial aid budget for international students. It is not need-blind for those on the waiting list or for transfers, but the college has not yet determined how many of those students it will take.

“We consider being need-blind and meeting full demonstrated need one of our basic operating principles,” said Patrick J. Norton, the college’s treasurer. “That is one of the last things that we would consider going away from.”

Those colleges that are need-aware typically admit part of the class without regard to ability to pay, but begin to consider it when the financial aid budget runs thin.
This year, many of these colleges say they are more inclined to accept students who do not apply for aid, or whom they judge to be less needy based on other factors, like ZIP code or parents’ background.

“We’re only human,” said Steven Syverson, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. “They shine a little brighter.”
The advantage is not across the board; it goes to the students at the margins, the ones who would probably be “maybes” when the admissions committee considered applications. Those students are less likely to get in if they are financially needy and more likely to get in if they can afford to pay.
“This is not the majority of the class, or even the preponderance,” said Rob Reddy, the director of financial aid at Oberlin College. “But it’s a factor.”

Even though there is more financial aid this year, more students are vying for it, so resources do not stretch as far. “It’s not unusual to see families earning $200,000 applying for aid, especially if they have a couple of kids going to college,” said Rodney M. Oto, director of student financial services at Carleton College.

And some campuses are shifting more financial aid to merit aid, money that goes to highly qualified but not necessarily needy students; if tuition is $50,000 and the college offers an award of $7,000, it still gets $43,000, where a needier student might net the college nothing.
Some say it is time to reconsider the cachet that accompanies a boast of being need-blind.
“You can’t say someone should be need-blind unless they have the resources to fund it,” said Dr. Schapiro, at Williams. “It sounds immoral to replace really talented low-income kids with less talented richer kids, but unless you’re a Williams or an Amherst, the alternative is the quality of the education declines for everyone.”

At Carleton, which is need-aware, Mr. Oto said, “I do think we’d all be better off if we were honest with kids that you may not get in because you need assistance, or you need too much assistance.”
Mr. Oto’s fear — shared by many other admissions officers — is that being honest will scare off students who might, in fact, qualify for financial aid.

On the other end, Mr. Oto said: “I suspect it may be a strategy for some folks. We do get the sense that people are getting advice that if you can pay, then you should shoot for the highly selective school.”
Many admissions counselors ascribe the increase in early decision applicants this year to wealthier students’ seeking an advantage. Early decision requires students to attend if they are accepted, so those students give up the ability to negotiate financial aid, and tend to be wealthier.
“Those families in a position to afford the cost of attendance capitalized on that,” said Mr. Villanueva, at Brandeis.

Many colleges, in turn, accepted more students early decision, as a way of securing students in December. Some families have come back and tried to renegotiate aid after an offer of admission, but colleges caution that there is no guarantee: they have accommodated some requests, but told other students that their offers are firm, and in some cases, released students from early decision agreements rather than give a larger scholarship.
If endowments do not rebound, some colleges say that it will be harder to maintain commitments to the needier in coming years.

Tufts says it is reading applications on a need-blind basis this year, but may not be able to continue doing so. William D. Adams, the president of Colby College, told students in a letter that the college would continue its new policy of replacing loans with grants this year, but that he could not guarantee that future budgets would be able to afford to do so. Grinnell College in Iowa also intends to meet a promise this year that no student graduates with more than $2,000 a year in loans, but officials say it may be hard to sustain that.

“These are things you’ll have to pry from our hands,” said Seth Allen, Grinnell’s dean of admission and financial aid. “At the same time, you have to be realistic.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 1, 2009 An article on Tuesday about colleges looking more favorably on wealthy applicants referred incorrectly to a pledge by Grinnell College to limit the amount of loans that students must pay back after graduation. The college promises that no student will graduate with more than $2,000 a year in loans — not a total of $2,000 in loans.

Education Is Preparing You For

2009-03-22T17:03:00.000-07:00

Dom was visiting Me and Ivan at LA and San Diego this past weekend. Ostensibly it was for graduate school interviewing, but really it was to watch the entire epic series called the Wire.

The Wire is about many things. Drug trade, life on the street corners, politics, media and how its all interrelated. The clip below is from the 4th season and refers to troubled students in public school.

The bald guy doing all the explaining, Bunny Colvin, is talking about how especially troublesome students in a research program fared in some fancy restaurant. The woman interrogating him is trying to gauge how effective that research program is in getting them prepared for a standardized test.

His two big points are:

1) that the testing is really stupid and very very cursory band-aid/excuse for funding, and

2) the education system particularly in West Baltimore is not really relevant to them in their world. Their environment overwhelmingly dominates their life views and education is pretty much an afterthought.

\

Food for thought:

1) Any parallels, metaphors we can make from LAUSD to the university and college system?

2) How does this apply to the community college?

3) Also interesting for me is the woman's idea that the research program was "socializing" the students rather than "educating" them. Ain't that the same effing thing?

Is Higher Education Just for the Rich?

2009-03-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

This was the topic question in Zocalo's event yesterday.

If by higher education, you mean "4-year college" then pretty much, yes. It's been like that for centuries.

If by higher education, you mean "associates or trade tech" then, not necessarily.

It's relatively cheap here in California.

In a world in which the popular discourse from newspapers to educational institutions are championing and maintaining that they provide equal opportunity, we want the answer to the question to be no. We want higher education in its different properties to be for non-rich people too!

A few months ago the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that high-income students on average find more financial aid their expenses than low-income students. What does that say about low-income students?

I think it says that they often don't know where to find the resources. I personally was intimidated whenever I had to take care of administrative work. I'll bet that they don't have too many friends or relatives who have done the college thing themselves. They don't have networks of people who've worked it and done the same.

Kevin Garnett Is Going to UCLA

2009-03-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hmm...I'd consider trading Josh Shipp for him. Anything more is a rip-off.

March Is a Brotherhood

I am not a fan of college basketball at all, but, March Madness is around the corner and I suddenly become an expert. Where do we finish this year?

El Camino College and Santa Monica College

2009-03-09T22:47:00.000-07:00

We recently visited El Camino College to get students' input on the conditions, the life at the community college.

Two community colleges, both successful in the fostering of transferring to 4-year universities. Graduate about the same percentage of people.

Santa Monica has the best transfer rates to 4-year universities. They retain freshman at a clip of 65%.

El Camino has the best transfer rate to UCLA and certain other schools. They have a freshman retention rate of over 74%.

What are the things these schools in Los Angeles have that facilitate a transfer to the 4-year university?

One of the things that facilitate university transfer was just having a lot of couneslors. Santa Monica College has 60 full-time counselors and 40 more part-time counselors, as mentioned before in this blog via the LA Times. However, when I asked how many counselors El Camino currently, students said that El Camino had around 6-8 Full Time Counselors.

So what are some of the things El Camino provides? An article in their student newspaper touches on the building of not only transfer agreements between colleges, but also the building of on-campus support networks:

The success to the increase of transfer rates can also be [attributed] to organizations that were built to help students transfer.

Organizations include: the Honors Transfer Program, Mathematics Engineering Science Acheivement(MESA) and Project Success.

This brings up the questions that might be seem obvious on an individual level, but:

1) What networks do community college transfer centers tap into to secure enrollments at 4-year universities? This might be a question for academics and administrations to explore more.

2) If all the resources are there for people to get, why do others constantly miss them? For example, the Measuring Up 2008 report found that on average, students from more affluent, RICHER families are likely to get bigger grants than low-income students.

Is that not bass ackwards or what?

Theoretically, the resources are always there as they might be at any other institution of education, but I suspect that it's because everyone tends to stick with what they know, and what they know often does encompass the tacit, social knowledge needed to navigate the higher education system.

3) To what extent do transfer-facilitation resources exist at other community colleges? Are there the same resources everywhere? Why do students who want to transfer feel the need to be at a certain community college like an El Camino or a Santa Monica? Why not a Los Angeles City College, or a Los Angeles Harbor College?

Hackneyed Schmackneyed: 'Holistic Empowerment' and PTSP Bayanihan

2009-03-03T00:33:00.000-08:00

(Sorry, Brian for the delay in posting and thanks, Andrew for the invite)

Hello, all. My name's JP Bareng Schumacher. Here's the obligatory (leadership) resume ala Theresa and Dom:
-Education: El Camino College, AA Psych (c/o Fall 2002); UCLA, BA Psych (c/o 2005)
-Samahang: SPEAR Staff Assistant (Spring 03); SPEAR Peer Counselor (03-04); SPEAR Peer Counseling Coordinator (04-05)
-PTSP: Academics Coordinator (03-05), PTSP Bayanihan Co-Founder and Peer Advising Dev't Coordinator; Co-Alumni Advisor (05-06)

I'm currently working full time for Samahang Pilipino / UCLA Community Programs Office (CPO) as the Director for the SPACE (Samahang Pilipino Advancing Community Empowerment) Project. From SPEAR to SPACE- who knew?

As the much anticipated focus group at El Camino College nears, I can't help but feel genuinely excited. This event is the result of a determined Bayanihan Coordinator and El Co Site Coordinator (Mr. Andrew Hambre and Mr. Marc Barlis respectively), dedicated PTSP general members, and an exciting collaboration between a PTSP and Samahang Pilipino. Outside of the focus group, the scope and scale of the PTSP / SP collaboration is simply amazing. 4 years ago, such teamwork would have blown my mind (and the mind of my lovely partner in crime, Ms. Theresa Toledo). Come to think of it, it blows my mind now considering just how difficult it was to get PTSP Bayanihan off the ground as a student.

SPEAR and the CPO changed my life- as dramatic a pronouncement as this is, it's absolute truth. In relevance to PTSP, SPEAR training equipped me with the confidence and skills to invest (although, quite painstakingly) the PTSP Executive Board and my Pilipino transfer friends in taking up the cause of Pilipino transfer access to the University. We knew that there was a dearth of data about these access issues, but we also knew anecdotally that our folks were falling through the cracks at the community college. Like Brian said in a prior entry, in those early days (Winter 04), because of the lack of info, 'student driven knowledge creation' was what we worked with and, at the time, epitomized an organization coming into its own to address Pilipino transfer access issues.

As most of you know, PTSP used to be SPTSP- as in SAMAHANG Pilipino Transfer Student Partnership. For my fellow Boardies (shout out to EB 04-05, hahaha) an important document we utilized to shift PTSP back into a progressive direction was the original SPTSP Brochure drafted in 1997. Back then, SPTSP promoted the three R's (Retention, Recruitment, and Research) and according to the brochure, held amazing workshops that promoted academic and holistic empowerment.

Now, Dom is right on when he says that the term 'empowerment' and 'holistic' have become taboo because it's slightly hackneyed now. And let me tell you, some folks (full time staff AND students) that I work with choose not to use this word anymore for that precise reason. But more importantly, Dom is dead on when he talks about just how essential holistic empowerment is regardless if the word is taboo. It's a core outcome for PTSP and Samahang Pilipino, striving to facilitate this amongst its members via general meetings and various other programming and amongst UCLA / CC students via SPEAR, SPACE, and PTSP Bayanihan services and programs.

Holistic empowerment as a means to community empowerment is exactly why PTSP Bayanihan was created. Through working toward your own holistic empowerment, you approach your education very differently. Your education doesn't just live in the classroom- it's in the streets, it's volunteering at a nonprofit, it's what you get out of sharing what you learn with your friends, family, and peers. Further, you realize your education doesn't just belong to you anymore- it's for the betterment of your family AND complete strangers who comprise the nebulous term of 'community'.

