Binghamton!

2/23

So the day after I write the 'defeated' post, I get the email I've been wait for for over five years, and working towards for ten.  Accepted to a PhD program - with funding!  I still have five schools out there to hear from, but with one in the pocket, I have little to worry about!  I can't tell you the relief that it is.  The weight on my shoulders that was alleviated, the pressure on my brow that waned  the pure sense of victory that I felt at that very moment.  I'll probably always remember exactly where I was when it happened.  Coming back from a delivery, I dipped into that horrid coffee chain to catch a quick moment of wifi and download my emails for whenever a moment arose.  I've been obsessively waiting for word from programs, so I quickly ran through the emails for anything.  I see Fred Deyo - I know that name - Binghamton I think, and right underneath it in the subject heading it says congratulations and then sociology under it in the body.  I of course didn't register it right away.  It didn't add up, something impossible to happen was trying to compute as happening in my head, but my head wouldn't let it.  lol.  Yeah, that's pretty much as it seemed.  Discombobulated, out of order.  I opened it, and there it was.  You've "been accepted...with funding".  Ahhhh... even reliving the moment right now feels so empowering and enlivening I'm getting chills down my spine.  It is the final sense of accomplishment for a long road.  I know I will do fine in a program, but I had yet to be able to convince anyone to give this old dyslexic football player a shot at the big time!  But here it is, time to run with it!  We'll see what the other schools say and how Ljubljana plays out, but I know I'll be somewhere come September - and it won't be delivering groceries in NYC!!  :)

The familiar stench.....

....of defeat floats through the air, but I will not wait for it to envelopment me this time.  For I will not be defeated, there is always more than one way to find victory.

I have started hearing form schools.  One by one they trickle in, no, no, waitlisted, no, no, waitlisted.  It is what it all tells me though that is most important.  Year after year I am told the same thing by American academia.  I am not good enough - at least by their arbitrary measures.  Now mind you, it is not over, but I've gotten my rejections from UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, and Boston College, and my waitlistings from Rutgers and UConn.  There still are six schools out there, but it doesn't bode well to be 25th on UConn's wait list.  And last year I was on Rutgers' wait list, only for them to not even go on it.  They had two spots.  UConn has about ten.  To be that far down on their's means I'm still a ways off.  I was offered a spot in the masters program at BC, but with no funding or guarantee of PhD admissions.  I've already been through two MA programs and turned down the same type of spot last year at the New School.  No, I'm close - as always - but there is something about my application that is not quite good enough it seems.  Grades and GRE's I would imagine.  But it tells me more and more each day.  My skill set does not seem to be what American academia wants.  I am an "armchair anthropologist."  I've been all over the world, lived in all sorts of places, and spent all that time tieing together how things function in this globalized world we inhabit.  But perhaps that is not what they want.  Perhaps it is book smarts they want, not the real world.  They want people who's grades and GRE's show an academic rigor from birth, rather than the dyslexic football playing late bloomer that I am.  But so be it.  I have strength, and I will not be defeated.

I went into this process with the ultimate fall back school, the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.  If I apply, all I need is the masters (which I have).  No GRE's, no BS, no recommendations, anal probes, retinal scans, or poncy description of what sociological question I'm going to answer.  I just need a masters degree to get in and then I can just put my head down and work without wasting time worrying about what everyone else thinks!  The kind of place for me!

But hold up, let me get back to the beginning.  I still have six schools to hear from and they are some of my top choices and best chances.  I got an ominous email from Pitt today though talking about decisions not being made yet but that they had over 80 applicants for 4 spots - not holding out too much hope.  That leaves Northeastern, York, Binghamton, UC Santa Cruz, and Hawaii.  Hawaii was always kind of my fall back, NEU and York are my two top choices with Rutgers, then Binghamton as really solid, but without decent funding.  With UC Santa Cruz, I am just assuming my declination is a formality waiting till March.  I mean there's a chance at the other five still.  One of my best friends is at York and working for me, but they have only one spot for an international student which doesn't bode well.  Binghamton is really specialized, I'm in or out - experience in this apps game tells me I'm out.  Hawaii is a political science program and not going to get me very far on the job market afterwards I'm thinking.  Northeastern seems to me to be the best shot I've got here in the states.  Not a highly ranked school, and really ideal for me.  But I've thought that before.

