DR. KATHERINE S. CHO

With tenure-track faculty life, universities often set a midway checkpoint where the institution reviews what you’ve done (with research, teaching, and service) to project if you’ll be tenure-able and on track. It’s admittedly kind of stressful, especially because I moved institutions last year so I had to unlearn my old system and relearn another. But a 45-page narrative later, with hundreds of pages of documentation submitted, votes from the faculty evaluation committee, and letters confirming the decision from the Provost and Dean, I’ve OFFICIALLY passed!
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What makes it extra special is that in moving, I made a commitment to live a life while being in academia: 8 musicals, 6 concerts, 3 comedy shows, and being a self proclaimed “patron of the arts” later, what I have loved most about this year is who I have become and realizing I could actually pivot and live differently. So yes, it’s truly been a spectacular year— with 6 peer review articles, 1 book chapter, and 3 accepted on the way in 2022/2023. But it’s also been a spectacular year of reconnecting with friends, brunching, loving Orange Theory Fitness, and even engaging in nature. So cheers and much gratitude to everyone who got me to here 💖✨



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At the end of each year, I do a "by the numbers" as part of my reflection that I do through Year Compass (which I HIGHLY recommend). You're able to download a guidebook that helps you close our the previous year while also then thinking about how you want to intentionally dream the new year. One of their prompts is going through your calendar and writing down important events, etc. For me, since I use my calendar and Notion to track the books I read, concerts I attend, shows I watch, etc. I figured that this random round-up could be some highlights from my 2022 "by the numbers" categories and some other highlights too. Enjoy! 

OTHER BY THE NUMBERS? 
I traveled to 15 different cities in 2022, some of which were related to the 8 conferences I attended and the 8 weddings/unions I celebrated. Obviously the highlight across all the cities were the friends and families I got to see (and some GREAT food along the way: Baltimore crab cakes; LA omakase; San Diego tacos; Midwest apple fritters)— help, I'm drooling just thinking about them. Work-wise, some of these numbers included 4 peer-reviewed articles coming out, submitting 11 manuscripts where 6 were with students, getting 7 grants (I applied to wayyyyy more), with the largest work highlight being moving to a new city with a new job, Now, the only number I'm hoping I don't experience is the negative degrees, courtesy of Chicago winters!


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I also love this piece because it reflects a shift in my work and engaging with care and how carework folds into labor, particularly within my larger research agenda of institutional accountability and what we able to describe and distill as institutional carewashing. While the gendering of education and teaching has been well-studied under the lens of feminism (and how related/resultant facets such as emotional labor are then valued as less important), I appreciated the space within this article (and particularly through the lit review) to reimagine and apply carework then to what it means to work with students and work with ourselves. As a result, we were able to draw the connections of institutional carewashing (or the ways institutions declare care without tangible efforts) and apply that to how activism can and has cause harm to the its own activists— a similar parallel to the ways scholars who try to rehumanize the academy (myself included) can recreate neoliberalism. Carework and community-centric responses like mutual aid (see Lydia X. Z. Brown's work) are the necessary ways to respond to the institutionalization of it all. ​​I'll close with one of my favorite quotes from our article (though let's be honest, I loved every sentence haha!): ​

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Today is the last day of my social media hiatus (which I explain here and here). A lot of my reflection is similar to what I've already written: feeling disconnected but having more oportunities to be intentional about connecting with friends; realizing I spent A LOT of time on my phone; appreciating the time to focus on myself and pick up books I've been meaning to read, shows I've been meaning to binge, etc. 

For a bit of deeper reflection, one thing I realized I have missed are the "announcements" on social media. Friends post updates and news for mass-communication on Twitter and Instagram and I'm sure I have missed key events and missed things to congratulate. While these practices might, at times, increase stress and anxiety because you can't help compare (yes, I've been guilty of this; I've written about here), overall, I deeply appreciate this practice to celebrate people's wins— especially because in academia, the wins feel so few and far between. In that comraderie, I am thankful for the GroupMes and chats where I wound up still in the loop, and also yes, happy to be back in this way. 

