In the reading "How to Leave Academia", Neurill, who graduated from university of California, Berkeley shared her stories about how she left the academia and gave some tips. She applied for over 350 tenure-track positions without success then she left academia and alternate through various jobs and careers. When I first read through her stories, I begin to wonder how a such educated woman with golden degrees cannot find a place in the academia? During her interviews in hotel rooms she said that “I needed to look boring. Being a mixed-race, “exotic” woman of color, with an obsession with fashion, made me someone who was in a particular need of looking boring—I couldn’t be loud in any way visually, aesthetically, or vocally.” The elitism, racism and sexism in the academia accumulate her resentments for education and she chose to left academia and become a waitress. “a waitress with a doctorate, only now I also felt old and like a failure. That bolded quote in seventy-two- point font was coming back to haunt me.” Asian American women in academia are facing pressure from the academic world and the society. On the one hand, they are biased in the academia, on the other hand, their own choices are judging by the outside world. Sarcastically, the environment is the restaurant is much better than the environment of academia which is filled with elitism, racism and sexism. The question I have is that although Rani Neutill choose to leave, is it a waste of educational resources for her to be a waitress?
Taylor, Kate. “Denying a Professor Tenure, Harvard Sparks a Debate Over Ethnic Studies.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Jan. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/us/harvard-latinos-diversity-debate.html.
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