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I am always, at least in my head, a little behind the rest of the group. Slow to "get it". Growing up, I didn't mind how and who I was to myself and comfortable going along with the flow of things. My problems always stemmed from the point where someone being themself (myself or others) was met with ridicule or violence. Such moments always felt unfinished- where was the closure? The follow-up answer for the person who was harmful because they didn't understand me, or the person they were targeting. It wasn't that their actions deserved justification; I wanted to see that closure for my own learning purposes and to see the unnecessary inflammation of the situation eradicated. I can now identify this feeling as injustice.

I watched and read the news starting at about age 7. Every day I'd watch and read with my Mom and it was a chance to learn about other situations of injustice and how they were treated and sorted, if at all. It's an overtold story, but finally leaving the epitome of suburbia gave me an opportunity to no longer feel like the problem was me- who I chose to be, the problems I chose to "create" simply by acknowledging their existence. I am a student in queer and political studies because I knew I needed to surround myself with people who would either understand and relate to, and/or challenge and push me to reassess, my ideas of justice. - Kelly

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I am always, at least in my head, a little behind the rest of the group. Slow to "get it". Growing up, I didn't mind how and who I was to myself and comfortable going along with the flow of things. My problems always stemmed from the point where someone being themself (myself or others) was met with ridicule or violence. Such moments always felt unfinished- where was the closure? The follow-up answer for the person who was harmful because they didn't understand me, or the person they were targeting. It wasn't that their actions deserved justification; I wanted to see that closure for my own learning purposes and to see the unnecessary inflammation of the situation eradicated. I can now identify this feeling as injustice.

I watched and read the news starting at about age 7. Every day I'd watch and read with my Mom and it was a chance to learn about other situations of injustice and how they were treated and sorted, if at all. It's an overtold story, but finally leaving the epitome of suburbia gave me an opportunity to no longer feel like the problem was me- who I chose to be, the problems I chose to "create" simply by acknowledging their existence. I am a student in queer and political studies because I knew I needed to surround myself with people who would either understand and relate to, and/or challenge and push me to reassess, my ideas of justice.

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Chaguitillo, Matagalpa, 1983-1988
Those sounds at night were bombs and guns. I just wanted to put flower petals on my fingernails with Marilet.

Riverside, Jacksonville, 1988-1996
Yo no so gringa. No puedo hablar en Ingles. Bring her to me my grandma said. Sugar sandwiches and learning to iron pillowcases - hearing stories about when my mom was my age.

Douglass Anderson School of the Arts, 1996-1998
ME: I want to shave my legs.
Dad: No.
Me: Everyone shaves their legs
Dad: *Silence*
Me: But they look at my legs and laugh
*dad shows up at school the next day walks up to me and my friends*
Dad: Who is looking at her legs?

ICE, NYC 1998-2000
She's mad smart - valedictorian.
Gets into relationship with a teacher.

Penn State, 2000
Doesn't go to class.
Drugs. Abusive Relationship. Failure

Florida Community College at Jacksonville, 2001
Works 3 jobs. Takes care of dad after accident. Failure

Amir, 2006
BEING A MOTHER IS HARD AS FUCK. What is happening to my nipples? I am so tired.

Harlem, 2008
Welfare Office, HRA, Medicaid on repeat.
Too poor for affordable housing
Admin Job, can either afford daycare or rent

Hostos Community College, 2008
YO SOY HOSTOS.

CCNY, 2011
35k in scholarship money - but you can only have 28k because you qualify for financial aid.

Grad Center, 2021
You read an article written about poor mothers and their contribution to academia and it takes your breath away. You send it to your mom.

Happy Valentine's Day Mom - we made it.