To be honest, I didn't think I've make it. That first week was so hard, and again, really hard after I finished a conference last week. I had not-a-little bit of FOMO (fear of missing out) for what I know are all the post-conference social media funsies. But throughout the month, the inclination and temptation to go on social media slowly dwindled. I didn't realize how badly I needed this break and spend some time with myself. I heard silence for the first time in a while and in that silence, was able to hear myself. I'll likely engage in this practice more often. At the very least, it's affirmed that I don't need to check social media every day. Now, for tomorrow, I might feel differently depending on whether I have 0 or 10000 notifications, ha! 

But overall, the past four days have affirmed what I had hypothesized previously: that I spend a lot of time on social media, and on my phone in general. And as a result, during this break, I find myself misplacing my phone often. And in all of this, I've enjoyed my holiday time with my family more because I am both figuratively and literally more present. I didn't think it'd be that much of a difference, but it has been. Admittedly, I also feel somewhat disconnected, which I had also hypothesized— it's part of why I was scared to delete these apps because it's so much of how I stay in touch with friends. Thankfully, people have texted me more, which has been lovely, and I'm glad that on the 31st, I posted that I was going on break for the month. 

​In that, I totally missed the news about the boycott for the Golden Globes. I already had a slew of criticisms for them, which have been aligned with the critiques about the lack of diversity from the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation and corruption (all of which can be read here and here), But my critique has also been deeply personal in the ways that the Golden Globes categorized Minari under the "foreign" category, despite the narrative being about Korean Americans, written by a Korean American, and a cast that is largely Korean American. While I grew up not in Oklahoma, where the movie takes places, I felt like the stories and snippets, the small details in that film were taken verbatim from my childhood memories. Memories, according to Hollywood Foreign Press and the Golden Globes, that are foreign.

​Scholars have written at length about this: about Asian Americans being perpectual foriegners, of how Asians are reduced to the model minority myth, and the ways the model minority myth  further perpetuates anti-Blackness. So even as the Golden Globes awarded Bong Joon Ho and Parasite many deserved awards (which I write about here) and I, like many others, was excited about Lee Jung Jae of Squid Game receiving a nomination for Best Actors, I also know that this representation isn't enough. Representation won't bring us transformation: at most, it is what Dr. Sarah Ahmed describes as a function of the diversity check-list. 

Over the past several years, I've justified my hours of scrolling, posting, engaging because it is tied to my work with gatekeeping (see my research here) and how part of the ways I challenge toxic academic socialization is by sharing resources (see explanation here and here). I share and learn about call for proposals, new articles to read from Twitter. The Facebook Groups I have joined often serve as mutual aid groups in my identity as a pre-tenure scholar. And Instagram is where I keep in touch with friends and all the Kpop and Korean drama funsies. I love so many aspects of social media. And, as equally important, I dislike so much of social media. Or, more accurately. how I have been seeing myself morph and engage with these platforms. I spend hours endlessly scrolling, being less present, hyerscrutinize the photos I take or the captions I'm trying to write, and spend time feeling like something is missing because the comparison feels real, even though I know and have read articles like this one from Psychology Today that breaks down how this phenomenon is a facade. 

So starting tomorrow, I'll be taking a break and try logging off. I know I should because of how much stress it's already causing me to even think about not using it. I want to use it even more today just to "make up" for the lost time I know I'll be incurring later by not being able to access it. Hilarious, and a reaffirmation I need to pause, take a break, and see what happens. At the very least, I imagine I'll have regained some time back. 



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It's that time again! Me sharing what are the things I've been consuming, watching, enjoying, while procrastinating from my actual to do list, AND also taking some much needed time away and resting. Much like the rest of the world, I binged and enjoyed Squid Game - I had it marked months prior because I'm still always a little dazed that Korean content is showcased and readily produced with streaming sites. And in that, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole of a TON of Korean shows and movies.

