#grad school tag

[asinglesock]

rip biblical prophet Jonah you would've loved weighted blankets

rip Jonah you would've loved life jackets

rip Jonah you would've hated seaworld

rip Jonah you would've loved confessional poetry

rip Jonah you would've loved air conditioner

rip Jonah you would've loved greenhouses

rip Jonah you would've loved AITA posts

#a sock speaks #is this anything #grad school tag #we're in Jonah chapter 3 in my Hebrew class #it's nice to be out of the wet part of Jonah

[all-seeing-ifer]

I've spent so much of the last few months reading all these books and essays and such about asexuality (and about aromanticism when I can fucking find them) by aspec people for my master's and it's been such a lovely experience but also. idk shit's weird man. like you take even a cursory look at the literature and discussions and there's such a wealth of new and interesting and nuanced perspectives on consent and rethinking the way we talk about sexual trauma and the insitution of marriage and discrimination against single people and the institution of psychiatry and the limits of modern discourses of gender and sexuality and relationship anarchy and capitalism and reproductive rights and culture and history and narrative structure and feminism and how all of it is influenced by race and gender and disability and culture and it's WONDERFUL but also. every single time I read something like angela chen's ace or sherronda j brown's refusing compulsory sexuality I can't help but wonder about how much we've missed out on. how much interesting thought and discussion and new ideas have we missed out on because of all the years these communities lost to the fucking "ace discourse". how many important conversations could we have had sooner if a small number of entirely disingenuous bad actors and a larger number of the most useful idiots on the planet hadn't declared it open season on an entire subsection of the queer community because they wanted an excuse to bully 16 year olds online. how much more could we already understand.

#urghghgh #aro shtuff #ace shtuff #grad school tag #ifer rambles

[othellho]

Anne Carson, Elektra

#words #classics tag #Anne Carson #elektra #why does tragedy exist etc etc #on saying no #academia tag #grad school tag #?

[cinnamonphile]

“october, when the light is sweet and heavy”

#personal #october in LA is so weird #can’t get Home By Now by MUNA out of my head but it’s just the part that goes #‘what is love supposed to feel like anyway? why is it so hot in LA in late october?’ #because they’re so real for that #i say speaking like a native californian after living here for a little longer than two months #anywho look at how aesthetically pleasing these shots are #studyblr #gradblr #grad school tag

[crowleyanthonys]

tonight is literally the class meeting that i dread every semester and i'm anxious and on waiting mode and unable to be productive :/

#we literally do the same thesis writing excercises every time during week 12 of the semester #and i dread them every time. idk why tho! #now i can predict them so i can mentally prepare ahead of time #but i should be researching and writing right now!!! not mentally preparing for class!!! #grad school tag

[thelivingautomaton]

the predoctoral fellowship i resubmitted in the fall not only didn't get funded, but in fact got even worse reviews than the first submission, except literally all of the reviewers' critiques were unrelated to the actual scientific merit or value of the work i was proposing. anyway i am feeling very poorly and very stupid today and hate everybody and everything, &c

#grad school tag #anyway STEM research in academia is a clownshow. and brother i'm one of the freaks in white facepaint #it might aggravate me less if i didn't know as much now about how much funding is just dependent on insider baseball bullshit #or if i didn't know that other labs in the department are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for projects that are absolute nonsense #or if i felt like more than 1.4% of the millions of dollars my institution is sitting on went towards developing trainees as scientists #(DEEP BREATH) okay it's cool it's fine i'm over it. whatever

[calamarr]

love seeing the shock and wonder in my classmates when I introduce them to the Humongous Fungus for the first time

#I’m doing two final projects about fungus so I’m being a little extra about it rn #dear diary #grad school tag #okay to reblog

[eleftherian]

so I’m in like one of the most highly ranked LIS programs in my country and the majority of my classmates so far have been queer & like… this gives me hope for the future of libraries tbh

#my posts #grad school tag #queer librarians will save the world mark my words #LIS #library school #library science #queerness

[ttpd-chair]

There are many scholarships and programs available for people of color and women in the humanities and other non-STEM fields, and the reason that there are scholarships and other programs to support women in STEM is that women were systematically excluded from STEM education for decades if not centuries. Obviously there are sexist ideas that women aren’t good at any form of scholarship and those should be dealt with too, but many of the STEM scholarships & programs exist because people in a STEM field noticed a gender disparity in their field or workplace and wanted to try to change this by making it easier for women and girls to enter into a science or math program. This includes programs that provide early STEM education to girls so that they can build knowledge and confidence and scholarships so that they can afford to go to a college or university with a good STEM program.