When Theresa and I were at El Camino, there was no Pilipino organization to facilitate our Pilipino consciousness, nor was there a Pilipino mentor to engage us in critical thought, Pilipino peer counselors to help us plan out our academic and personal goals, or Pilipino(-American) studies classes. Having transferred and gotten involved in SPEAR and PTSP, we thought it was unacceptable that at the community college, Pilipino 'holistic development' was hinged upon either intrinsic motivation to seek out that self-knowledge at the CC or transferring to a University, possibly deferring critical discussion about identity and education for 2+ years. PTSP Bayanihan was created to do something about that. We modeled PTSP Bayanihan after SPACE and anchored training to what we learned in the CPO through SPEAR and SPACE.

[RANDOM SIDENOTE: I have to applaud the first year staff of PTSP Bayanihan- mostly for undertaking the enormous effort of running a project, the rest for dealing with a recently-graduated, idealistic bugaboo of an Alum Advisor- me. <-- That was for Brian =)]

4 years later, I can't help but feel y'all (PTSP and SP) are right where you need to be. With the current fiscal crisis, classes being cut left and right, student resources diminishing, and the bevy of other access issues, Pilipinos effectively transferring to a 4-year institution is under threat. This focus group will get to the heart of El Camino student needs and will begin anew what Theresa, myself, and so many others have been waiting for- critical dialogue as a means to, say it with me,

"holistic empowerment".

Unapologetically verbose,

[JP]

PS. Current PTSPers, if you're down for tea and chatting it up with this old fogy about anything from PTSP to post grad life, come visit the SPACE cubicle in Suite 106, Student Activities Center. We'll set up a time to talk.

A Panel Coming Up on Wednesday March 18th: Unaffordability of College

2009-03-02T13:35:00.000-08:00

So there's a panel coming up on Wednesday, March 18th about the affordability of higher education hosted by the Lecture Series Zocalo located at the Los Angeles Center Theatre in downtown LA at 7:30 PM. Lasts for an hour, usually some kind of reception afterward. It's FREE, and if you're interested you need to make reservations giving your name, email, and number --- they've never called me. To do that click here.

Who's speaking?

-Los Angeles Community College District Board President Kelly Candaele
-Inside Higher Ed Editor Scott Jaschik
-UCLA professor Patricia M. McDonough, author of Choosing Colleges: How Social Class and Schools Structure Opportunity
-Bruce Poch, Dean of Admissions at Pomona College

Lecture series by Zocalo is usually pretty good and interesting, and this time highly relevant to PTSP and all students in general. The people who usually attend those lectures tend to be older, white, and/or are professionals, but I usually went for free food. They used to have a whole lot of food from tamales to quesadillas to only the finest cheeses even smug individuals would not smug.

Unemployment, an Alien's View and Bigger Beefs

2009-03-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a nasty ass brutish, Leviathan-like few weeks for me. Very recently, I was kicked off the ladder and have just taken a backflop into the pool of unemployment.

But to me that's just a petty, unimportant reality that I have to deal with for the time being.

If an alien with humanoid features were to visit planet earth and anthropologize me, he/she'd/it would ultimately see is that I merely lost my form of income generation.

At the individual level, income is only important so far as I acquire the means to eat, drink, shelter ourselves to deal with the elements and store personal conveniences, and perhaps, if I really have the time, reproduce!

If an alien were to visit planet earth and old-school anthropologize us as a society with curiosities and peculiarities, he/she'd write about income-generation as just one activity we simply engaged in to sustain ourselves:

A lot of what humans in what would be labeled "Western" popular and public society do appears to be tied not to making things, but acquiring and consuming things.

Things --- whether they be objects like food or an automobile, services like those provided by a house-maid or an engineer, or experiences like vacations at places, some of which carry greater semantic importance for others, and amusement parks.

The main way to acquire things is done via transaction.

However before a transaction can take a place, an individual needs to go through a process called income generation and accumulation. Income generation and accumulation is a process where humans offer their services in return for the means to participate in trades. After having generated enough income and accumulated enough, humans become free to consummate transactions

This society is highly built on those transactions. There is a high amount of interpersonal dependence because none of the things acquired by humans in this society can be made en masse for the masses by any single individual. However, this interpersonal dependence is rarely acknowledged because many individuals can consummate an almost innumerable amount of trades in the time of one Earthly rotation. Individuals who have low participation levels in this institutionalized acquision of things, either voluntarily or involuntarily, this individual is often labeled and stigmatized by members who can acquire things, and his/her characteristics are scrutinized and/or shunned by many members in society.

So basically, the alien would say that I just don't have an income-producing activity and that I don't have that much a chance of participating in the exchange network, and that I'd probably be ostracized in my society for that.

Link found at www.thisisultimatelypettybullshit.com

In seriousity, even though I can dismiss this dismissal and its ultimately just one ditch in the proverbial road, I will say that I loved what I did, I feel like I was completely mislead, and ultimately got my eye put out like that kid, Arshavin from Slumdog Millionaire. It was truly the biggest what-the-fuck moment of my life.

But, I don't really need sympathy 'cause there's a whole other world waiting out there and things could always be worse. I'm actually afforded a lot of luxuries mainly because I was born here so I'm greatful and I'm going to use whatever advantages I do have to leverage whatever I want to leverage.

However, turning your proverbial attention to the bigger picture, not everyone has the privilege of saying that.

America is the land of opportunity — if you have papers.

There was a very long, but highly informative article a few weeks ago in the LA Weekly about trafficked indentured servants from the Philippines working in a Sherman Oaks health care facility.

Modern-day slavery does exist, but in degrees.

She has shoulder-length black hair, dark skin, a wide, flat nose and eyes that seem perpetually tired. As a teacher in the Philippines, she made less than $100 a month. Now she makes $120 a day taking care of a retired podiatrist named Fred, who is 102 years old.

For three years, beginning in October of 2005, Agnes labors inside the confines of the house on Vernon Street with five other illegal Filipino workers.

Mary and her daughter work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Between them they make $1,500 a month, a massive amount compared with the family’s combined wages back home.

Why does this stuff happen? Poverty is the root cause. It is the fuel that drives the engine of supply and demand. Supply: abundant cheap labor. Demand: first-world clamor for someone, anyone, to do disagreeable, menial tasks.

A tenth of the population of the Philippines live overseas, a diaspora second only to that of Mexico. The country is a major exporter of labor, the highest relative to population size20of any Southeast Asian country.

Last year, Filipino overseas foreign workers, or OFWs, sent back $14 billion in remittances. This money accounts for one-fifth of the country’s GDP. Remittances have become a pillar of the Philippine economy, and are expected to rise 10 percent next year.

One of every three Filipinos fails to meet the official, arbitrary poverty line set by the World Bank — the infamous $1 purchasing power per person per day.

There are 12 million undocumented workers in the United States according to the PEW Hispanic Center, recognized as having the most accurate figures on this subject. The largest number of these workers — 2.8 million — are in California. Of that 2.8 million, roughly one-fifth are Filipino. At any given time, there are half a million TNTs in California. Elsewhere, they are maids in Hong Kong and Dubai and Kuwait, cooks and crew on cruise ships, hotel workers, nurses and caregivers all over the U.S.

I wonder what the alien would say about trafficking.

Humans from a region called Southeast Asia appear not to be able to acquire as many things as humans from the West. Though the population can offer the same services in the same income-generating and accumulation activities, those activities are not as valued as their counterparts in the West, mainly because their exchange network does not have connections to commodities.

They do not have value because they can only offer their services only to people that they are geographically near. The geographically near individuals consequently do not have as much income or things with which to make exchanges, which means the exchange becomes tautological and ultimately self-defeating.

The only way out is to often times to offer the physical human body.

Link at www.whatsbeefthatsbeefitsalwaysyourownpeoplessometimesitsyourownpeoples.edu

The Unwritten Rules of Ph.D Research

2009-02-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

Today, the wonderful world of Scribd ran me right across the book The Unwritten Rules of Ph.D Research.

Interesting, considering that going back to school is almost always on my mind. I'm usually not a fan of self-helppy-ish how-to books, but in this case, I think it's alright.

I've read before that going to grad school is like joining a cult.

For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar.

- Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."

- Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."

- Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."

- Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"

Lot of professors, TAs I've been around have also remarked, "I wouldn't wish grad school on anyone." Graduate school has been described not as a learning process in terms of "bettering yourself" or "getting more knowledge", but more a "socialization" process where you learn conventions, ways of doings, pecking orders.

The book below speaks to a lot of that socialization process of grad school. Little stuff that you might overlook. They talk about "fitting in" within the culture of academia. They talk about a lot about how getting a Ph.D is like a rite of passage, an elaborate, drawn out hazing ritual you have to get through so you can become a 'peer.' In the end, what these authors seem to be saying is this: those hazing rituals imposed by the universities/institutions are in place to show that you could create, organize, and manage research in your area of discipline by yourself.

The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research (MJ Version)

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education eBooks research philosophy

The Hip-Hop Work-Shop

2009-02-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, not too long ago, PTSP had a hip-hop flow to it. We now refer to that year as 2006.

Ha, I kidz, I kidz, ya'll in 2007, 2008, 2009 are hip-hop too.

But I'm just saying, we did hold a hip-hop workshop this one time, and I'm glad it was something we did because it was fun. In our workshop that one fateful February or March day, we represented the 5 elements of hip-hop: breakdancing, MCing, beatboxing, DJing, and graffit-ing.

Why? Well, why the helfck not? We've got our Filipino dance crews up and down, left and right, we've got upcoming MCs on the underground, the l-o-r-d knows we got our DJs. Most of us grow up because it was just there for us and I imagine we relate a lot to its cultural norms and it's stars as opposed to the unspoken hegemonic dominance of white guy culture. I remember being at Disneyland celebrating my lil sister's birthday at around the time Gangsta's Paradise was ripping it, talking with this white teenager named Doug, the first thing I said to this guy was, "Rock music sucks."

I said in my intro post that PTSP had sort of an interrelation with the development of my hip-hop-headiness, let me explain.

One of the first classes I took was a class in ethnomusicology called the Cultural History of Rap. The Roots performed for free at Bruin Plaza and I got to see them live. Ugly Duckling was supposed to show up one time, but ended up flaking. The Blue Scholars represented when no one knew who they were. One of the best classes I ever took was a Hip-hop Linguistics class which was taught by a dude who went to school with John Legend.

PTSP was just a space that encouraged more of that. Freestyling/MCing was always at the PTSP parties thanks to the master MC, EZ, who'd strike up a SY-PHA/cipha/cipher where X-Tian would drop ridiculosity and Dom would flow. B.Saturday was a master beatboxer whose mic failed at the end of SEND 2006. Ivan was/is a poet inspired by Saul Williams and he knows it.

Anyhow, EZ is still busting lines

I knew this dude who went to Slugvilles with me and always thought he was on the verge of killing somebody. I was right. Dude named Tantrum.

Via Bambu Rants

I always wondered how I had such trouble coming up with anything during the ciphas but these guys make it look easy.