And as a random observation, I didn't realize how many zombie shows and movies I've been enjoying. It's not a trend I thought I'd like (and I completely skipped over the vampires and werewolves excitement), but in thinking about Kingdom, Train to Busan, and most recently Happiness, I apparently really like zombie things, or at the very least, the way Korean directors are showcasing zombie storylines and tying it back to... yep, you guessed it, corruption, greed, and the human condition.

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To be frank, the idea for this article had never crossed my mind. Instead, what happened was a conversation with Dr. Criss Salinas that included a tangential mention about the resources on this site. And organically, I wound up sharing a bit about the evolution, (which I've written about here— also on this site), emphasizing how many many iterations its gone through and hopefully can be an encouragement for folx who might be interested in creating something similar. And from that conversation came the encouragement and push for an article like this: to describe its purpose, history, lessons learned, and  recommendations. And now it's here. The article is actually here. 

I'm dazed with the article being here, because of my other longstanding conversation with myself and my relationship to writing. I've penned some of my struggles with writing here and the difficulties of transitioning in the faculty position here. So it feels especially wild for me to have an article published within this "pit" in where I'm still feeling stuck. Thankfully, collaborations and writing groups have been helpful as I still struggle and continue to struggle with writing. And much in the ways I've shared here (in a podcast episode), writing is hard to do in the middle of a pandemic, with ongoing racial violence, because writing, dreaming, thinking, drafting— all of it— requires stillness, time, and quiet. The world is rather noisy. 

Coupled with all of these feelings, has been the fear: the fear of being a "one hit wonder." My last published manuscript was in 2018 and with all my writing woes, I have kept wondering if I'd ever write something else. (Granted, I wrote a dissertation, but for some reason, it doesn't feel​ the same). Earlier last week, I listened to a fantastic podcast episode from 88 Cups of Tea (highly recommend) with author Tochi Onyebuchi who talked about that exact fear. He outlined how this fear manifests particularly when going from the first book to the second and the ways our expectations increase, both internal and external. It was a well-timed moment, and a nice reification that the fear of it doesn't necessarily go away with more books, more publications, more accolades. This is because our fears are rooted in a slightly different question: "is this it for me?" And what Onyebuchi describes is how to overcome this feeling, or maybe not even overcome but to be alongside it, is to continue to try. 

And so I have. I still write. I am still writing, both here and in draft manuscripts. I am trying. And for me, the article, all the feelings, represents, in part, a wonderment of trying. I feel a bit bare saying it like this, but I imagine that some of you are in similar places, spaces, of trying. 


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My students have come to roast me during class because I apparently introduce every book, author, and article in class as "my favorite." Which is true; they really are all my favorites. At the beginning of classes, I like to introduce a "quote for thought." They'll range from a quote within a science fiction book, or an excerpt from a random article I read, or an Instagram post or tweet I liked. Last week, I brought N.K. Jemisin's "Broken Earth Trilogy" because I had used  the following quote (which I screenshot from my slides):

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It was the perfect way to start our week of "Research Foundations in Higher Education" with our adventures with phenomenology, narrative inquiry (and speculative storytelling), and portraiture. And the Broken Earth Trilogy really is one of my favorites— as my class has very lovingly pointed out.  And I find this absolutely hilarious because I had no idea I did this for a while. And now I keep qualifying every book and author with, "I know I say everything is my favorite, but y'all, this one is really a favorite." ​And I stand by it. These are many of my favorite things 💖


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The first week of October is done, and with that, the 7th week of the semester in year 2 as faculty. I'm not sure where the summer went, nor where the beginning of fall went, but here we are. And here I am, in a very different stage and place in my life. 

