*Excuse to lateness of this post, my internet was down 1/10/07 and since then I've been house-sitting at a house that lacks internet access.
I began my academic career at ASU back in the Fall semester of 2002. I entered completely convinced that I would become a teacher and declared my major as Elementary Education as soon as it was possible. As I worked toward completing that major I began to find that my heart was not in it. I was sitting in my Math for Elementary School Teachers when I began to realize that I was working toward this goal not for myself, but instead because I had been telling people since I was five years old that I wanted to be a teacher. Everyone I knew was invested in my old dream and I felt that I should accomplish it for them if no longer for myself. I received an A as my final grade in the class, but I knew there was no way I would continue completing the work and being as unhappy as I was fast becoming. I figured that maybe if I tweaked my major by staying with children, but switching to Early Childhood Development that I would be happy and everyone else would be okay with the change as well. I took a required class for the Early Childhood Development major and realized after about a month that I hated that major as much as my Elementary Education.
I then began to really examine what I was passionate about and came to the conclusion that I really wanted to focus my studies on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender issues. I talked it over with my then adviser to see what if anything was offered in that area at ASU. She pointed me in the direction of the IDS department and I have been here ever since. Most of my family and friends are supportive of my decision and are happy to see me so passionate about something again. I began my self-designed concentration of Gay and Lesbian studies in the Spring semester of 2004 with two courses; Queer Theory and Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality. I was finally excited about my classes and looked forward to doing my work. Over the years I have found more classes to apply towards my major and my understanding of queer issues. These classes include Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gender and Society, Women in History, Men in Film, Sexuality and Identity, Human Rights, and most recently Queer Stories: LGBT Lives in Fiction and Film.
1 comment:
Glorious decision! I've known a whole lot of people who became rapidly disillusioned with the formality of large programs on this campus (Teaching Fellows, Shcool of Music,etc) and were simply at their wits end about all the hoops they had to leap through. Well, IDS certainly has copious hoops but the plus-side is that you're finally engineering something that resonates within you and not simply acting out a role you forgot you were the creator of. It's amazing how resigned we can become to the things we fetishize and begin to see them as "the only way" forward. Congrats on interrupting that process! BTW, thanks for appreciating my ramblings. I'm not actually fully self designed, I just tweaked Third World Studies for my own ends...
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