Boya Di, ASA 002 A03, Week 4

Boya Di
Section:A03
Week 4 Blog

In this week's reading material, "Killing Machine: Exposing the Health Threats to Asian American Women Scholars in Academia" by Caroline Valverde, Cara Maffini Pham, Melody Yee, and Jing Mai, states that the unfairness of academics leads to a lot of pressure for Asian-American women, and the pressure has seriously impacted their physical and mental health. 

Because of discrimination, Asian-American women should work harder and do more work. Otherwise, they cannot be promoted to higher ranks. "Although many of our respondents did not elaborate specifically, our findings are in line with other studies showing that Asian American women must work to a higher standard than others to achieve the same rates of success" (Turner, 2002). Under this intensive work and stress, many Asian-American women suffer from cancer, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and even depression. When they have the disease, they do not have enough time to recover. Since the heavy workload is not completed, they have to return to university as soon as possible. Thus, their health will have many sequelae, leading to their health status getting worse.

In my perspective, the professor's gender, nation, and race are not necessary factors for the university to evaluate promotion; instead, their quality of course is essential. Therefore, the work for every professor should be the same because the health is the base for professor to make work more efficient. When they are healthy, they can pay attention to their courses and students. They do not need to waste time on seeing doctors. Besides, a mental disease is worse than physical disease, and it is not easy to be cured. Hence, the college should care about professor’s health and treat them fairly. I find a picture which illustrate what professors do all day. In this picture, we can see that most of the time, professor is meeting, writing emails, and preparing for classes. I think except for the colleges’ care for the professor, they themselves should save time to do exercise. Job is important in our life, but I believe health is more important than work. 

Question: Why the college distribute many extra works to Asian-American professors?

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy, “Killing Machine:Exposing the Health Threats to Asian American Women Scholars in Academia”. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Wade, L. (2014, April 28). What Do College Professors Do All Day? Retrieved from https://psmag.com/education/what-do-college-professors-all-day-80194