The first year of faculty life was a lot, as my reflection about the first-year dossier indicated. The best way I can describe last year, within the larger context of the (ongoing) global pandemic and continued racial violence, is that I spent most of the first year thinking I was bad at my job and deeply convinced that I wasn't cut out for faculty— that I was in the wrong profession. How did I come to this conclusion? I'm too sure, but by the first set of course evaluations (which were brutal, as all the literature has confirmed), I knew that this was not it. And so I spent the rest of the year feeling as though I was continuing to fail, was being set up to fail (as I did indeed fall into many of the traps Women of Color faculty experience at predominantly white institutions), and that no matter what I did, I couldn't improve the conditions, my position, and so I felt like I kept failing. 

The summer was important. I spent time away from what became a personal and professional sinkhole: my home. During that first year, I spent the entire time in my apartment, taking every meeting at home, every crushing moment of writer's block at home, crying after reading my course evaluations at home, all of it... at home. Home was no longer sacred; home was no longer restful; home was the painful reminder I was bad at my job. I bought plants to distract, invested in hobbies to try other things, and redecorated often. Spending a summer away was exactly what I needed to regroup and reframe who I was going to be moving forward. 

The second year is different. I did not realize how much I had missed the physical classroom (while still recognizing the inaccessibility it forces). I have an office, which I very much enjoyed decorating. Yes, I put plants in it. And I have distance— literal, with my hour commute each way that gives me time to enjoy a podcast, listen to some songs, catch up with a friend. But the biggest reason why the second year feels different, is because I know I want to remain a faculty member. To be clear, I am not magically a better professor this year; I am more or less the same (although, like I told my students, I am WAY more funny and charming in person). However, I've reframed last year as growth and also changed my stance with the job. I do want to be and enjoy being faculty—perceived failures and actual failures in all. I didn't make the wrong choice, and that even if, hypothetically I did, I'll have learned a ton to better prepare me for whatever is next. And, I do think I am marginally better at the job this year (which make sense), and that maybe I actually can do this job in the ways I had always hoped. 

​Oh, I'm also happier in this second year because I also stopped working 7 days a week. I know, I know: neoliberal capitalism and grind culture at its worst and I very much folded into it, but I also strugged in teaching two classes on Mondays so Sundays became work days, and Saturdays had already been writing days. Thus, I quickly evolved into a system where I was working every day. I no longer do that. As I tell my students often— in part, as a way to manifest it for myself— I have a robust life outside of academia; we all should. 


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I will speak this into existence for this summer, which truthfully doesn't quite feel like a summer. My goal: to go on vacation, and not bring my laptop.

Whew. I am starting to get anxious just thinking about not bringing my laptop. I have a tablet, with a keyboard, which I know I'll bring with me. But even so, the idea of NOT BRINGING my laptop, feels so very much different. 

My friend Debbie, who I met while at UCLA, used to complain about me (in a loving, joking way) because no matter where we went to explore on the weekends, I'd always bring my laptop. Cute cafes, amazing locations, delicious brunch spaces (all pre-pandemic), always included my metaphorical but actually quite literal, physical baggage that is my laptop. For many of those times, I actually never wound up opening it. (And Debbie would, like a true friend, tease me about why I hauled it around LA in the first place). Even during multi-day vacations, I'd really not spend a lot of time using it— usually just answering emails which (1) I shouldn't have been doing anyways, but also (2) could easily do on my phone.

​And yet, the idea of not taking my laptop, feels like a commitment I'm not quite ready to make: a commitment to not be so tied to my work. To be clear, I am certainly not making the argument that people who bring their laptops everywhere have bad work-life harmony; (thank you Dr. Fred Bonner II for that reframe from work-life balance). Instead, as I'm slowly starting to travel (i.e., see my family for the first time), I'm wondering what my life might be like where I just... don't take my laptop. I'll still be able to do work off my tablet of course, and my parents have computers for me to use too in case I really need it. So I am thinking, and wondering about this idea, this vision, this tantilizing dream of not bringing my laptop... that feels like something that maybe I can actually try for this summer and commit to taking some time off. 