On Community Colleges Recent Troubles and Transferring

2009-02-16T21:33:00.000-08:00

As the economy is tanking and the job market is collapsing, community colleges are now getting swamped. In two different ways!

Swamped with newer students trying to make better on the job market, and two, swamped from actually acquiring resources to accomodate the new deluge of students.

The LA Times had an article about how the community college system is stretching their capacity in response to a garbage-load of problems: California's state budget cuts in K-16 education, dealing with an uptick in enrollment, and increasingly having trouble at getting students ready for transferring to 4-year universities.

Community colleges are being asked to do a lot. And they always have been asked to do a lot. But when things get to the point of 'overwhelming' and people are asked to do a lot, they go on a mission to cut the 'over' part to ease the passage to 'whelming.' That means, cut the 'inefficiencies!' Which means cut classes! Cut arts programs! Cut the humanities! And cut the crappy students from your classroom!

This guy, a college dean talks more about it.

By definition, though, the needy are inefficient. A student who shows up prepared for college-level work, passes everything the first time without tutoring, and has his personal life together is remarkably cheap to educate, especially in the liberal arts. A student who has academic skills deficits, who needs counseling, and who attends part-time for several years is much higher-maintenance, and therefore more expensive.

When times are relatively flush, we can do some justice to both efficiency and mission. Now, we're being forced to choose efficiency.

Essentially, the people losing out from all this effiency-making and cutting extravaganza are the students who are probably the ones who would benefit most from a college education.

The Public Policy Institute of California touched a bit on what demographic actually stands to benefit the most from a college education in a previous study.

The demographics are usually people of color, usually people from low-income families, usually people with few weak or strong social connections to a collegiate institution or people who've graduated from a collegiate institution.

One of the reasons we did PTSP Bayanihan in the first place was to reach those students.

While picking up a desirable education is getting rough in of itself, transferring is a whole other beast. The same students struggling to get the education struggle to transfer.

"Students who come to two-year colleges generally don't think they can make it," Trice said. "I dispel certain myths about transferring: 'UCLA is made for white people.' 'I'll never make it there.' 'I can't possibly pay for it.' It's a social ceiling."

Community college officials say that 40% of students who are serious about transferring manage to do it. But the Public Policy Institute of California, in a 2006 study, found that only about 25% of the students who are focused on transferring actually make it.

Is it me or does it seem like its getting harder and harder each and every year to transfer? Don't these (culturally-hegemonically-created, which don't seem to prove anything) standards seem like they are getting getting shot to the roof? And were learning and proving exactly, what?

The LA Times article made a quick note about how the community college environment facilitates transferring, something that we all tried to note in Bayanihan's first Academic Year Proposal:

It's no coincidence that Santa Monica College, which has the highest UC transfer rates of any community college, also has one of the biggest counseling staffs, with 60 full-time and 40 part-time advisors, said Dan Nannini, coordinator of the college's transfer center.

Compare that with the 5 or 6 counselors at El Camino or the 2 at Glendale and LACC. It seems like there's just a culture hardwired towards transferring. On the outside, Santa Monica is perceived as the preeminent place of transfer. I'd hypothesize that there's just more opportunity for people at those colleges to be connected to resources and networks that would facilitate transferring. But perhaps people who actually went to Santa Monica and/or El Camino, Glendale would know better than me.

Cognitive Abilities, Environment, PTSP Environment

2009-02-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

PTSP was one place for me to think about my academic interest: our cognitive abilities and our environments.

Ever since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, my Education 130 class about Race, Class, and Ethnicity with Tyrone Howard and spending time at the UCLA Bookstore peering through Mike Rose's book The Mind at Work, combined with my disposition towards anthropology, I've been interested in intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures.

Intelligences and cognitive abilities across different cultures is just a more compact, technical way of saying that I'm interested in how environment/context/social network influences many different individuals to become "smart", what they may choose to become "smart" in, or how they can become perceived as "smart" in doing it.

In much of popular discourse, people of color usually are considered "intellectually inferior." A meme passed down from the times of Charles Darwin --- brown people are the more primitive and less evolved. Their ways are backward! They are the sub-level between the chimpanzee and the ideal, fully-evolved, fully-capable white person. You could look thru the history of Western science and medicine, you'd be hardpressed to find people of color making "discoveries" and developments in technology, let alone being celebrated for doing so. Nobody really gives a flarping tuba player about Kitasato Shibasaburo or Percy Julian. If you buy into Western science and medicine is about individuals, virtually white folk from Europe are the only ones with all the rockstar, bro wisdom and genius in the world because they've come up with all the rational, objective, progressive solutions.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond was one of the first books I read to overturn that type of thinking. He asked the question "how did it come to be that white people were the ones making all the technological innovation, the guns, and the steel, while brown peoples were not?

Did it have to do with white people's innate intelligence? Or was it merely, the work of their environment?

The work of environment. Here's a bit of a parable from H.A. Simon in his book The Sciences of the Artificial via the book Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins about how our intelligence is mostly environmentally-influenced:

As we watch the complicated movements of an ant on a beach, we may be tempted to attribute to the ant, some complicated program for constructing the path taken. In fact...that trajectory tells us more about the beach than about the ant...Rather than watch a single ant for a few minutes, as psychologists are wont to do, let us be anthropologists and move in and watch a community of ants over weeks and months. Let us assume that we arrive just after a storm, when the beach is a tabula rasa for the ants. Generations of ants comb the beach. They leave behind them short-lived chemcial trails, and whereever they go they inadvertently move grains of sand as they pass. Over months, paths to likely food sources develop as they are visited again and again by ants following first the short-lived chemical trails of their fellows and later the longer-lived roads produced by a history of heavy ant traffic. After months watching, we decide to follow a particular ant on an outing. We may be impressed by how cleverly it visits every high-likelihoood food location. This ant seems to work so much more efficiently than did its ancestors of weeks ago. Is this a smart ant? It Is it perhaps smarter than its ancestors? No, it is just the same dumb sort of ant, reacting to its environment in the same ways its ancestors did.

Were humans, were usually known to make our environments. At least, most of us have the freedom to make our environments.

That said, what kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we make ourselves as Filipinos in the Phillippines? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks did our parents, relatives, friends make for us in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Filipinos in America? What kind of environments/contexts/social networks do we re-create as Pilipino Transfer students at UCLA? What kind of intelligences are we making? What are we becoming experts in?

Justice for Filipino American Veterans: Did We Settle and Is This Enough?

2009-02-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently, the Filipino American Veterans of World War Mothereffin' II are just on the verge of receiving compensation they were originally promised by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and nullified by the Missouri Mule. Might I remind you that World War Mothereffin' II was over almost 64 mothereffin' years ago and that those were presidents of the United States in the 1940s and are long dead.

From the Mercury News

The stimulus bill approved by the U.S. Senate on Monday night authorized the release of $198 million to rectify Uncle Sam's postwar snub. About 18,000 Filipino vets who fought in the war under the American flag would now receive up to $15,000 for their service.

In case you don't know what the Filipino vets' struggle is about, here's a little legislative background:

The vets' quest for compensation stems from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision in July 1941 to draft 140,000 soldiers from the Philippines, then an American colony. A year later, Congress passed a law allowing Filipino soldiers to become U.S. citizens with full military benefits. But in 1946, after Filipino soldiers fought and died side by side with U.S. troops, President Harry S. Truman signed two bills denying them citizenship as well as most veterans' benefits. The bills were postwar cost-saving measures that Truman said he regretted.

Basically, the US government entered into a contract with people who sacrificed body, mind, and spirit. But because they weren't viewed as a colony anymore, nor were they regular white people, nor did they have any other leverage otherwise, the US pretty much just ignored the Philippines soldiers. Like...ahhh...you don't exist! Gollymee jeepers, isn't social exclusion fun?!

Because they have been disappointed before, Valdez and other Filipino vets say they won't celebrate until the allocation survives the committee now trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the $838.2 billion stimulus bill.

Ivan had been talking to me about his organizing work on behalf of those veterans, and the main thing that I got from him was that whatever they got was probably not enough. The Japanese who had been interned in the US had received more in terms of benefits and recognition. Don't know the exact numbers, they've been long since recognized, apologized to, and received their benefits. With Fil-Am vets, it's like a pittiance they've thrown at us just to shut us the fork up.

We have nice recognition parades in San Fran and Los Angeles on Veterans Day, and a nice monument in Historic Filipinotown. These are good, but it seems like there's a lot more missing.

Lots of people die in 64 mothereffin' years. What's happened to those veterans' families since then? Will their kids be able to reap any benefits?

My grandpa (RIP) back in the Philippines with my namesake was a veteran of World War II, but he wasn't able to come to the US, so he went out and made my dad and 8 other aunties and uncles. My dad wasn't able to come to the US till the mothereffin' 1980s and he wasn't able to finish architecture school because of the lack of money that perhaps my grandpa could've been compensated for.

Read full articles at Mercury News via the Angry Asian Man

Support a Local Community-Minded Filipino on National TV!

2009-02-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

So tonight at the Grammys on CBS, they're going to air a bunch of Lincoln MKS Car commercials. I usually wouldn't give a flying mating ritual about the Grammys, CBS, or Lincoln MKS Cars, but in this case I'll make an exception.

One of the Lincoln MKS commercials will be from a local Filipino filmmaker named Patricio Ginelsa. I don't know the guy, but my godsister actually does; she says hes kind of a geek. You might not know him, but you might know his work: he was an associate producer for that Filipino-American classic the Debut, he made the APL Song's Video, and he made Bebot. So the dude is major with Fil-Am stuff.

Patricio recently turned in a proposal as part of this Lincoln MKS young filmmakers contest. Patricio's proposal got into the semi-final stages. The proposal then turned into this music video selling the Lincoln MKS and promoting this song.

As it turns out, there a few more people involved in the video's production.

One of them is this female named Francine whom I know from way back in high school. She's good folks and talks to me on occasion about environmental justice stuff. She was a production coordinator.

The other is Bambu. A Filipino community rap star from Watts and the Native Guns and the organizing group Kabataan-Maka-Bayan.

So basically, the video is basically us on National TV. Although within the context of promoting a luxury product that may upset the environmentally-conscious sensibilities, I think I prefer to just see us out there winning contests and accomplishing stuff. Brings my network of peoples up.

So, 2 Steps to Supporting Their Cause:

1) Go to this website.
2) Vote "Patricio Ginelsa."

Really, really easy, it takes a nanosecond.

Afterward, if you feel it, go to kidheroes.net and see the making of that particular music video. Bambu is the Filipino-Cholo-looking guy who plays the Cupid agent alongside the white guy, and my friend Francine is at the end of the video in a bandana holding up a toast after shooting.

From a "Non-Traditional" Student Mother

2009-02-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

The first day of orientation to USC, I attended a seminar for “non-traditional” students defined primarily in terms older students, students with children, and married students. As I departed from the rest of the graduate students all in line to go to the same workshops, I departed from them walking alone into what was probably the smallest orientation I’ve been to all day with 10-13 graduate students...

I knew my experience as a “young” mother, graduate student, and professional worker would make my college experience a “little” different from other graduate students who did not bare the responsibilities of having a child and having to support a child. For the first time, I felt what it was like to be on the “other side” and experience graduate school with certain challenges.

Childcare. I went to an orientation for childcare at my institution to find out that childcare costs were $1800 per month, but wait, you get a subsidy for $800 per month.

