JE #3A

What does "cultural schizophrenia" mean to you? In a 10-minute freewriting write about how you feel pulled in opposite directions between mutually exclusive or contradictory cultural values, religious mores, or social expectations. Has this ever led you to feel like you're having an identity crisis, a disconnect between how you see yourself and how you are seen by others?


I have an identity crisis every month, without fail. I've come to welcome this unsettling questioning of who I am and what I am doing with my life at the moment. I am a graduate student, therefore I am pulled in different directions every day. What i mean by this is that I am constantly in situations where power relations are inherent and unescapable, I am in that nepantla space of "you're not a professor" and "you're not an undergraduate", then what am I? 

One of the first things I noticed upon entering graduate school was the act of tokenizing students of color, in other programs students of color revealed to me that they experienced racial micro aggressions on a daily basis, often so many that they themselves had given up on calling it out. I am extremely lucky to be in a program that is supportive and has other students of color with which i can share in the crises, however that doesn't mean that i don't feel myself being pulled in many directions.

 Part of me wants to become a catalyst for change, and another wants to have alone time to read and absorb theory, and texts. I was once told by a professor that being a graduate student is the loneliest experience of your life. I initially understood this and gave in to what would be long hours in the library with me, myself and I. However, as of late i've begun to resist that. In what is supposed to be the most solitary time of my life, I am finding more community that I ever did before. I am building networks and meeting students from all over the nation who are graduate students by day and social activists, artists, musicians by night. It's often students of color who have found that the ways in which they are oppressed have only intensified with academia in the picture. 

When thinking of a disconnect of how i see myself and how others perceive me, I feel that not many get to see the many interests I hold dear. There is a typecasting of sorts that occurs. People assume that you're an intellectual who lives for the pages and academic conferences. Funny that many of the graduate students i've come to know are so much more. They are part of underground rap collectives, combining theory with music, they are social activists, painters, filmmakers and successful bloggers. 

I feel that cultural schizophrenia has become my dear and near friend, it is through this constant questioning that i've come to appreciate the different forces that pull me apart, and bring me back together again and again.