Women and girls are still discouraged from going into STEM fields often by teachers who perpetuate the idea that women aren’t good at math and science, and so women that do go into STEM often try to talk about their careers and research to disprove that idea. In addition, women face barriers from accessing higher education, since private colleges and universities are allowed to give male applicants a boost and choose a less qualified male candidate over a female one under the guise of protecting gender parity on campus, although some schools such as William & Mary admit a noticeably more men than women; public colleges and universities may also do this even though it’s illegal under Title IX. The women in STEM movement is more about counteracting gendered ideas about who is good at math and sciences than it is about encouraging people who don’t like math or science to go into those fields; different people have different strengths and interests, and many of the women talking about their STEM careers understand this because they’re fighting against stereotypes about women’s academic interests.

The movement to encourage women to follow their dreams and passions, including by going into STEM fields, and improving working conditions for them once they enter those field, is a basic part of feminism. Women in STEM fields have historically faced misogyny in the workplace, including sexual harassment, generally misogynistic office and laboratory cultures, lower wages, lack of recognition for their work, and expectations of faulty or decreased performance from bosses and coworkers. Feminism has for decades been partially focused on the treatment of women in the workplace and ways in which that can be improved, and one way to do that is to encourage more women to enter STEM fields and to raise awareness about the working conditions that women in those fields face, and both of these issues are discussed at length by women in STEM fields.

Obviously the humanities and other non-STEM fields can often need more funding and although at this point part of the problem is that some schools may invest heavily in labs to attract potential students, in my opinion the bigger problem is how little certain state budges give to public universities relative to the amount that’s actually necessary to run the universities, preventing the schools from investing the adequate amount of money into these fields. One way to deal with this is to push for state legislatures to foot more of the bill and increase their funding for public universities; with private universities, maybe federal funding and alumni donations could be increased or partially directed towards those non-STEM fields to increase the amount of programs & scholarships that those departments could offer.

#like in many places women are actively pushed away from science & math #and it’s just generally good to encourage people to consider STEM and decide if they want to enter a STEM field or a different field that #they find interesting #text #stem #women in stem #feminism #grad school tag

[misseyres]

"I have some background in reading things about American politics" bestie that does not make you special <3

#grad school tag

[yessoupy]

I HAVE TURNED IN MY LAST ASSIGNMENT

#grad school tag

[all-seeing-ifer]

Aromanticism in Academia

Since it's currently Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and I'm currently in the middle of a master's research project about aromanticism and asexuality, I figured I'd contribute by putting together a list of some books and other academic sources I've read so far that deal with aromanticism! There's very little written about aromanticism in academia, so I think it's important to spotlight what we do have.

DISCLAIMER BEFORE THE LIST: Due to the lack of discussion of aromanticism specifically in academia, most of what I've found are texts that are primarily about asexuality but also discuss aromanticism. It's unfortunate, but it is also where we're kind of at right now in terms of academia, so bear that in mind.

Books:

Ace Voices: What it means to be asexual, aromantic, demi, or grey-ace by Eris Young - Definitely has the most focus on aromanticism of everything that I've read so far, this book draws from a combination of the author's personal experiences and interviews with other members of the a-spec community, including aroace and alloaro people. A good source of discussion of aro issues and how they interact with things like gender stereotypes. Also notable for its discussion of QPRs, a topic which I find has generally been ignored in academia about a-spec identities.

Ace: What Asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex by Angela Chen - Primarily deals with asexuality, as the title suggests, but also contains some relevant discussions of aromanticism, including the experiences of aroallo people. If you're going to check out the book, I would especially recommending looking at chapter 7: Romance, Reconsidered, which features most of the discussion of aromanticism and non-normative relationships

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J Brown - Again, asexuality is the main focus here, but I would still recommend checking out this book as it does still contain some useful discussion of aromanticism, particularly an extended critique of "singlism" (i.e. discrimination of single people) and how it is weaponised against aros. I also find Brown's criticism of the dehumanisation of aromanticism in media to be very compelling!

Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law - I would be remiss not to mention Brake's work here. While Minimizing Marriage is not specificallly about aromanticism and deals with marriage reform and the concept of amatonormativity more broadly, I think it's fair to say that many of Brake's ideas (particularly her coining of amatonormativity as a term) have become vital to the aro community and aro activism in recent years. Definitely a must-read for anyone interested in deconstructing amatonormativity and in contemporary critiques of marriage as an institution, though it's worth noting that this is a work of moral/political philosophy first and foremost, and as such it gets very into the weeds of things. Available on the Internet Archive here

Academic Articles/Essays (all can be found in the collection Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives):

"Why didn't you tell me that I love you?": Asexuality, Polymorphous Perversity, and the Liberation of the Cinematic Clown by Andrew Grossman - A really interesting and engaging analysis of the archetype of the silent film clown, and how it can be read as an a-spec figure. While Grossman uses the language of asexuality, his analysis makes it clear that he is looking at the clown as both an asexual AND aromantic character.

On the Racialization of Asexuality by Ianna Hawkins Owen - A personal favourite of mine. I think many parts of this essay will be very relevant to aromantic people, particularly Owen's investigation of how romantic love came to be pedastalised and her critique of attempts to normalise asexuality by distancing it from aromanticism.

Mismeasures of Asexual Desires by Jacinthe Flore - A critique of the pathologisation of asexuality that also discusses how aromanticism challenges common discourses around intimate relationships

Finally, I would like to mention the work of Bella DePaulo, who has written extensively about singlism and compulsory coupling, and who Brown uses extensively as a source in their writing on aromanticism. I didn't want to make this part of the main list because I haven't yet had a chance to get stuck into DePaulo's work, but based on Brown's mentions of her work I believe she has some very interesting ideas that are very relevant to aro people.

As you can probably tell, the list of academic sources dealing with aromanticism and aro issues is very limited. However, while aromanticism is vastly underdiscussed in an academic context, I'd like to point out that this is also only what I've been able to find so far. If anyone has any other recommendations please do add them to this post - I for one would love to hear about them!

#aro shtuff #asaw 2024 #aromantic awareness week #asaw #aromantic spectrum awareness week #aromantic #ifer rambles #also if u guys have recommendations for aro academia it would be very helpful for me personally #so y'know. there's that #grad school tag

[okarasusama]

thesis defense tomorrow and it's feeling entirely unreal

#grad school tag #also there's a robin outside my window

[bookcub]

just read they called us enemy by george takei and it is as good as i thought it would be. i usually will binge graphic works but because of the intense subject matter, i made myself take breaks, so i read it in 4 settings instead of 1 sitting.

i will be asking my professor why this graphic memoir was selected for the historical fiction week, since it isn't fiction but i wonder if she chose it because this and similar books are often miscatorgized . . .

#they called us enemy #george takei #grad school tag

[crowleyanthonys]

i told myself that i would get soooo much work done today before my meeting with my advisor so that she would be sooooo impressed with my progress. instead i've just been at a state of nervous paralysis and have not accomplished anything today 😔

#BUT she may reschedule our meeting so there IS hope!!! #my only saving grace is that it's finals week and she knows that i'm ''''focusing'''' on my seminar class rn #so maybe she won't be expecting much of a progress report today lmao #anyway...pray for me pls #grad school tag

[thelivingautomaton]

the more i think about it the more i find it hilarious(ly appropriate) that the band whose music has stuck with me and kept me (relatively) sane throughout the entirety of grad school is, of all things, nine inch nails. but like, not even any of the fun sexy songs from their discography, just the Loud Industrial Static Of Despair And/Or Being Really Fucking Pissed Off

#grad school tag #nine inch nails #like i for real just checked and yup. started listening to nin in september 2020 #trent reznor yelling about how god money's not looking for the cure is something that can be so personal actually