Housing. I wanted to apply for family housing. However, costs still ranged from $800-$1300 per month with a few limited spots and all I remember hearing was “we don’t know how long the waiting list will be.”

Healthcare. I am fortunately covered through healthcare at my school and through wishful thinking, I asked my institution if they possibly had an affordable plan for students with children and the answer is “no.”

On top of everything else, I had to worry about the baring the costs of extended childcare, just so I can study later. My daily routine included going to school, going work, picking my child up, cooking for my child, taking him and bath, and putting him to sleep with a book. At about 10pm, I was able to study.

It’s hard enough to bare these responsibilities and it really is such a downer that the university that you go may not offer the aforementioned above. One must question how supportive universities are in general, because this applies across the university system.

What a supportive academic environment looks like is a university is one that:
1. Waives childcare cost.
2. Has guaranteed family housing or more spaces available for students with children.
3. Offers an affordable healthcare plan for students with children.
4. Offers more grants and scholarships for students with children.

These are basic needs that are not addressed and do not hold priority. Hence, I see how one may be adamant to continue higher education because they face real challenges that makes them choose one over the other-- Education or Family? A supportive academic environment would help students with families, not make it a challenge for them.

BUT there are ways and there are resources. With patience, knowledge and time, it’s about knowing and finding what’s out there. If you should ever question whether continuing higher education is worth it, it is. THERE IS HELP, maybe not from your particular academic institution, but THERE ARE RESOURCES. I work with immigrant parents and children and I could honestly say that my experiences and/or attempts to seek resources whether failed or succeed, I know where to direct them. My life experiences have been the most resourceful, first hand experience is powerful and beautiful thing. It’s one thing to read it, but to experience it is something that feel so different.

I’ve come to the conclusion that these issues are not met simply because there are not enough of us to voice the particular concerns. Whether it be at the transfer, undergraduate, or graduate student, our universities are in dyer need of a diversity to voice particular concerns.

Remember what you all represent. You bring something unique to the university. Embrace it, challenge it and make it your greatest strength.

Peace,

Aileen Malig

Grad School Musings: USC Rules the World Around Me and Filipinos in Grad School in General

2009-02-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

These days somehow its USC this and USC that.

My mom works at an elementary school near there.

I am more likely to go there when there's something happening, including this concert they had with that myspace phenomena Passion, and Bambu, this one-woman act show about multiracialism that my co-wager dragged me, to and the latest, a screening of the Linguist with much apologies to the Queen of El Monte.

Almost all the people I know in grad school somehow end up at USC, despite that place costing a bunch of money.

There are quite a few folks I know earning Master of Social Work like Aileen.

There are future nonprofiteers like this one dude who works where I work named Mike.

There is a Ph.D candidate like Chiara in Education who will be doing research on Pinays.

There is one other dude named George at the School of Communications, who helped named Historic Filipinotown, and is looking to bring his research project to the wider Fil-Am community.

Meanwhile at the UC's, all I know is one guy named Paolo in education, who incidentally was a Pilipino UCLA transfer student but not a PTSPer but nonetheless helped us out at PTSP.

I'm curious as to what that's driven by. You'd think by virtue of UC being the public school, they would have more of us. Are they just that more disengaged from the LA community? Do they have impossible standards?

But there's a world beyond USC and UCLA.

Thinking more broadly about peer Filipinos in grad school, in my collection of 460 friends not going to SC or LA, I could almost count the number of people on one hand, (that is assuming I'm not counting finger joints and what not and just the typical phalange digits with the Arabic base-10 system.) Here's whom I know:

-An Economics M.A.
-An Asian Am M.A. going Ph.D
-An English M.A.
-Two Law Students
-A Counseling M.A.
-Two TFA people

I'm also struck by the fact that no one in my circle (with the notable exception of a friend Char knows) at Private Creme-de-la-creme high school where 99% of the graduating class goes to 4-year universities, is even in grad school. Mind you, Creme-de-la-creme High has a garbageload of its students in Grad School, mostly a bunch of law students. But as far as my circle of Filipinos at Creme-de-la Creme goes, were still at nil.

Perhaps that's driven by us being cheap, practical-minded Filipinos.

Chula Vista to UCLA and back

2009-02-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

This is attempt no. 2. My previous post was saved and then I erased it because I was quite informal on it and was being overly nostalgic.

My name is Ivan, PTSP alumni 2006 fall (History/English). I was formely a PTSP Bayanihan peer advisor (High School Specialist, 6 months), but a vacancy opened up for the Assistant Director. I officially took the position in November 2005, but before all that during the summer and the fall I think I was already unofficially filling that position.

In my first year at UCLA I went out to a few Samahang meetings and participated as a script writer for PCN, it was a learning experience. However, I didn't really feel in the right place. Aside from cultural performance, I wanted to get more involved with the Pilipino community on campus. Luckily I knew Theresa (through PCN) and JP (my SPEAR counselor). They coerced me into doing PTSP, jk.

I felt that working with transfer students was something I can do, because I remember how difficult it was for me to transfer. So I stepped up and became a peer advisor, then an Assistant Director. It wasn't easy handling internal direction for an outreach project, nor was it easy to relate the needs of the project to Executive Board. It was challenge to be apart of leadership, but it was an experience I am completely grateful for. So thanks goes out to JP and Theresa, for pulling me outta the weeds into student/community organizing.

Of course I cannot speak favorably about PTSP without mentioning the bonds that I have built from my time with the org. Of course it also did help that I lived on Kelton Ave in close (and I mean close) proximity to other PTSPers.

Being a few years out of UCLA, I now understand the opportunity that I had in front of me while I was there. I am currently a community organizer here in the San Diego area, mainly working out of Mira Mesa area (aka 'Manila Mesa'). Without putting down San Diego, I tip my hat off to Los Angeles for what they have. San Diego is in catch-up mode with respect to community organizing in the Pilipino community. We got a different flavor down here (as we should). Each city is different. I am happy that I can I apply what I learned here in my own community.

Currently I am apart of three organizations:

FAVE (Filipino/a Americans for Veterans Equity) - In FAVE we organize youth around the demand for recognition and benefits for Filipno Veterans and their families.

Anakbayan - Anakbayan is a youth organization oriented around social justice issues of Filipinos across the diaspora. Our concerns lie mainly with the National Democratic movement in the Philippines.

KAMP (Kuya Ate Mentorship Program) - KAMP is a collective of Filipino/a youth teaching Philippine History and Culture to High School students (most in Filipino language class), with the intent of establishing Filipino Studies as an elective.

The interesting thing is that my gateway into KAMP and the rest of the orgs I am apart of came from my connections with PTSP alumni. So I currently organize in the San Diego area with PTSP alumni Ana Bravo and Eugene Gambol.

Furthermore, KAMP intially takes it's cues from PEP (Pinoy Educational Partnerships) in SF State. PEP is ran by Professor Allyson Cubales. If I am not mistaken, she is one of PTSPs founding mothers. So imagine my surprise when I join up and I am doing the unity clap again and talking about doing "Sala Talks". Moreover, we base our methodology on Frierean Critical Pedagogy. In short, these connections matter.

If anybody has any questions about my orgs, please feel free to ask me.

In Solidarity,

Ivan

It All Falls Down

2009-02-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

The summer before my first year on Executive Board, we had a meeting with SPACE and PREP. I think we were trying to discuss how we could all work together. PREP and SPACE were doing the outreach thing to high school students, and PTSP had plans of starting up Bayanihan. We were supposed to present what the "transfer experience" was like. At the time, I didnt really understand the significance of being a Pilipino/community college/transfer student, but at this meeting I began to understand my experience.

I have JP Bareng Schumacher to thank for that. He came up with a very unique, very relevant activity to help put the transfer experience into perspective. He played this song:

Listen to the first verse:

Man I promise, she's so self conscious/She has no idea what she's doing in college/That major that she majored in don't make no money/But she won't drop out, her parents will look at her funny/Now, tell me that ain't insecurrreThe concept of school seems so securrre/Sophmore three yearrrs aint picked a careerrr/She like fuck it, I'll just stay down herre and do hair/Cause that's enough money to buy her a few pairs of new Airs/Cause her baby daddy don't really careShe's so precious with the peer pressure/Couldn't afford a car so she named her daughter Alexus (a Lexus)/She had hair so long that it looked like weave/Then she cut it all off now she look like Eve/And she be dealing with some issues that you can't believe/Single black female addicted to retail and well

Doesn't it sound like a situation someone would be facing at the community college? "Sophmore 3 years ain't picked a career," "she has no idea what she doing in college," "won't drop out her parents'll look at her funny," and more. When I heard this I could relate. I didn't go through exactly the same thing, but a lot of the issues were similar.

I think we ended up labeling "All Falls Down" the "PTSP Song" for that year. I continued using this activity in future retreats, as I thought it seemed fitting and helped get across the issues PTSP looked to address. This activity was so relevant and effective for me, I implemented it into the Orientation program at the community college I worked at. It was an excellent way to engage new students and have them think about why they were going to college and obstacles they may face.

On that note, I think this would be an excellent activity to use at the focus groups that will be taking place next month. I will see if I can make it, and if so, I'm down to do this activity.

Being Pilipino/Filipino/Fil-Am Ain't Always Easy...Theresa's Intro

2009-02-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

I guess since is my first entry in this blog, I should introduce myself. This could take forever, so I'll keep this short for now. =P

My PTSP stats include:
-Co-Founder AKA Mom of PTSP Bayanihan with JP
-PTSP Bayanihan's first official Director (and all the titles before Director)
-One of two of the first Alumni Advisors to PTSP (at least as far as I know)
-Co-author of the PTSP Bayanihan handbook (which I've still never seen the final version of, but -I bet probably needs some major revising), again with JP

All this is not to mention my many hats in Pilipino organizations and clubs and whatnot during my 2.5 years at UCLA, being that I am a transfer student. I graduated in 2005 to find myself pretty much unemployed, in debt, back at home, bored with life, car-less, newly-single--so pretty much in a terrible, terrible rut. Maybe this wasn't the best idea, but I thought med school (and more financial aid) would solve all these problems in one fantastic hit. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen...and I'm in my 3rd year, currently residing in Guadalajara, Mexico, to boot.

So I'm supposed to be studying, but I'll leave you with this story and question, and feel free to comment on this.

This weekend, I went to 2 super bowl parties. The first one, during the first half of the game, had tons of traditional football party food, drinks, yelling, and I was the only non-Mexican girl to boot, not to mention that there were only 5 girls there total. It was nice to be the only girl there that understood Futbol Americano as well. Anyway, that was one party. I went to another in the second half that was quite the opposite. It was quieter, less drinking, fast food, people studying in the other rooms, and I was literally the only person jumping around during plays and screaming at the TV. Perhaps one would think it was the 2 beers and tequila shot at the other party getting to me...but no. If you know me at all, you'll know that I'm like that during sports events as long as I feel I'm with people I'm comfortable with. After the game ended, we were just sitting around, sipping on beer and talking as people started to leave. About 2 more beers in, I couldn't drive anywhere just yet and stuck around.