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And through it, I've come to meet some of my most favorite worlds, learned about authors who have now become some of my faves, and picked up new anthologies and books because I wanted to read more. Here are some of the episodes I've especially enjoyed (links and descriptions from Stitcher and in no particular order): 

The first story I listened to was Lesley Nneka Arimah's "What it means when a man falls from the sky." And when I finished listening, I couldn't believe that it ended there, so I went out and bought the book immediately. I did the same after listening to N.K. Jemisin's "Cuisine des mémoires." And I cried during and after Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie"-- it was a little to close to home for me. 

Part of why I like the podcast is because of how Burton adds in special effects with his incredible reading, so it really feels like a transportation to another realm. It's why I feel jarred when stories end "too soon" for me, or when things feel too close to emotions I've pent up. But, part of why I wanted to share about podcasts for this random round-up is because of the two stories I had wanted to include, but won't. 

If folx have been following the news over the past couple of years, we've seen several cases of how scholars, researchers, and organizers have pretended to be a race that they are not and reaped the benefits of doing so-- which is especially damaging, horrible, and frustrating given the already scare resources for minoritized groups. The most recent in 2021 is Andrea Smith and I recomment reading Sarah Viren's incredible article about it. Viren's article unpacks the multilayered complexities of claiming ancestry with Native American tribes. I can't really do it justice so please just read it :) 

I included it because of how, after listening to "Takeback Tango" on the podcast, I was enthralled and decided to look up Rebecca Roanhorse. And in doing so, came across this article: Acee Agoyo 's (Ohkay Owingeh/Cochiti/Kewa) article, entitled, "'The Elizabeth Warren of the sci-fi set': Author faces criticism for repeated use of tribal traditions." Whew. What a title right? But in it, included several troubling conclusions that felt similar to what I had been reading with Viren's (yet, also very different). I was of course, shocked and disappointed in reading the article, and now I don't know quite what to do-- I really do love Roanhorse's work. And yet...

In reflection on the past two weeks (which is when all of this came to play), I've realized that while I try to do my due diligence to read about authors I cite and include in my academic work (because citations are very much political), I have been less discerning in my other areas of life. To be clear, this isn't about wholesale boycotts or cancel culture (which is a different thing to unpack in it of itself), but a reminder for me that my time, money, and interests should be spent carefully and deeply in consideration of how harm is reproduced and the ways I contribute to it.


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I've appreciated African American Policy Forum's #TruthBeTold Campaign where they've been documenting the attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT). And one of the things that they've clearly outlined and what Colleen and I also spoke about (and can be seen from other CRT scholars), is just how many misconceptions that exist about CRT.  As mentioned in the article:

One of the things that we're observing is the interpretation of CRT as "attacks" on specific groups such as white conservatives, who argue that they are being villiafied. But what I want to clearly emphasize here and what CRT explains (see Derrick Bell who helped found CRT in legal studies), is that racism isn't just about racist interactions but really about the embedded ways our policies, structures, and even organizations reify racism. (This is also why I appreciate Victor Ray's article about theorizing racialized orgs). This also points back to our education systems and what we are— and just as importantly are not— teaching. For that reason and more, programs and initiatives like Dr. Nikole Hannah-Jones's work with the 1619 Project are huge because part of these anti-CRT attacks reflect a lack of recognition (*cough* hypocrisy) about our history. Recent comments from Vice President Kamala Harris in Guatemala to "not come" to America very much overlook how the U.S. has contributed to the political instability and migration, particularly in Central America.

