Now is as good a time as ever

I am sitting by myself in a fairly small room in Sage Hall.  The building is almost empty.  Thursday is the day we the infamous “Sage Socials” and people tend to leave the building half drunk in order to go out to finish the job.  

Today we had the last Social for the semester, so they brought back the good food (this whole semester, Socials have been mainly chips and salsa since the university is trying to cut back on budget).  There were crab cakes, and shrimp, and cheese that was labeled “imported”.  Since it was the last one A LOT of people came. Now at least half of the school is in something called “Johnson Follies”.  I decided not to go to the Follies, and actually didn’t stay long at the Social because I am working on my final project for the Marketing Immersion.  I decided to work through our data using SPSS, so that I wouldn’t have to do anything tonight or tomorrow and I’d be free to help Uri with his huge catering event (more on that tomorrow or on Sunday or Monday) - Incredibly enough I actually found something that looks like it’s worthwhile.   However, being here alone, the only thing I could really do in my little cathartic moment was change my Facebook status to “Tamar decided that she is SPSS queen”.  Now I’m sitting here waiting for Uri to come pick me up, and then I remembered you guys!  

But as luck would have it, Uri is supposed to be here in around 5 minutes.  It leaves me time to tell you just a small tidbit of something that happened while I wasn’t blogging – John Cleese was here! Apparently he comes to Cornell quite often.  Uri and I (along with some other friends) went to see him lecture.  It was quite funny and thoughtful.  He said some things that really made me think – specifically about the relationship between creativity and stress.  Also about how when people do what they truly want to be doing, life seems to align in a manner that circles come together.  More on those if I ever get back to having enough time to philosophize. That’s it.

Meaningful conversation - who would of thought?

I had planned to write an angst filled post.  I was majorly and very un-productively frustrated, so I started writing.  I didn’t get around to finishing it.  And then a couple of days went by and something a lot more interesting and a lot less depressing came up.  I figured it would make a much better post.

The context for this is a team project I’m doing with 3 classmates that involves extensive market research concerning immigrants to Canada.  In thinking about questions to ask for our survey, I had suggested the question “How do you define your identity?” (or something along those lines).  One team member who is black said she doesn’t think it’s a good question because people wouldn’t necessarily reply with a cultural identification and gave herself as an example.  She would not think of saying “I’m black, I’m American, I’m a woman”, but would most likely give character traits.  My initial reply was to say that if that was the answer someone would give, it would certainly tell us something about his cultural identity as an immigrant.  She at that time insisted we phrase the question as “What is your cultural identity?”.  At the time I didn’t see the point of continuing the discussion about it and standing my ground (though I will when we actually come to the final version of the questionnaire), but back to the point – even when we had finished up, I was still pondering her response and how it was completely opposite of what I expected it to be.  Obviously some of my surprise was due to stigmas that I have about American-educated-black-women (I wonder now if that is the right order to describe this group) but part of it was because she is part of both the Women’s Management Council and the Black Students’ Association. 

So today I talked with her about it.  It was really interesting.  I had wondered if it’s an effect of growing up in a multi-cultural society, or maybe just the opposite.  I don’t think we really got down to the bottom of it (it was after all a Sage Social), but part of what she said I really related to: She said that it had always really bothered her to be automatically associated with the “African American” group.  As though she had to be friends with them despite not really having anything in common with them.  And added that while she is for the general cause, on a personal level of interaction, it was something she chose not to do.  She also said that on those same lines she didn’t like the term “African American” because it forced her into a cultural connection that she didn’t really have (neither she, her parents or her grandparents have ever been to Africa), and it’s not as though white people recognize themselves as Irish American or German American.