Conversation went around...we were all joking around and such, when, to make a long story short, one of my friends started talking about race. I threw in my usual quip about myself: in Mexico, before I can say a word of my awful Spanish which completely lacks an accent, most people look at me and I am almost certain they think one of the following:
-She's Mexican.
-She's Asian...I think.
-I have no idea where this girl is from.
I swear most people think the third of the above the most often, as people constantly ask me where I'm from, especially after I talk. Usually I say California, but sometimes people ask for a more...in-depth answer. And some of those people have no idea where the Philippines is anyway, so I've just learned to let this go. This all is no longer weird to me, and that's where the story turns ugly.

You tell me--how would you respond to this statement:
Pilipinos are the Mexicans of Asian. Your last names are all Spanish like the Mexicans.

Perhaps fueled by the alcohol, I was pissed. My friend tried to play it off like we were all making fun of each other, that I was being too emotional in response to this, and that is was just 'cause I was drinking (by the way, I wasn't drunk either). He and my other friend walked off for a bit, and I stayed lying on the couch, trying not to explode. I left shortly after that, for more reasons than stayed here, but we haven't really talked since then (I'm hoping to soon) and I'm still kinda pissed.
Never mind we're on a different continent.
Never mind we have roots and history that go well past the time when Spain colonized us.
Never mind we've been colonized by countries other than Spain that have altered our nation's history and culture.
Never mind we don't speak Spanish in the Philippines as a primary language, definitely not as our national language.
Never mind I've personally struggled with my Pilipino-American identity before UCLA and afterwards still.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not insulted by the idea that we're like Mexicans. I have learned that we do have things in common with them for sure, and things that are different. I have nothing against Mexicans.
It's just that...his statement is moot, and makes light of all the ways that the Pilipino culture is one of its own. It hit me right in the gut. I'm still pissed just thinking about it.

I just wanted to know how you all feel about that, especially seeing as how I'm so detached from the world of Cali, where we Pilipinos/Filipinos/Fil-Ams are pretty much everywhere.

That's all for now.

En Fotografias: Traveling Thru My First Job

2009-02-01T20:49:00.000-08:00

Few months out of college, I got quite a few boos and nos left and right from potential employers. I did have this very odd and awkward hang-up with this boys home who'd offered me a job as a youth counselor, but told me that they lost my fingerprints so that pissed away 2 months of my time. It was just clank city as far as job-landing was concerned.

Keep in mind that I applied almost exclusively to nonprofit organizations cause I'm apparently not interested in making any kind of money and sort of had an impractical, natural aversion for corporate America, which is now officially ironic considering that my jobs to date have been centered on finding different ways of making money. And the different ways of making money often involve making nice with corporate America's various giving programs in support of my organization(s) and their work.

Give or take about 7 months of pondering my life goals, and thru strings of volunteering at various Los Angeles organizations, in February 2007, someone finally decided to say to me, why the hell not, come join us!

I felt a good vibe kick in when I kept emphasizing how much I loved writing, how I did that ish in my sleep, whether I was arguing on a basketball message board or whether a 66-page Academic Year Proposal for Bayanihan.

So...I worked as a Resource Development Specialist in support of LA County's Public Housing programs.

Basically I was someone who wrote proposals to people with money and did some other marketing stuff. A type of salesman who writes stuff to people with money. One of my cousins called that "intellectual/white-collar hustling."

Implicit in that job description was a whole lot of researching and pattern-finding while at a desk for 8 hours straight in a typical office building structure thing. I would call people, interview them, and occasionally travel to different sites. This was all quite alright for me, I did the best I could with it.

What really made the job however was becoming acquainted with the different subcultures and populations: the "work" subculture packed with office politics and gossip, the East Los subculture, the Long Beach subculture, the public housing population, the volunteer population.

This was in August during USC's first week of school hanging out at one of the housing sites. What USC does is have this kind of volunteer week where people sign up to volunteer at a place in the community. Was kinda alright, lot of kiddie kid 1st years though.

When you work in nonprofit development, you do a lot of schmoozing and networking. It's part of the work, which is relatively alright, especially after spending all your time up to the event making signs, setting up stuff, and cold calling lots of people.

The funnest Thanksgiving celebration ever. We had a Souljah Boy Contest at one of the sites.

I always gave her a smile when she peeked into the lunch room. I didn't know she had a lot to say about immigrants. Sorry, but I was hella disappointed when I learned that she already had a kid and a husband.

Three Mexican ladies that ate with me almost every other lunch, and took me out to a place during my last week. They're Mexican so they knew Mexican and gave me Mexican.

Other people threw me a party, sort of, like these Asian women here! Actually, there was some kind of baby shower or something as the cause of celebration.

The place was pretty much female-dominated. Women of color, too. Something they made mention of at orientation. I was the only guy who worked in my department at the office, which might've made the dynamic a little weird at times, but I was just content to be there and listen to whatever they said.

Akademic Conference Panels, Being Filipino, and Rewiring Reality

2009-01-30T17:52:00.000-08:00

Since I've graduated, and teased out all the possible careers, I've attended a bunch of academic conferences in topics I thought I'd be interested in. I went to one about California Studies. One about the history of the Pacific Rim. One about the re-addition of streetcars in downtown LA. And today, one on Critical Social Neuroscience.

Can you just feel the jumps in career-making in that?

I don't really go to talk to anyone, to network or whatever, I go there for taking things in and mainly observing how academics talk. All conferences have had very interesting bits to me, and I got a bunch of notes from each of them that I never bother looking at ever again. Obviously, these conferences are stock full of older folks, professors, elders, usually a good blend of males and females of all races and ethnicities.

However, there was something a bit agitating in the Los Angeles streetcar workshop and the Critical Social Neuroscience workshop.

In their final panels of 8 people or more, each conference bragged a panel of "experts."

Take a wild guess who they are? As in, guess what demographic they represent.

Suspense killing you?

Middle-aged. White. Males. All of them.

No, I'm not here to bash on white folks or to bash on the groups of experts, or to bash whatever they've accomplished as individuals. Matter of fact, most experts do say lots of interesting things, which is why I probably go to a conference in the first place.

I'm here to bash the reasons, the root causes for that regularity. Root causes being exclusionary policies and actions from years of district redlining to job discrimination, at a job where you might not "fit".

What I am agitated about is not these experts themselves, but just the regularity to all this. The regularity, the pattern that middle-aged white males are the experts. The normality that middle-aged white males are the experts. The people assumed to know things the best. The people who are chosen to represent what we should listen to. The people who can ultimately influence decisions in stuff as wide as media perception to public policy-making. Ultimately the people who are seen as rational, logical thinkers. Ultimately, the people who in large numbers are perceived as qualified and skilled. Ultimately, the people who are perceived as the "normal" of society to whom we should all adapt. Ultimately, the people who "fit" in anywhere.

I can't really verbalize how badly I want to disrupt that regularity. By having more of us up there.

This doesn't mean that I sit thru each of these conferences looking at these experts agonizing over the paucity of people of color. I notice it, but it doesn't ever distract me from the content of what's said.

However, when this dynamic really hits me is when I'm actually at home out of that academic space and plugged into my everyday reality.

Virtually everyone else that surrounds me does not look or talk like those academics or experts. I don't know many folks in my circle with anything higher than an M.A. (which would be Chiars!). The generation ahead of us brought us here which is cool, but it's not like they were able to make friends with lawyers, doctors, bankers, professors, and have those friends hire us once we got out of college or serve as a reference. Historic Filpinotown, Panorama City, South LA, East LA. North, East, South, I'm rolling around in dirt brown country with a few sprinkles of hipster. Every weekend when I play basketball in Eagle Rock, it's brown kids around my age whose places of origin were colonized by Spain either from the Philippines or Central America. We are barely effin' employed as bank tellers, video poker players, lowly lab assistants, high school tutors, teachers at nonprofits, and or going back to school and whatnot. Eh, I guess It's cool, for now.

Good to be here and all, but later we need to be there as well.

Research on Pinays

2009-01-29T23:15:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! This is Chiara again. I'm starting to build on my dissertation topic and it looks like I'm headed towards studying the vocational choice of 1.5- and 2nd-generation female Filipino American college students. I'm in the very early stages of my research and am wondering if any of the current UCLA undergrads can suggest a student org meeting, a class, or any event I can sit in on and do a preliminary observation. I've contacted the Pinays coordinator of Samahang and she's informed me of the collective taking place on Feb. 17. I'm looking to conduct an observation sooner than 2/17, and I'm unsure of when the various Filipino orgs meet now that I'm no longer on campus. It doesn't have to be a formal meeting; an Asian Am class would do. In any case, I'd appreciate any leads you have of events &/or classes. I can be reached at chiara.paz@gmail.com. Thank you!

Focus Group @ El Camino Community College: Inviting all alumni

2009-01-28T08:39:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody, I'm glad to see so many people contribute to the blog site and I just wanted to let everybody know that PTSP will be holding a focus group/open discussion forum at El Camino Community College on March 4 from 5-7. It will be held at the student services center, Room 106-Counseling Division Conference Room. Basically, it will just give us a chance to have transfers speak out their concerns about transferring to a four-year university. PTSP members will share their experiences on what's it like to be in a University. I want to extend the event to all the alumnis so that they can share their post grad experience as well. Let me know if you can come out and support. O, and there will be free food (hopefully Filipino food!)

SPEAR Post-Graduate Workshop

2009-01-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

To All PTSP Alums,

SPEAR is hosting a Post-Graduate Workshop on Thursday February 12. We are looking for Alumni who are interested in giving advice to students on post-grad options. PTSP Alumni can help in two ways:

1) SPEAR is looking for alumni to come and speak at the workshop, held on Thursday, February 12. More specifically, we are looking for at least one alum who have experience under the following fields: nursing, public health, teaching, engineering, pre-health, law, graphics/art design, public policy, entertainment, music, economic/finances/accounting/business, Asian-American related fields. If you are interested in helping us out, you can contact me at education@samahang.org.

2) Here's the link to a PostGrad survey. SPEAR is trying to gauge where Alum from various years are, and how they can help prepare today's undergraduates for a more secure future, esp. with the economic crisis. If you have a few minutes, please fill it out. It's fun!

Click here.

Thank you.

Mike de Vera,

Academics Coordinator, PTSP

My Story

2009-01-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hello PTPS'ers. I think it's about time I contributed to this blog, so here's my story.

My name is Angeline and I was a Bayanihan intern in 07, Chair in 07-08, and the current Alumni Advisor. I transferred to UCLA in 06 from Ventura College. Before that I went to NYU for a year. So I've experienced my fair share of schools. From out of state private schools, to community colleges, to a UC. I even spent a semester abroad, but that's another story. I guess my point is out of all the schools I attended UCLA was the one where I felt most at home. Which is kind of odd since I never wanted to go to UCLA while I was in high school and I actually hated it there my first few weeks. But that all changed when I got more involved.

So my first two years of college, I focused on academics because somewhere along the way I decided that my goal was to graduate with honors. Also, during my freshman year I was still adjusting to living in New York and I figured I would have the next three years to get involved. But the summer after my first year my plans changed (long story short NYU does not give out sufficient financial aid and paying 50,000+ for three years was not an option for my family) and I went to community college. I took about 7 classes a semester at VC to make sure I could transfer in a year and I got involved as a tutor, but that was the extent of my community college experience.