But what these attacks also reveal are the ways that C. W. Mills (1959) describes our lack of "sociological imagination." In short, we reduce systemic concerns and struggles to interpersonal conflict and personal behavioral changes. We see this in deficit-oriented language and programming— think of the rhetoric of parents not caring about their children's education because they are not showing up to parent-teacher conferences, but overlooking that these conferences are scheduled during the work day that many parents (especially low-income) cannot (literally) afford prioritize.  In the same way, we fall into the trap of thinking of racism as interactional, individually focused behaviors that we can "fix" through diversity trainings and workshops, without considering the political structures (think housing and redlining or gerrymandering and voting). 

All this to say, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have been able to share my thoughts and am also grateful for Dr. Abbie Bates and Dr. Nolan Cabrera who talked me through my initial concerns and reminded me not to ramble (as I usually do— exhibit A are these entries). 


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Graduation was on Saturday and it is complicated. I, like many of my peers as part of the class of 2020, have a complicated relationship with graduation because we cannot help but continue to mourn the loss of celebrations and be a bit salty about the cancelled graduations we experienced. 

I think because of these feelings, I was especially sensitive to the class of 2021 and my students, who were really hoping to have a graduation of their own. And so I volunteered to spearhead graduation and plan it with a great group of students (some who were graduating, others who will be in future years). We worked together for six intense weeks to make our socially-distanced in-person graduation (with pods and markers for guest seating) with a joint (virtual) live-stream! We had speeches, programs, hoodings, gifts, goodies, websites, Polaroids, and more to celebrate the students in love and in style. It was a lot. But it was also everything. 

As part of the ceremony, I got to hood my amazing incredible advisees who have GRADUATED 🎉🎓🎉🎓🎉🎓 #ClassOf2021. They are a special bunch, as I wrote to my message to them on the graduation  website I created (through Notion, of course): 

​I'm so proud of them and was so honored to hood them. (Admittedly, I was also incredibly nervous to hood them and practiced on quite a number of people just in case). 

I'm not quite done with my first year as a professor. I still have what feels like a mountain of grading to do and a graduation to help execute. But today felt like one of those days of "almost" so here are small snippets with no connection except that they all happened today. No big "moral" or takeaway at the end, just small bits of prose. 

Snippet 1: With Covid-19 vaccinations and improvements with weather, some of my students and I have been able to see each other outside-- distanced, of course. Today was one of those days and it was lovely to 1. see people's heights which is always hilarious given the different angles my head will now turn; and 2. just being in shared (non-virtual) space. It felt like an apt wrap-up with the student group I've been advising and a wonderful celebration of the year. We also took some polaroids; my selfie polaroid game has not improved in the slightest. 

Snippet 2: With graduation around the corner, the students and I who have been the graduation committee did a run-thru, which also included my practicing hooding my advisees. (The experience was both incredibly sentimental and something I'll explore later, given that with physical graduation being cancelled for me last year, I have yet to be hooded by my own advisor. Luckily, I watched a lot of videos to practice). The run-thru has been a culmination of 8 weeks of very intense planning with a team worthy of their own event staff company as we grappled with outdoor venues, livestreaming options, decorations, programming, and a hundred other details I am forgetting. Thank goodness they're running the show. I'm looking forward to celebrating the class of 2021. 

Snippet 3: I went to my office. I don't go often given that it's relatively empty and I'm still hoarding my books at my home workspace, but going made me realize that once the semester is over, I'll make the transition from home space to my office space. I saw and dreamt a bit of how the end of the semester will quickly mean the preparation for the next. The wheels keep turning., especially as I look at the goals of my summer planning. Do I even want to cross the finish line? (Yes, obviously and I will celebrate plenty when I/we do).  

I feel like all I'm doing is writing statements. And I mean that in two ways: (1) the tragedies and cruelty have been unrelenting so I feel like I am writing again and again and again— it's what I feel like I am doing all the time. But also (2) in doing this, I am exhausted, tired, angry, frustrated, in continuing to experience and observe structural systemic oppression manifest again and again and again and again. And in it, I feel defeated because in writing these statements, is this all that we can do? (The answer is obviously no; we can, need, and will do more). But in all of this, I wrote, again, to my students this past week. But wrote something a little different if you want to read it here. 

