Jenna Lee ASA 002 A03 Week 7

          This week’s reading “Care Work: The Invisible Labor of Asian American Women”, by Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace J. Yoo, introduced the key concept of care work and how it affects academia. As defined in the text, care work is “a sociological construct defined as the physical, mental and emotional work put into nurturing and supporting another individual” (303). And within academic institutions, it is often the Asian American women who end up providing this care work for their (or other professors’) students. Throughout the article, the authors argue how undervalued this work is and how much of an impact care work has on the students’ performances. As a second-year college student myself, I definitely feel that there is a strong need for such a support system within the school, and I believe that these resources would better our chances for success within the academia. When I was a freshman at UC Davis, I came across a couple of problems in my life that made it nearly impossible to focus on my studies. Whenever these came up, I had to reach out to my friends who I spent the most time with at school. Through consulting with my friends, I have resolved these worries in a healthy manner, and I came to the understanding that having someone to reach out to and trust about my personal issues was a very crucial part of my mental health. Now, I am doing much better in school, and I give much of the credit to my friends who were there for me when I needed someone to talk to. As a closing statement, the authors “argue that an academic institution that fails to value care work not only fails its faculty but also fails its students and thus its mission”, and coming from personal experience, I could not have agreed more (319).

Question
I do recall, however, that we have a couple of counseling services on campus. Are these services different from the “care work” that is introduced in the text?

References
Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Nakis, J. [Photo of Stressed College Student]. Retrieved from https://www.ahchealthenews.com/2018/11/09/1-in-5-college-students-contemplate-suicide-due-to-stress/