Anyway, I was hoping to transfer to Berkley because I never pictured myself at UCLA. But since I didn't get in, UCLA it was. I didn't enjoy it very much at first, so I got involved to get my mind off of things and of course to build my resume. I started with BruinCorps, then Unicef, and then thanks to my cousin who also transferred to UCLA a few years back PTSP ( he suggested it because he wished he would have joined while he was there). I did a lot my first year at UCLA and PTSP was kind of in the back drop until we started prepping for SEND and until my SPEAR counselor started encouraging me to consider a leadership position. So in prepping for SEND I realized that PTSP was something I wanted to continue to be involved in and with the encouragement from my fellow interns I ran for Chair.

My last year at UCLA was crazy. I spent the first quarter living a care free life abroad and the last two worrying about keeping PTSP alive and my grades up (graduating with latin honors . Luckily, I had a very supportive board who put up with my craziness and we made it through. My best memories of college have been with PTSP and even though I can't express in words what PTSP has meant to me, I know everyone who is involved with this blog knows how important PTSP is for whatever reason.

So that's my story of how I came to be involved with PTSP.

That came out longer than I expected, and I didn't even talk about what I did with PTSP. But I can tell you what PTSP did for me. The leadership experience I gained in PTSP helped me get accepted into Teach For America, an organization that puts people passionate about equity in education in the classroom. So I am currently a Kindergarten teacher in Oakland. It wasn't the grade level I originally wanted, but I am happy with it. Although I don't plan to be a K teacher forever, it's something very rewarding for the time being. I am also in school working on my credentials and a master's in Education. My plan is to continue teaching for a few more years and go back and get another masters (maybe even a PhD) and become a community college professor, but in my experience plans change and that's okay with me.

I don't know how often I will be writing on this blog (I find it very stressful to think of something to write worthy enough for my peers to read) but know you can contact me anytime and if you ever find yourself in Oakland, don't be a stranger!

~angeline

Swimming the Unemployment Pool

2009-01-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

The unemployment pool is getting to be as full as the one used for swimming in Sherman Oaks recreation center on a July day. I was rubbing elbows, bashing teeth in, Didier Drogba kicking people, but I've finally climbed out, kind of.

Unemployment in LA County was measured at 9.9% for December.

The state Employment Development Department today reported that the December jobless rate was up almost a full percentage point from 8.4% in November. It stood at 5.9% a year earlier.

The rate for Los Angeles County, which like the state number is seasonally adjusted, was 9.9% for December, up from a revised 8.9% for November.

9.3% in the state of California.

Officially the highest in 15 years.

This means that a sizable amount of folks lack legal money-making activites.

If it weren't for the social safety net called my parents, I could've tipped the balance to a full 10% and filed for unemployment, but I wouldn't do that to you guys.

The news of sky-rocketing unemployment is doubly bad for young folks. This fact documented by the NY Times. It probably has to do with the fact that not a lot of people trust us. They think were lazy and pampered. So goes the story of every generation, ever.

And the news gets even worse still for males of color.

But it has also taken its hardest toll on racial minorities. Among men age 25 to 34 — the youngest group in which virtually all have completed their education — there were 1.6 percent fewer jobs for whites, 2.1 percent fewer for Hispanics, and 6.2 percent fewer for blacks.

But wait, wait, not yet finished. Los Angeles County is expecting to lose 144,000 jobs in 2009, according to a forecast from the US Conference of Mayors.

Three Strikes, and were out!

I'm really really really grateful for all that volunteering experience for the job I have now, though. With PTSP. Post-PTSP with the various community organizations in LA. I'm greatful that I even had the opportunity, and the space to do that. One of my UC-Santa Cruz friends, a guy trying to make his dent in the world of journalism, once told me that the way to get in where there wasn't a job was to volunteer. Work for free. Intern. I think it sort of paid off for me, as I end up knowing all the people in and around the organization.

I don't know how that applies across various fields, but it's stuck with me. I think it sorta works. It was a point reinforced by Will Smith's last great movie about pursuing happyness; a man on the streets and his will to survive interning at a brokerage firm's stipend, and eventually making good on it. You know, so many times, it seemed like it happened too fast. He might have changed his passion for glory in 6 months, but it didn't seem like he ever gave up on his dreams of the past. The logic behind volunteering and working your way into a job seems to be built on the premise of becoming familiar with your employer's working culture.

Seems that ultimately what prospective employers want to know is that you "fit" into your job. This idea syncs nicely with that old maxim, "it's not what you know, it's who you know." Most propsective employers have told me many times that while they were impressed by my resume, my cover letter, they ultimately did not hire me because I did not "fit."

When you volunteer (which is just ONE avenue to getting a job besides just basic, good ole-fashioned networking and schmoozing over cocktails) you possibly take away concerns of that "fit." You could show your dedication, your work ethic. As a volunteer immersed into their culture, MAYBE you won't require much orientation or training. But as a rule of thumb, I doubt there are many employers who want to invest their time and money in someone who seems like an outsider and/or is "new", especially in my field.

So, with the job market not in the favor of people of color and young people, where exactly do you go nowadays to get a job?

Film industry which was considered recession-proof has been cutting back, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people, and even super-successful companies like Sony and Google have even lost money. Even college-educated Chinese folks feel the pinch.

Despite virtually everyone having lost something, there has been growth elsewhere.

Those industries growing? Prisons and the military of course! The institutions that thrive upon providing illusions of all kinds, including that of security.

Prisons will eventually cost more than education.

The prison population has grown by 8% since 2003, to more than 173,000. But the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s budget has exploded, increasing 79% to $8.5 billion, and is expected to top $10 billion next year.

The report concluded that substance abuse treatment programs, which have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion since 1989, have had no effect on keeping people off drugs so that they don’t end up back in prison.

The average monthly salary of corrections officers has increased 57% during the current decade, to $4,959 a month, according to the department.

Sillen, for his part, has raised salaries for doctors, nurses, dietitians and X-ray technicians to fill long-standing vacancies and recruit more skilled employees. Prison pharmacists, for instance, who had earned less than half the salaries they could get outside the system, have received 64% raises to as much as $123,936 a year.

There is little sign that the growth in the prisons budget will abate any time soon. Prison healthcare spending alone has increased 263% since 2000, to $2.1 billion a year,

Awesome pay if you work within the prison system!

They seem to cost a lot for no real societally-beneficial reason, other than the fact that people make a lot of money from it.

Military getting more applications than usual.

Another lure is the new G. I. Bill, which will significantly expand education benefits. Beginning this August, service members who spend at least three years on active duty can attend any public college at government expense or apply the payment toward tuition at a private university. No data exist yet, but there has traditionally been a strong link between increased education benefits and new enlistments.

Trading your body for knowledge.

If the military nor the corrections system interests you, like just about every other Filipino you know here in the United States, you could do nursing and head into the health care industry. That's one thing that seems to be recession-durable. One of my friends who got a Sociology degree at UC-Riverside is now on track to become a nurse. She's enrolled at Los Angeles City College. One of my b-ball friends who was going to be an electrical engineer decided to switch course and become an Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN).

However, that's not all necessarily us.

I think most of us in PTSP, the Pilipino organization community, and UCLA generally really love what we do and what we study, which tends to be "impractical", "humanistic", "activist", social sciences stuff (or maybe that's just me), and we tend to follow just that. The job market tends not to smile down on those kind of activities.

I had thought that teaching would be a stable job. However, education across the board K-16 has been ravaged with LAUSD was on the verge of laying-off 2,300 teachers. Teachers! The people actually in the classroom dealing with boogery, smelly little kids. One of my cuzzos, an LAUSD teacher in Watts, says that the lay-offs would have been based on seniority, meaning that the younger folks would've ate the dust on this.

I've done the temp thing, which ranged from attending TV tapings in Studio City to scanning documents all the live long day. I would've loved to have kept on scanning documents for as long as I could to break out of my debts. Unfortunately, my main supervisor, who was kind of an idiot and smelled like she had 15 years of peanut-butter jelly sandwiches stapled to her ass, didn't seem to like me and launched me on my merry way.

There might be some hope within the green jobs industry. Obama's got the green thing going for him and is part of his proposed stimulus. All kinds of job-training and education should be in it. Apparently, 57,000 jobs can be created in National Parks alone. Interesting also is the fact that becoming an urban planner is a great practical job idea. I actually was on track to do that, but obviously I'm not a fan of practicality or stable jobs, so I've decided that I'm going to follow my nose to some kind of professorship or something.

In the meanwhile, it's writing grants, marketing, and doing numerous gigs.

Like the gig below:

Here is one opportunity from the US government that I myself will be taking. And it seems to pay decently.

The Bureau has set up a great website detailing the recruitment effort for Census enumerators. The Census enumerators are meant to go out into their communities and confirm the addresses of almost everyone. The pay is quite good and varies by the geographic location. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area the pay starts at $22.00 an hour.

Yeah, we all need a little paper to survive. The pool is crowded, folks might be drowning. It'd be cool if other PTSPers and other folks within the UCLA community would toss out some of those lifesavers around and yanked others out.

For added inspiration and to close this post out, ladies and gentlemen, Vlade Divac.

Help Support my Lil Sister, a PTSP-bred Designer

2009-01-22T23:55:00.000-08:00

My lil sister is a 3rd year environmental engineering student at UC-Riverside. When I was with PTSP, I made her the unofficial designer of all things Bayanihan.

She pimped out our logo.

and

our myspace.

and

She also busted the numerous iterations of SENT and SEND Flyers.

She inherited the part of my dad that does graphic arts.

Now she's on to big things. Her high school uses a design she originally made for T-Shirts in their centennial commemoration journals. She won a Chris Brown CD Cover Design contest. Her stuff is on his myspace.

And now, she just entered a UNESCO design competition. The task was to create a poster for International Mother Language Day on February 21st centered in Paris, France.

This is what she came up with.

I wrote the description.

This poster represents a visual interpretation of the quote "A different language is a different vision of life" described by linguists Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir, anthropologist Franz Boas, and most popularly attributed to Italian movie director Federico Fellini. The iris represents a satellite view of planet Earth and is looking towards the background. In the background, the quote is translated into various languages spanning the global community: English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, French, Filipino, Italian, Japanese, Swahili, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Romanian, and Inuit. These languages represent only a portion of the planet which reflects accordingly back on the iris; the iris contains only a partial view of planet Earth. As captured by Linguist K. David Harrison in his work "When Languages Die," "language disappearance is an erosion or extinction of ideas, of ways of knowing and ways of talking about the world and human experience." Acquisition of multiple languages enables an individual to "see the world through another's eyes." The individual is allowed a new in-"sight", a new thought, a new idea into the human condition. Without having this list of languages to look at, the iris would be staring at an empty background.

She's facing a field of 1133 other entries. If you want to help us win, you'll have to do this:

1) Go to this website.
2) Sign up (name and email)
3) Sift thru a dastardly amount of entries (1133) that are brought up in random order, paying attention when you finally do see the poster above and clicking the Green Vote button

Don't expect anyone to sit and do this because that took way too much time even for me, but just saying, just in case.

My PTSP Experience

2009-01-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Hello Hello. It's Dom again, now coming with a proper intro piece.

I transferred to UCLA in the Fall of 03 from my hometown of Salinas (Salas Represent!). I stayed at UCLA for 3 years and graduated in 06. During that time I served as PTSP Vice Chair 04-05, Academics Coordinator 05-06, SPEAR Counselor 05-06, and Education 80 Discussion Leader Fall 05.