So as it is, I'm wallowing in desperation with every ring of a rich person's door bell and "where would you like your groceries miss/sir?"  But not today, for the last few days I've started turning my attention elsewhere.  I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of America on many levels as many of you know, education being one of them.  The system systematically excludes people like me from its perches.  So why not just go to a far flung school in a part of the world that has always felt more at home to me?  Central and southern Europe.  The former socialist areas of the world resonate so well with me.  I don't belong here in the US, its to restricted, to polarizing and conformist.  Thus, I feel restricted and confined here.  I want to fly freely, and the frame of mind I'm in right now is a good one just thinking about it.  Getting a PhD here in teh US is a sevenish year project.  In Europe - given that they recognize my master degrees - I'm done in four.  If I go to Slovenia I would be in an interdisciplinary doctoral program with foci on Ethnology/Anthropology, Sociology, Political Anthropology, History, American Studies, Geography, etc.  Everything I am interested in studying in one place.  And in four years I'd have a PhD.  Also, and perhaps most importantly, if I do the Occupy project I would be ripe to teach American studies anywhere in Europe and be a solid candidate for job throughout the continent.  The program would put me there for a year and a half and then at a "foreign" institution for a semester -  which could be Rutgers, Northeaster, the New School, wherever.  Then I do my research here in NYC for a year, and write up for another and I'm done.  I teach in Europe and do research for a few years, and then I'm still in the same place I would be here after seven years, except I would have already been employed for a few years, already researching, teaching.  And I get to live in Europe.  I get to learn another Slavic language, maybe two as serbo-croatian isn't to far off.  And I'd be happy there.  I struggle here.  But I could still be here, researching etc.  I could also spend the next six months focusing on publishing my MA thesis and something on Occupy to help get myself ahead of the game. So many possibilities.

Honestly, I feel enlightened, enlivened.  I've been back here in the US for almost four years.  It hasn't been very kind to me, nor do I really like it.  I want a PhD, and I like being in Europe.  Why not?

Settling In

Ahh.. it feels nice.  It is Friday, but feels like Saturday for me.  I have off from work, nothing that "must" get done. I'm having a nice bowl of granola with some mango, kiwi, and dried cranberries with a little kefir over it.  Sitting in bed, just finished a three day attempt to watch "Blood Diamond" with the usual tears I struggle at the end.  I'm nestled in to my bed, writing, and have a crock pot simmering away from last night that should provide effortless food for the next couple days.

I'm in a new home.  This is key.  A small two bedroom in Bed-Stuy with one other guy.  He's a key figure in Occupy and a pleasure to live with.  No more neurotic land ladies on power trips, no more economic half-way houses in the hood, modest accommodations for a modest, stable life.  It feels good.

Anyone that has read these blog posts over the last several years knows that has not been the case.  Ups and downs, unemployment, homelessness, struggles on every level, but now things seem to be settling in.  My job is good.  I'm not making much money, but I'm making rent and needs.  I also end up with probably on average 2-3 dollars and hour extra in tips.  Money that will go directly to Sierra Leone and maybe to a new transmission for my car so I could think about selling it. I've got ten Phd applications in, one has come back as a rejection, the only decision thus far.  But despite deja vu type fears of a recurrence of years past, I still think I'll find a home for next year.

For now though, I'm quite happy as am.  Funny to say that three days into this, but still, I know myself and life well enough to know this is going to be fine.  I caught myself looking at a nail on the wall and saying, oh, I can bring my scroll from China and put it there!  And in the kitchen I was already mapping out the verma composting (with worms) process and thinking about a small roof top garden for the spring and summer!  Gotta have my kale!!  The perfect crop for me, hardy, sturdy, and will survive anything!

All told, I'm doing ok.  I need a few things like a dresser and such.  But on the whole.  I finally feel whole again.  :)        

Dirty Jersey!

So I went on Monday to revisit the depths of last year's despair.  Last year's academic quest ended with a last second denial at Rutgers.  I was wait-listed, thus had to wait till the final hours of the April 15th deadline to learn my fate.  This year I've got this new strategy that places the ideal analytical lens below just getting in to a PhD program that allows me to get back to work.  That debate is the Sociology versus Anthropology debate.  I struggle with locating the division between the two in practical terms, but I tend to find more fulfillment in anthropological work and reading - seems closer to the ground.