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While home in Guyana over christmas I dusted off old report cards from my primary and secondary school education in Georgetown. Having gone to one school from age 6 through 16, I had the remnants of a decade’s worth of grades, and comments from my educators. Kayla (is) “a bright child,” “talkative,” “has lots of potential,” “needs to focus more,” “if only she would...” I dreaded parent teacher meetings. Comparisons. Tears. Beatings. Tears again because Guyanese parents will, “give you something to cry about.” I mouthed off to boys, while other girls giggled or ignored their torments. I was eight when I first got called a feminist; the word was hurled at me by a boy child who no doubt overheard the word and understood it to be an insult, or something only “bad” girls are. I was so pleased. He’s a misogynistic lawyer now, so... *shrug*. I excelled in English and English Literature. Always. I was on the debate team, and won elocution contests, I was often on the honours roll, but I didn’t follow all the rules or live up to other standards. A physical education teacher failed me for PE when I was ten years old! LOL. What kind of person gets off failing a chubby child for PE? But the cost of being a fat, wilful Black girl only multiplied as I got older. When I was 15 I was the only girl in my entire year not chosen to be a prefect, a coveted role for its power and prestige. When I didn't arrive late—which was seldom—I was the only girl in the line-up for the procession to class. I wore extra piercings in my ears though they were often confiscated; I stayed late after school to watch my crush play basketball. In sixth form, my Lit teacher called my mother in because I wrote a homoerotic reading of “A Separate Peace” for my final. He, the teacher, was aghast at the assertion that any of the characters were gay and insisted I had grossly misinterpreted the work. Thankfully, my mother did not share his views and couldn’t understand why I was being graded down. When I was 26 I was denied a degree at the graduate level, a degree I pursued after not/because/instead of pursuing motherhood(?). Subsequently, my long-term partner denied me his love. Shame. Having everyone you love, look away or through you because they are so disappointed in you is... excruciating, pain that temporarily impairs hearing and sight, and the will to live. Rage. Rage has been my long-term partner ever since. I procrastinate, I cry often, I take ages to start writing, but I like the process of learning, the exploration, the opportunities to create. I’ve never been a “good” student or scholar, but here I am, at it again. Still fat. Still wilful. Still Black.

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I've come to believe that many of the most beautiful things in my life have flourished (or not) because of timing. I grew up with a lot of noise around me, parents who were the first to be educated, a culture which values STEM over all, patriarchy, compulsory heterosexuality, traditional cultural values dictated by my home-country of Greece. I was fortunate and privileged to go to university, however, I found myself lost in a system that could not recognize my needs, and was too inflexible to allow for self-discovery. I am here because I am ready to create my education on my own terms. -- Nicole

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I think this is a really interesting question because it makes me think back to my educational past and its influence on my life. During the exercise in which we shared an important memory in relation to our education, all I could think about were memories from my undergrad. Looking back, I think it's because my school did not really teach topics like gender studies
in my life in a public school in Missouri in the middle of suburbia. Growing up in a Reaganite household probably didn't either. Once I came to college, I came in as a biology major, specifically, genetics, which was not the best move, seeming how I was terrible at anything math-related. As I mentioned to Angela in the exercise, it wasn't until October that I soon realized my mistake and was yearning for something I was passionate about rather than something that would make money. I considered going into history (which I ultimately got my second degree in) but felt as though the history I knew was never really challenged, which frustrated me. That's when I showed up to my WGS introductory course that I found my true passions. A field that I could not only challenge what we perceived as public history but also theory. Throughout my undergrad, I decided to keep pushing my education further to be able to become someone who would have the backing to challenge common notions of historical individuals. So to answer the question of why I am here, my answer would be to learn how to challenge history and push the field to be more inclusive to the world around it rather than maintaining false narratives.

-Sam

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I didn't know what I didn't know. That there are other LGBTQ people who are not interested in NYC Pride. That the weirdness I felt in saying  -- even among my gay male peers -- that I didn't want children was perhaps informed by living in a heteronormative culture. That my English lit BA gave me the illusion of knowing 'the canon,' and that there were queers writing alongside it. That there were films representing LGTBQ lives beyond The Kids Are All Right and Brokeback Mountain. That outsiderness, non-binary thinking, and queer behavior and creative expression were all around me, and had a long and complex history, if I knew to look. I didn't know.

Little encounters had big impact: joining a bookclub of LGBTQ folks and reading Kate Bornstein. Going to McNally Jackson Bookstore, or perusing Quad Cinema's "Coming Out Again" archive, and coming across queer titles I had never heard of. On a trip to Philadelphia, accidentally finding my way to Giovanni's Room, and Meg-John Barker's Queer: A Graphic History.

These encounters and the texts they brought me to, taught me a lot about queer history and queer theory -- namely, that they existed -- and helped me begin to understand that I don't just identify as a gay man, but aim to live a queer life. I didn't understand how I could have missed all of this. I understand a little better now. Other discoveries, events, and desires led, seven years after those encounters started, to my beginning to formally study queer topics.

- Jeremy

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There are two components to my why.