My first year I wasn't big on extracurriculars at all. I was real focused on academics and getting good grades, plus it was just a huge adjustment coming from where i'm from. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't a square ass book worm who didn't go out. I did my fair share of partying and chillin, I just didn't really have direction.

Towards the end of my first year I started the process of my "holistic development." The reason I put this term in quotations is because it became taboo among my fellow PTSP'ers. It gets thrown around a lot in the P org community, but in the end it's meaning rings true. Without this concept I would've graduated with no real understanding of myself, my community, and where I wanted to go.

Choosing to become involved was probably the 2nd best decision i made in my life (1st being going to UCLA). I started attending PTSP meetings during Spring qtr of my first year, and instantly found a comfort level. I had homies from the apartments, and we were real koo, but I bonded on another level with the folks I met in PTSP. Everyone was welcoming, and it was a small group as well. Samahang kind of turned me off because they were such a large group. PTSP was a nice alternative. After coming to a few meetings I knew that I had found my niche.

Vice Chair was the first leadership position I EVER held. I took the job tentatively and a bit scared, not knowing what to expect. But I put my heart into it cause I wanted to give back to the organization that opened so many doors for me. That first year on Board was an excellent excellent year. I get excited just thinking about it. We were innovators and we were taking the org to another level!! All the while I was learning about myself, about the unique experience that is the transfer experience, about the Pilipino experience, about the educational system. I was meeting new friends, and I was forging bonds with what would be my FAMILY.

So many things sprung from my involvement in PTSP. Like i said, i found my niche and i didnt want to stop there. I stayed on Board another year, I became a SPEAR counselor (which was another great experience), and I was a discussion leader for a class of great students including bball super stars Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Alfred Aboya!! (if you don't know who they are, you are not a true bruin : p). Moreover, this involvement made me realize that I wanted to work in Education, and that I wanted to serve my community.

Amidst all my other involvements, I always knew that PTSP was my heart. Reason being because they were the folks that first opened up to me, they were the folks I struggled with, and they were the folks I could relate to. They knew where i was coming from and we were all able to learn from one another. Today these people are family.

This commraderie has always been a PTSP trademark. It was the quality I always tried to exude when I was a Board member. Beyond the politics, the empowerment, the activism, is the friendship. Thats the first thing. Without it none of the other stuff will work.

Whew! so that's my PTSP experience in a nut shell. I'm glad I have a space where I can share my experience. I hope that it offers some kind of perspective to current PTSP'ers. Ilook forward to sharing more with you. I also look forward to hearing from current PTSP members. Let me know what y'all are going through. I'm sure you have much to share!

PTSP WINTER RETREAT 2009

2009-01-21T15:37:00.000-08:00

Some pics from PTSP's winter retreat 2009 at Lake arrowhead.

Jill Biden, Community College Advocate

2009-01-21T07:31:00.000-08:00

Apologize in advance if this is already common knowledge, as this stuff is already in her Wikipedia. However, I feel like it should be said.

While watching the Inauguration yesterday on NBC News, the commentators made mention of Second Lady, Jill Biden's career as an academic and her role in this new administration.

Apparently, all she wants to do is continue working at the community college.

This, despite being offered positions at more "prominent, high-profile" universities. Obviously, any rational American logic dictates that she seek the creme-de-la-creme of professorships and tuck herself away in the ivory tower. But not Jill Biden, who sort of looks like the alternate universe version of John McCain's wife.

We should mother-effin' call her G-Biden because she's a G, and I definitely know one when I see one. What she's done is more or less what I'd want to do. I think.

She's had quite a history of plowing through, pushing on with her work, almost regardless of Joe's numerous campaigns for presidency and vice-presidency.

Throughout the time her husband was running for vice president, Jill Biden continued to teach four days a week at Delaware Technical & Community College during the Fall 2008 semester, and then campaigned over the long weekend, while grading class papers on the campaign bus.

And it seems like she remains adamant about keeping it that way, having authored a paper specifically about student retention at the community college. She'd be prime example of instructor retention for the community college.

While she moved to the vice presidential residence in Washington as Second Lady of the United States, she plans to continue teaching at a Washington-area community college. She has been weighing offers from institutions such as Montgomery College, Northern Virginia Community College, and the University of the District of Columbia.

Jill Biden's White House Plans

DC-Area Community colleges fighting over Jill Biden

On a side note, it's amazing how grounded Barack, Michelle, Joe, and Jill have been in their careers and throughout this campaign. From Joe's notorious Amtrak-riding days, Barack and Michelle stepping out of the limo to walk their own parade yesterday, to Jill's dogged insistence at remaining in the community college, I speak for a grip of people who really hope that this is all more than just a façade.

Remember

2009-01-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

Hello PTSP. This is Dom, Vice Chair 04-05 and Academics Coordinator 05-06. Glad to see that we are getting a lot of participation on the blog!! I'm excited!

I wanted to post about my background and experience with PTSP first, but being that it is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I thought I'd post about that. His actual birthday is January 15th, but for some reason we don't celebrate on that day any more. So on the day we observe his birthday, I wanted to shout him out and remind people of the relevance of his work and how it relates to our work today.

Last night I saw the History Channel documentary, "KING" which "focused on the man, rather than the legend." I was really inspired by what I saw. Dr. King was passionate, and selfless about his work. He and so many other people put their heart and soul into the civil rights movement, and despite the hatred and bigotry they faced they succeeded in making progress for the people.

We are on a similar path today. Our country is restless and we are ready for a change. But it will not be easy. Obama’s campaign energized America and on the verge of his inauguration, it is crucial to look back on the civil rights movement and Dr. King's work. Theirs was a labor of love, and patience. Change was not immediate, and it came with many hardships. In a world of instant gratification, this is what we must understand. Just because Obama is in the White House does not mean things will get easier. We have to ready ourselves for the tough tasks ahead. And we have to remember that one man is not going to change things, WE all have to be part of the change.

How does this relate to PTSP? As former and current PTSP members we are agents of change. I think we tend to forget the impact we have, and can have on the community. It’s easy to lose perspective of the work we do, and our potential amidst the stresses of school, work, and life. But keep in mind that we are capable of making change.

With that said, I’ll leave you with this.

Post-Grad De-fragging

2009-01-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

(Note: I'm just filling the space until everyone posts, exploring the different directions to go with this PTSP blog: past memories of PTSP, academic experiences from UCLA, broader educational issues affecting community college transfers and the UC, and now this personal post-graduation de-frag.

I'm NOT going to drown out what other people have to say by making 2posts a day, so this'll be my last post till EVERYONE whose emailed me an emphatic YESSSSSS or COUNT ME IN like the vampire from Sesame Street actually starts posting on their own. I'm sick of talking, everyone else please speak up.)

It's been 2 and a half years since I got that B.A in Anthropology from UC of LA.

Every day that I spent unemployed, which has been about half the time of that 2 and a half years, there would be moments when I felt like such a motherfuckin' chump.

There wasn't a day that went by where I did not think at least one of the thoughts below: when am I going to stop being a pansy-ass and move out of this house? What kind of skills did I actually learn in 4 years of college? God, I should've stuck it out with math. God, I should've learned more Spanish. Where did all this theorizing and anthropologizing get me? Why the hell did I nail myself to such a new unproven project in PTSP Bayanihan and not get a real job and/or research experience? Where the hell are my hook-ups now? When am I just going to blast past all this shit and go to graduate school?

Things usually didn't get better hearing about how some grade and high school mates were doing awesome. One of them who was really involved in doing all kinds of crap in college and managed to stay employed, had already gone thru 3 jobs. She was some kind of auditor. One of them was a computer engineer who made almost as much as my mommy. A lot of my high school mates were in law school. Some doing other kinds of graduate school. A grip were/are in New York, Washington DC.

Meanwhile, I'm still in LA living in the incubator called my parents' house.

Inevitably in these 2 and a half years have been countless social functions with family, high school friends, and new friends, where I've had to explain myself to people.

"What are you doing now?"

"How much do you make?"

"Oh, I heard the County has great benefits!"

"Why don't you teach?"

"Why don't you look into the LAUSD?"

"Do you have a girlfriend now?"

Those days of unemployment were more of a daily grind than the time that I spent employed. Least when employed, I could mindlessly sink into a daily routine and had reason to go out and about afterward. I could confidently maintain in conversation with Acquaintence X or Sir Anonymous Muckety Muck Muck, "why yes, I do pick asses and brains for a living, ha ha ha, how 'bout yourself?"

But even though I was really anxious about being unemployed, those were very temporary. Extremely temporary. I said that I only had *moments* during the day when I'd think about all the crap that I didn't do yet. Rest of my day, I was farting out skittles and pissing out rainbows.

Cause I'd read other people's stories.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

A story about a kid from Malawi building windmills from busted bicycle parts.

And last but not least a last lecture by a guy who knew he was going to die.

The History of Science and Medicine Minor at Bruinopolis

2009-01-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

When I got to taking classes full-time at Westwood, I was heavily under the influence of this class I took at UC-Santa Cruz called "Science as Cultural Practice." It was stashed in a department called the History of Consciousness.

History in the History of Consciousness program wasn't really history in the sense of establishing dates, names, accomplishments, we just went over different topics over different time periods and more remarkably across different borders and regions.

Our reading material included a random assortment of the Rule of Experts, Maps, Tricksters, and Cartographers, and Twice Dead. The topics: the artificiality inherent in cartography and the construction of maps, brain death, the masculinity embodied within the sciences.

I was 18. Technically, the language was English, but fuck if I understood most of what my professor, my TA, or my books were saying.

Still, I knew that it was very fascinating stuff. Science six years ago and science today occupies the reverence religion seemed to have in the medieval ages. In sum, no laypeople, mere civilians, homies on the block, dare question its validities, its institutional power. Scientific findings work for our purposes, namely creating new technologies. People study hard to become scientists and we laypeople, civilians, homies are in no position to challenge their opinions.

What we were doing in this class was reversing that tide (if only temporarily and in one microfractioned space of the world). We were exposing all the artificiality, the emotions, the politics inherent within science. We were exposing the human, error-laiden side of science, that which is often ignored in popular discourse.

When I got to da school, I wanted more of that type of book-learnin' and analysis.

The closest I could find to that experience was the history of science located in UCLA's history department. Without hesitation, I took up the history of science and medicine minor.

Save for my one class called Social Knowledge and Power, appropriately enough taught by a UC-Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Ph.D., we actually talked about...the History of Science and Medicine. The history of Western science and medicine.

So, it wasn't the history of the history of consciousness. It was history of businesses and patents acting as the infrastructure to white guy creativity and geniusness. It was the history of John Snow, Conrad Roentgen, Andreas Vesalius, William James. It was history of Isaac Newton, Antoine Lavoisier, Lamarck, Chuck Lyell, Chucky Darwin. Most of these topics were the classes that sunk my GPA.

A lot of this pretty interesting in their own right, but if you're really into dead white guys, their rationality, their objectivity, and the great things they accomplished in technological history, this department is quite possibly your calling in life. Not mine.

The Summer of 2005: PTSP Bayanihan in the Community and Dreams of a Future

2009-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

When I first got the position of Bayanihan Director in June '05, I was all about getting us out into the community of Los Angeles. I wanted us to build community resources unlike any other organization at UCLA.

I started with the largest, most visible symbol of Filipinos in Los Angeles - SIPA or Search to Involve Pilipino Americans. We were going to volunteer with them!