Anyway, Rutgers is the only Anthropology school I've applied to this year.  Everything else is Sociology, with one political science program and one joint program.  Most of the places I've found do interdisciplinary work, and the people cross over well, but still Rutgers was my top choice last year, and it is hard to imagine it as anything but that this year.  It is tough though.  I am visiting a lot of schools and developing relationships with people and places.  My friend and the critical nature/perfectly structured program at York, the radical joint program at Northeastern, the anti-capitalist global critique of Binghamton, Boston College's focus on public sociology, the Cali schools, Pittsburgh.  There are really good people that I would really struggle to say no to.  Programs that all sound great.  Rutgers, always seems to rise above them though.  It pains me to say that, because I want to work with my friend in Toronto, etc.  But the program just fits.

On Monday I met with I think seven people.  My one friend and professor that I have been working with all year on Occupy.  Then several people I met last year and really like.  It was great to see them again as ther was an immediate familiarity and almost affection.  And then the new people!!  They were great.  The one works on media and the other is a joint criminology appointment.  So right there in addition to the engaged anthropology (i.e. using what you learn to bring change), and the focus on violence, conflict, Africa, American inequality, and with several people working on social movements, they now have the two buttresses of my Occupy project.  There is only four years of funding which is tough.  But your field work usually has funding through external grants and such, and mine would be in NYC most likely so wouldn't be such a challenge to handle.

The meetings went well.  I got some very good questions and had to find ways to frame things in different ways for each person to understand things.  I have two supervisors right off the bat that I would think would be fabulous!  I spoke with both of them for an hour at least.  One lives five blocks away from me here in Brooklyn!  Anyway, as is, this school search is tough, I have the applications in and should start hearing back from places any day now.  I had a positive email from UC Davis, and good visits throughout.  We'll see.  Rutgers would probably be the highest regarded program I applied to.  It would be tough to turn down.  But we'll see, so would York in Canada, and Northeastern in Boston, and Davis in Cali.  So it goes, assuming I get in - an assumption I've made before....

Much Respect Due

So within my new job I have had to work the cash register.  Wow.  I never knew how much respect the people doing that deserve.  Eight hours a day, five days a week.  I just did a two day stint and I tell you my body feels it.  My neck, my legs, feet, etc.

They have a very defined and regimented protocol for the register there.  When you get in, you go to the supervisors counter and get a little red bag full of the money for your register.  $288 in cash and change.  You count it, and put it in your drawer.  You get to your register, sign in, deposit your cash drawer in one of the two slots, and start ringing up people.  You do this then for hours.  You stand on the hard ground and just move your upper body back and forth, with only your hands using the touch screen device to enter produce PLU numbers, scan items, bag groceries, smile and send people on their way.

These shifts are eight and a half hours long, with a half hour unpaid break and a fifteen minute paid break.  I can tell you this too, you need those breaks.  You are not allowed to eat anything at the registers, but you can have water.  To go to the bathroom you have to call the supervisor and ask permission.  Usually you get to go right on the spot, sometimes you have to wait your turn while others are going.  I haven't been told no yet, but with a long line I could imagine someone may ask you to wait.  Talking among cashiers is discouraged and reprimanded.  It is agonizing physically, and trying mentally.

The first two hours seem to go fairly quickly.  You are ringing up people constantly and not physically hurting yet.  But all the concentration and standing takes a progressive toll.  My concentration and blood sugar levels seem to drop after a while and my ability to concentrate wains exponentially.  This is an obvious problem given the draconian policies for miss counting or not have you bills the right way in your drawer.  I have dyslexic moments, but so far I think they have been typing in the right produce code, and you can go back and change it.  But what happens when you have one with the cash?  I was short yesterday 80 cents on one transaction.  It was 62.84 and the woman gave me 65.04, I typed in 62.04 by accident, my mind was in a fog by that point, and the woman was really pushy.  She was treating me like I was just another subservient worker - beneath her - as is a common occurrence it seems.  She was saying its simple, the change is three dollars, she was wrong, but I didn't realize it until later.  I typed in another $3 to make the $65.04, her change should have been $2.20, and it said this, but the woman was bitching and badgering about $3 while I was trying to figure out my mistyped amount.  I gave her three only to realize a moment to late after she'd gone that it should have been $2.20 as it all added up.

