Week 1

Gabriela Garcia-Mejia

Section A03

Week 1

            This week’s reading was a piece written by professor Valverde on her journey through the university system and the obstacles and prejudices that she faced. She mentioned feeling that impostor syndrome when she arrived to UC Berkeley as an undergrad and even though some years have passed since that I can still relate that feeling with my experience here at Davis. I’m the daughter of Mexican immigrants, first generation college student and the first in my family to attend a 4-year university. When I first arrived here I remember feeling a mix of emotions from excitement, fear, homesickness, joy etc. but as I looked around in my classes I noticed that there weren’t a lot of other Latinos, especially in the Sciences and it made me feel like I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough. This feeling of being less reached a high point that same freshman year when I made an appointment with a counselor because it was mandatory for all first years. I went in to meet with her and at the time my major was Undeclared in the college of Bio Sci. She began to ask, with a puzzled look on her face, why I wanted to major in Biology if I was not on a pre-med path. As I explained to her my interests she began to tell me that I should look into my options and that since I was taking CHI 10 (Chicano Studies) that a lot of people like me decide to major in that so that might be a better fit for me.

I know that it should have been shocking to hear about Professor Valverde’s experiences of being attacked by “her own”; scholars from the same department as her that were supposed to be her support system yet they turned their backs on her. In reality in wasn’t as shocking because we are an individualistic society so there’s always a sense of competitiveness and outdoing of one another when we should be helping each other, especially since we are POC. We should stand together and support one another not tear each other down.

Question: Professor Valverde had a perfect record, accolades and published work and yet they still denied her tenure which makes me wonder why has the process not been changed to be objective or is such a thing even achievable?

Resources:

D. (2015, January 11). Mad Typist. Retrieved April 09, 2017, from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/518265869594101880/

Valverde, K. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia.Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 12(2), 369.