Starting with their community event, SIPA Summer!

From the left to the right (and notice whose at the very left) Pens, B-Saturday, Gelatinous Jel, YT (yours truly), Dom

I honestly expected a lot more people to show up since it was a Historic Filipinotown party and they did go to the trouble of cordoning off a block.

However, I didn't want to admit to the people with me that it was a waste of time. I really hated admitting any kind of failure back then especially in the incubator ages of Bayanihan, so I guarded against that by turning this into an opportunity to survey people about community college and education.

I figured that this was the opportunity to ask local community people about their perceptions of community college. This was when and where I began to think that we could've made a part of PTSP Bayanihan into some kind of research group.

A research group staffed full of students that PTSP would recruit into our intern program, who rather than having SPEAR and SPACE methodologies spat back at them, were engaging in the process of active student-driven knowledge creation. I thought that's where the real student power would emerge: when we began to be the ones defining knowledge. Creating it. Using it...to influence current thinking and most importantly action amongst administrators, professors, and other forms of media.

Hola from a former PTSP-er!

2009-01-15T00:58:00.000-08:00

Hello PTSP-ers! I'm Chiara Paz, PTSP alum from the Class of '03. I'm quite excited to see that this phenomenal student org is still very much alive and is continuing to create a niche for Pilipino transfer students at UCLA. Thanks to Brian for reaching out to the old timers and letting us know about this online venue.

Let's see...for starters, let me share a little bit of my Bruin background. I transferred in Fall '00 from L.A. City College and entered as a Psych major. I initially thought I'd be a clinical psychologist and tried to make Franz Hall my home. Later I realized that my calling is in education and decided to complete the Education Studies Minor & Applied Developmental Psych Minor. It made sense at that time because I planned to become a high school science teacher.

After graduation, I took the very popular "year off" to mull over life goals, prepare for various tests like the GRE and CSET, and submit applications to different schools of education. Like any college graduate, I needed some form/source of income and that led me to holding 4 part-time jobs located in the farthest corners of Los Angeles (all of which were education-related). Upon realizing that my paychecks were being funneled to my Chevron gas card due to the enormous amount of driving I had to do and that I needed some form of health coverage, I began to search for one full-time job. That's when I landed a position as a Student Affairs Officer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS). 'Twas a credential counselor position which allowed me to work vicariously with teacher education graduate students. Consequently, my "year off" turned into two & a half years off. And my goal of becoming a teacher shifted to a goal of becoming a university professor.

In Fall '05, I began the M.A. program in Higher Education & Organizational Change at UCLA while still working full-time in GSE&IS. [One tip to future UCLA employees: the university pays for 2/3 of your tuition if you're admitted to any academic program on campus.] I finished my M.A. in '07 and I'm now enrolled in that school across town, the name of which true Bruins dare not mention here. I'm in my 2nd year in the Ph.D. program in Urban Education, with a concentration in Higher Ed. [Another tip: the school across town offers full funding for 4 years. This means that tuition is covered and students receive a monthly stipend for living expenses.]

All that being said, I hope I can be a resource for you as you go through the ropes of being an undergrad and as you ponder post-graduation objectives. Even though I had an inkling of what I wanted to do after my B.A., I certainly didn't have a straightforward path that led to my current graduate program. There were many twists, U-turns, 3-point turns, somersaults, and most inevitably emotional rollercoasters too. These twists and turns still take place until today as I figure out my dissertation topic and what I want to do with a Ph.D. in education. I'd be happy to chit chat with you about curiosities you might have about life after UCLA or also possibly connect you with the other old PTSP fogeys who are in specific fields you intend to pursue. There are a handful of other alums from '03 and back who are still in the area and who may be able to share their insights too.

I'm always on e-mail (chiara.paz@gmail.com) and look forward to hearing from you.

UC Cuts Freshman Enrollment by 6%, 2,300 Students

2009-01-14T21:59:00.001-08:00

But hold on...It's not that bad for people at UCLA, Berkeley, grad students, and transfer students.

...Enrollment would not be cut at UCLA and UC Berkeley, the most popular campuses, and expansion would continue at UC Merced, the newest school, according to the plan that is to be reviewed by the UC regents next week. The other six undergraduate campuses would see some freshman reductions.

...The number of graduate students would not change under the proposal

...The number of students who transfer from community colleges would increase by about 500, or about 3%.

UC Proposal

Not to encourage further cuts to public education, but having spent my first and second year in dorm life at UC-Santa Cruz, my friend 'Yell and I came to the conclusion that there were plenty of spaces being wasted on some utterly useless kids.

PTSP Alumni Network

2009-01-14T14:53:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, this is Andrew Hambre (08-09 Bayanihan Coordinator). PTSP Board was just talking about the effectiveness of this blogsite and what we wanted to get out of it. After looking at the people who are involved with the site, I thought why not make this site an open space where current PTSP members and alumni's can use to share our experiences in and out of UCLA. As a UCLA student and PTSP board member, I have questions of my future and what I am going to do after college. I don't know if I want to go to graduate school right away and looking for a long term permanent job is also not what I want to do just yet. I would like to hear to stories or experiences from PTSP alums so I can get a general idea or vision of what it's like after college. I would also like to know that there is a space where I can reach out to PTSP and share my experience after college. What do you all think? I believe having the PTSP blog be an alumni network is a good idea. Dom and Brian can you somehow reach other alums and have them join the PTSP Alumni Network blog site?

Perception of the Importance of a College Education

2009-01-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

There was some food for thought I came across in last month's Public Policy Institute of California Bulletin.

In California, Latinos (84%) are far more likely than Asians (69%), blacks (63%), or whites (57%) to believe college is necessary for success in today’s work world.

Similarly, our April survey on K–12 education found that Latinos (61%) were by far the most likely racial/ethnic group to consider college preparation the most important goal of California’s K–12 public schools (31% Asians, 30% blacks, 21% whites).

Majorities in all political and demographic groups today believe that college is necessary to be successful, but this view declines as education and income levels rise, and is much lower among residents age 55 and older (57%) than residents age 18–34 (71%) or 35–54 (73%).

In other words...

The most underrepresented ethnic groups in college and in high-power influential socio-economical-political positions are more likely to believe that going to college is a key to success.

These underrepresented ethnic groups who've traditionally been thought of as any one of lazy and careless, actually believe in the value of a college education more so than people who've historically dominated the system, still do, and whose demographic is still overrepresented in the most influential parts of society.

What does that suggest?

For me it reminds me of that Everybody Hates Chris episode where Chris Rock's white Italian friend says "no matter hard I try, I just can't fail!"

Transferring and the PTSP Acronym

2009-01-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

There is no one way to characterize my transfer experience from UC-Banana Slug to UCLA in one sentence with one emotion.

Upon typing up my application number and student ID for about the 29th time that minute, and seeing that my application was being reviewed each time, Dr. Vu Tran finally delivered me the news.

"Congratulations Brian!"

Holy shit.

My next-door dorm neighbor named 'Yell was in the room playing NBA Street 2 or something while I was checking up on my future. Once I saw that "Congratulations Brian!" at the top of the screen, any attempt to inhibit that upward-teeth-revealing crease formed by my lips was futile. Trying to hold in the smile was like the New Orleans levee system trying to stop Hurricane Katrina.

Some time later in the week, 'Yell told my other friend Joe that I was gone.

I didn't really want that to be true.

Hanging out at the dining hall, NBA Street, NFL Street, talking about the bullishtiness of everything, our [non]-experiences in the dating life, jokes and trash-talking about other people. My best buddies in my first 2 years of adult independence wouldn't be there anymore, but I guess I'd come up and visit them...and hey I'd have my family...

Little did I know at the time that the "family" I'd refer to is not the one I lived with throughout my life, but the one I formed with fellow brothers and sisters. *Hugikissiness ensues*

Then October 2004 came, Filipi-groes, I'm here. Good-bye.

Upon the first day of class, an old friend whom I will call Chiars told me to check out some other Filipino group and their welcome reception.

P-T-S-P. Wow that had to be the worst acronym I'd ever heard...definitely didn't roll off the tongue like SPACE or PREP or PIE or even PCH which at least can be referenced to a very famous highway.

But you know there was something about this organization...these people...maybe it was the fact that there was food. Maybe it was the fact that I was a transfer and well this organization dealt with transfers. Duh. Maybe it was the fact that they somehow managed to bring in all the aesthetically pleasing people together in one room. Ha. Maybe it was the fact that their Vice Chair, Dom, looked like an older computer-simulated version of the younger brother of one of my grade school classmates. Maybe it was the fact that they actually talked with me afterwards and even outside the meeting.

Even when my car wouldn't start that one afternoon after class.

Didn't know anyone, but I did know Dom and somehow he was in my cell phone directory already. Called him...The 831 area code was a reminder of the good times with 'Yell and Joe in Banana Slugland. He called a friend with a jumper cable and a car. It was all EZ like Sunday morning. Car fixed, back on my merry way.

From there began two new bro-ships, which would help spawn an intense infusion into hip-hop and hip-hop culture.

Because of this infusion, I gradually perceived the P-T-S-P acronym not as four lifeless disconnected letters, but as distinct flavorous sounds that you might start a beatbox with.

Puhhh-tssss-puhhh...Pee-tee-yess-pee

We are the only organization that has a beatbox sound as its acronym's pronunciation.

Just as hip-hop is not just a music, it's life, PTSP is not just an organization, it's life.

Me Brian J. Delas Armas. Tengo veinte cuatro anos. Born Chi-town, raised Los Angeles. Transferred from UC-Banana Slug. I graduated UC-Bruin in 2006 with a B.A. degree in anthropology and a minor in the History of Medicine and Science. Have volunteered, worked with, and derived income from nonprofits since graduation with periods of temp jobbing. Currently a grant writer, which means I like flipping and flooping the written language around and read thru tons of things every day for research purposes. Will go to graduate school for a Ph.D in cognitive and urban anthropology with interests in how we remember things, mathematics, science, and numbers in different cultures, semiotics, and the creation/destruction of public and open spaces. Beyond that, we'll see.

PTSP @ Pilipino Welcome Reception!

2008-10-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

PTSP board sans Mike

Mike

PTSP "fashion show"

for more Pilipino fun, come out to PTSP's Welcome Reception on Tuesday, October 8 at 6PM in the Ackerman 2nd floor lounge! FREE FILIPINO FOOD!!

Welcome to the PTSP Blog!

2008-09-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Pilipino Transfer Student Partnership's (PTSP) blog, where you can find all info regarding our organization and upcoming events. This is a place for our members and the general public to connect with each other, find ways to be involved with the organization, and see what we're all about!

Who are we?

PTSP helps Pilipino transfers transition into the university system and act as a net of support to look forward to in the academic year. It's a place for transfers to meet, make connections, and relate to other transfers. We help not only transfer students get adjusted into UCLA and network, but help the community in general with programs such as Bayanihan, which outreaches to community college students in helping with the transfer process, and SEND, which welcomes community college students in considering UCLA.

What can you look forward to this year?

Here's what you can expect from us in the next year!

Meetings!

Retreats!

Friendships!

Stay tuned here and on our Facebook group for all the PTSP info you need! Contact us at ptspucla@gmail.com.

2008-08-24T02:05:00.000-07:00