I now see how common these interactions are.  Because this is a hard job.  It is so sad that all too often customers treat people at the register like morons because the type in the wrong PLU code, or miscount the change.  I would love to see all these executives and office types come down here and spend eight hours a day on their feet doing the same repetitive motion, counting on the fly, bagging, and scanning over and over for eight and a half hours.

To each customer this is their money, their food, their pain in the ass exercise in sustenance that they have to do, and want to do as quickly as possible between their jobs and getting home or to play in their free time.  They eagle eye you and have little remorse for the slightest mistake.  The cashier on the other hand is staring at a screen all day, doing the same thing over and over.  I have never had such acute blood sugar issues as with this job.  I have to eat something every two hours or I'm lost.  And I can feel it, I end up in this fog that is almost surreal.  Like you barely see the money and PLU codes as they fly by your eyes and hands.  I usually recognize the issue and grab my water or sneak a little something to get the sugar back.

Customers though don't see these ins and outs of the job.  They see the singular action, and see it as simple.  They don't see the eight hours and the pressure put on you for your job by the company.  They treat you like you are stupid because you are counting the change, reentering the PLU code or fiddling with the bag.  No, I think it's safe to say that the general public has little respect for this work, hence its low pay and prestige.  Apparently one customer who had to call over the manager at one point said to her daughter that she needed to go to school so she didn't end up as a cashier.  Right in front of the cashiers.  It is really sad to hear that, sad for society.  Yet still this is the society we live in.  A place where "menial labor" garners no respect even from those that so deeply and heavily rely on it for the very existence.  Whether you work for a company that employs cheap labor, or buy products that cheap labor makes cheap for you the world goes no where without people like supermarket cashiers, and its hard work, just like digging a ditch, mopping floors, building a roof, whatever.  Much respect due.  

The laws of the register

So I am going through training on the cash register for my new job. Wow. I don't ever want to be behind the register. I am scared to death of the draconian rigidity of the terms and rules, and how quickly the slightest slip – like not having all the bills facing the right direction – can lead to getting warned and fired.

They work on a system of a written warning, a final warning, and discharge.  In terms of being absent or tardy if you are:

• 3 times in 30 days, 
• 4 times in 90 days, 
• 5 in 6 months or, 
• 10 in a year,

you will be given a written warning that lasts for a year.  This includes sick days (though back-to-back days only count as one "incident").  If this happens you are on written warning for a year.  If in that time this or any other issue happens again (see below), you get a final warning (which last six months).  If in this time anything else happens you are "discharged" (i.e. fired).

So what is included in this?  Well with the register you are accountable to balancing your till.  If you are a penny off one way or the other 5 times in 30 days its a written warning.  Meaning no take a penny leave a penny, and if you're off by more than $5 on any one occasion it is an immediate written warning.  This means that you count wrong once, accept a counterfeit bill, whatever... you're on warning.  But it gets worse.  If within a 30 day period you have 5 instances of any of the below issues:

• excessive coins or cash
• bills not facing the right direction
• missing a coupon
• missing an EBT slip
• missing voided transaction slip
• miss entering a product code
• improperly filling out a traveler's check
• talking to the cashier next to you
• not asking to go to the bathroom
• coming back even a minute late on a break
• looking at someone the wrong way....... breathing.... ok, so I made that one up.

But really?!  You don't place the bills face up and all in the same direction!?!?!? or give someone a penny!?!?! and your in trouble!?  Enter the wrong code, give back the wrong change and in trouble you get!!!  No sir, not me.  Keep me off of that register.  My dyslexic, hypoglycemic ass would be done in a week.  I mean hypothetically speaking (and keep in mind schedules only come out Wednesday for the next week), if someone is late or sick more than 5 times in 6 months (keep in mind NYC subways, doctors, dentists, kids), and they don't put their bills all face up a few times and then take a counterfeit bill by accident, they're done.  No flexibility, only a lashing with the whip.  Amazing.