Hi everyone,
 
Some of you might be following closely to the news, while others of you will be learning about this for the first time. Last night (March 16), a white, 21-year-old shot and killed 8 individuals in Atlanta, Georgia— six of whom were Asian and Asian American and seven of whom were women. In the reports detailed by Korean newspaper, Chosun, some of these individuals include elders and grandmothers. 
 
A year ago, many of you received an email from me regarding anti-Asian rhetoric and hate regarding the discourse around Covid-19. In that email, I described how the reporting and rise of Anti-Asian (and especially anti-Chinese) violence was both related to the now-former president's harmful rhetoric but also related to a much longer history of stereotyping and associating disease with Asians as well as the construction and history of Yellow Peril. Since then, the organization Stop AAPI Hate has documented over 3,795 incidences from March 19, 2020 to February 28,2021 and includes the following disturbing and concerning conclusions [read full report here]: 

• 68% of the incidents are verbal harassment (68.1%) and 11.1% are physical assault 
• Women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men
• Youths (0 to 17 years old) report 12.6% of incidents and seniors (60 years old and older) report 6.2% of the total incidents.
• Chinese are the largest ethnic group (42.2%) that report experiencing hate, followed by Koreans (14.8%), Vietnamese (8.5%), and Filipinos (7.9%). 
  
  

I provide these statistics and reports to you all because as we think about the anti-Asian killings in Atlanta, we must take an intersectional lens and think about hate and racism with their intersectional relationships to gender, social class, immigration, stigma of sex work, and policing. Additionally, these conversations have to be situated in the longer history between the U.S., Asians, and Asian Americans. We can trace these things back to the Page Act of 1875 specifically prohibiting the immigration of Chinee women, which led to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 banning all Chinese people; the horrors of Japanese Internment; the murder of Vincent Chin; and many more attrocities (see Dr. Erika Lee's The Making of Asian America).
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Even further, we can take another step back to think about how Asians came to the U.S. and the larger global economies of imperialism and war (see Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy's Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History) which even then trickles down into how we are socialized to think about food (see Dr. Mark Padoongpatt's Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America). This same week, the U.S. deported 33 Vietnamese refugees; all of this is deeply intertwined. To learn more, in addition to the books and articles I've recommended, consider watching PBS's "Asian Americans" series, reading and looking at organizations like AAPI Women Lead and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. 
 
What this means for us, especially as student affairs professionals and faculty, are three things:

1. The first is how we better protect and advocate and support international students, especially the international Asian population. Again, the attack must be viewed intersectionally and the relationship between racism and immigration can't be ignored. Are your international students actually experiencing less violence and hate, or are they scared to report it in fear of losing visas?
   
   
2. The second is thinking about the age of the shooter: 21— "college-age." We cannot take social justice for granted: we cannot mitigate, dilute, or wave-away harmful actions. We've seen with the #MeToo Movement: how "boys will be boys" creates a culture of fear and misogyny. Consider how you challenge racism, genderism, homophobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia, and intersecting forms of oppression. AND, in doing so, do so in community; do so recognizing how you can wield your privilege to be what Dr. Bettina L. Love describes as "co-conspirators" for justice; and do so knowing that we, myself included, can make missteps and need to continuously grow ourselves. 
   
   
3. Third, in the intersectional lens, don't get distracted. Don't pit groups against each other, fighting for crumbs, while missing the larger cookie of white supremacy. As Mari Matsuda, J.D., who is part of the foundation group who developed Critical Race Theory (CRT), brilliantly writes CRT is not anti-Asian. We can be both against anti-Asian hate and against anti-Blackness. And, in supporting the Asian American community, we can do so without being anti-Black and/or co-opting the #BlackLivesMatter movement (e.g., don't use #AsianLivesMatter— instead use #StopAAPIHate; don't post yellow squares). As Lilla Watson says, “Our liberty [liberation] is bound together.” 