Of love: I went to PS 13 in Elmhurst, in the 1970's. Elementary school. Sometimes my father would drop me off in his checker cab.  It was so long ago, on occasion, I confuse the number with 19, as my birthdate has a 19 in it. Time shifts as the years shorten. In 2004, my daughter began her education, at a public school in Manhattan. As a solo parent, I was fearful of moving alone to some place where the cost of living would be lower but would be unfamiliar, far from my chosen family. I stayed here. She did pre-k, k-4. I was constantly prodded by administrators to act upon my child's behalf. "Get her here on time." "She should test for G&T." "Have her apply to this school or that school."  She went to  a public charter middle school 5-8, and some of those teachers are still in her life, forever imprinted. She went to a public high school, where there were gender neutral bathrooms. Her tenure in public school made life here possible for the two of us.

Of erasure: Your child leaves for college. You've blinked and you're no longer 35, you're some other age, an age of discontented invisibility, professionally, personally, and socially. There's so much space but there's no room for you. You do that thing, of going to a school that is within convenient proximity, so that you can get home and walk your dog and pace your empty nest, working out how you're going to work until you physically can not, praying that social security stipends will still be a reality. The option of education offers you something akin to what you've accomplished as a feminist, a salve from what you've been discarded from. So there you find yourself, among the like-minded, embracing the opening of optimism, tamping down the nagging erasure.

Education has provided an anchor of possibility, of rope, of further introspection. Will I be able to write like a scholar? Will I be able to pronounce words like "pedagogy" correctly? Will I be able to make a difference? There's so much more to consider, to juggle, to tackle, and I suppose I'm just getting started.    (Marcelle)

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I am here because there is a piece of me that I never understood until I took a Queer Theory course in college. Suddenly, everything made sense. The institution- although I can critique it in a hundred different ways- gave me access to the things that made me feel whole. I never heard of Women’s and Gender Studies until I got to college. I wasn't aware of intersectionality. I thought 'queer' was a bad word. I didn’t think that I could experience community in the ways I do when I am in WGS classes. I don’t have to explain myself in these spaces because my peers and my professors understand me. I love to read. I love to learn about history, politics, and theory. I love having existential conversations about the state of the world. I love listening to my peers tell stories and share the things that keep them up at night. I love learning from my professors when they teach with passion about their work. I know that there is content I can engage with on my own- freely and accessibly without the academy. But I also know that it wouldn’t be the same. I am so lucky to be here and privileged that I get to do this work. I am here for a lot of reasons. But mostly I am here because I can’t imagine doing anything else at this time in my life. So, I will put myself further into debt. I will take the train for an hour and a half both ways to get to the Grad Center. I will stay up late finishing assignments. I will cry when it is stressful and I will laugh when it is good. -Angela

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From the DOE to CUNY, I am a proud product of the NYC public school system.

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From the DOE to CUNY, I am a proud product of the NYC public school system.

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When I think about my education, I think about values: the ones I sought out from it and what it brought out in me. That everyone merits a quality education. That that education should be a right. That that education should be free of charge.

Public school is the closest thing we can get for now. Going to public school made me overly conscious of exclusivity and elitism. I'm a journalist for a corporate newsroom, where everyone has an Ivy League or fancy school education. I represent a perspective that otherwise would not be there, a perspective that's economically representative of a large swath of the country. At school and at work, I use this perspective to make decisions about coverage, representation, and weight. About what underserved narratives merit my thinking and  exploration.

- Yelena

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Through the chaos of 2020, not knowing who I was, falling in and out love, burning out at my nonprofit job, and having lots of fire in my belly, I thought: “no better time to apply to grad school!” My decision to apply was mixed, though. Having hopped from institution to institution throughout my twenties, I didn’t know if I had it in me to wade through the bureaucracy of academia. In undergrad, I studied film at NYU, often frustrated by the eurocentric male film canon taught in my classes, and the inaccessibity of the school and the industry at large. Years later, I found myself working in film programming at BAM. I met some of my favorite artists, thinkers, and mentors working there. Yet, I couldn’t shake off the constant frustration I felt by the financial roadblocks put up by the institution, the obsession with “getting butts in seats,” the neoliberal guise of progress in having more BiPOC represented in our programs without the material or infrastructural change to back it up. I found myself once again at odds with an institution that cared more about its profits than it ever would about its people.

Reflecting on both of these formative institutional educational experiences, I realize that what it shaped the most was my politics and curiosity. I want to know how systems work/don't work, why gatekeepers are the way they are, why some knowledge is favored over others, and above all how I can cut through the bullshit and make something useful out of it all. How can I bring intention, love, creativity, and agency to my frustration? I’m not sure if grad school is the immediate answer to these questions, but I hope that it will serve a very specific purpose in helping me gather the tools and plant the seeds towards what is to come. - Natalie