 
Writing this statement is especially difficult for me as an Asian American woman, and frankly, felt almost impossible for me to write as I am still processing and still grieving. Your Asian and Asian American friends, classmates, and colleagues may be feeling similar, and additionally feeling invisible considering the (general) lack of news coverage about Asians and Asian Americans and the geopolitical history of invisibilizing Asians in the midwest (see Dr. Jason Chan's dissertation). Consider reaching out to them and check-in. And as this statement might have shared new information to you, consider reading and learning more of the history that was not taught to us— read about Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) people; learn their histories; and hear their stories. And in doing so, consider how we might be more intersectional in our analyses and the ways we are challenging for student affairs, higher education, both as a field and in our respective positions, to do and be better. 
 
In community,
​Dr. Katherine S. Cho

[A/N: March 18, 2021]
In a previous version of this statement, I did not include the Page Act of 1875, which is earlier than the more well-known Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In including it, I have been reflecting on how for the little I learned about Asian American history, I was only taught the latter and not the former, which (again) reifies the relatioship between race, gender, and immigration.



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That's all for now.

In Korean, there's a phrase folx use with "Latte" (라떼; just the way it's pronouned in English), as a play on words with "Natte" (나때; rhymes with latte), which essentially translates to "back in my day." People use it to tease the older generation to stop referring back to their "good ole days" or how they had it much worse, etc. 

The number of times I've already used "back in my day" as a faculty member is hilarious. And even more hilarious because the "back in my day" was literally 6 months ago. That's all for today - just a coffee-time story with a splash of my ridiculousness. 


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What I didn't expect the dossier to be, as I worked on mine, was a rollercoaster of emotions in two ways. First, despite me consistently reminding my students to give ourselves grace for the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing racism; adjusting requirements for classes; and supporting students in modifying their expectations for themselves, I did not do the same for myself. Instead, I quickly spiraled into the "Well, I should have been doing" and "I can't believe I didn't do" self-talk that helps no one. I know many of you can relate and have done the same. Second, the process was emotional because I actually did do a lot. And you'd think that the second point would counteract the first point, but it didn't. I did a lot in things... I hadn't been counting. I didn't count them because I didn't count me. At some point during the semester, I stopped thinking I mattered. I cannot overstate how hard this transition has been, while recognizing that I have not written about it much either (in part, because I'm not quite ready to). I spent the past semester, my first ever semester as a faculty member in a new city, new institution, feeling like I failed at every aspect of my job. I know and know and know that I didn't fail. And yet, I still felt that feeling of failure to my core.

Yesterday, I learned that the term "imposter syndrome" was originally coined as "imposter phenomenon." I'll be sure to use the latter from now on, in the continuous reminder that my feelings of failure, a reflection and manifestation of imposter phenomenon, is a construction.

Of course it is.

As so many brilliant scholars have stated, higher education wasn't built for me, for people of color, for women, disabled folx, for trans folx, for so many many identities.  Writing the dossier was grappling with how far I had convinced myself that I didn't belong. Despite my best efforts and even ironic ways I study and critique and analyze dysfunction, the dysfunctional socialization of academia, and even via the communication I have with students reminding them how much they belong here (because they do!), I had wrapped my identity in this 20-page document. What a ride. I obviously finished the document. Because I had to (ha!). AND because of a tremendous community that refuses to let me be less than, even when self-determined. Today, marks the halfway of week 2 in the second semester (still in the first year). In some weird way, I'm thankful in how the year 1 dossier gave me a solid moment of reflection, despite the rollercoaster. I'll carry these lessons a little closer to my heart as I finish out my first year and start working on the year 2 version. 

P.S. As a pro-tip from Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya, make sure when writing a dossier, to have a conceptual framework that guides the narrative of who you are as a scholar. 


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