A Gay Everyday: The World Is My Oyster

This is a new series I am starting called A Gay Everyday. Each day, or at least a few times a week, I will post an interview with one of my friends about the interesting things they are doing with their lives.

Todays featured gay is Erika, who will be journeying with me across the desert this summer as we depart the Bay Area and head back East to attend our respective grad schools. We both lived in NYC at the same time but didn't meet until my second year in San Fran. (This is her holding my birthday present, an unapologetic carnivore, she wrapped it with bacon tape--ewww.)

1. How do you know Mel?

i know Mel because i was in law school '04-06 and she was working for the NLG. as i got more and more inviolved with the NLG we became close friends and eventually yoga spouses. we bonded over the spirituality of yoga and our common neuroses. finally, when i quit law school and the NLG, we became the closest we'd been.

2. What do you do?

I work at a public policy research and advocacy organization.

3. Why did you come to the Bay Area?

i came for law school, and initially for very gay (read: girl) reasons.

4. Where will you be going to school this fall and what will you study?

i am going to school at columbia teachers college and will get an MA in Politics and Education. i might get a PhD eventually.

5. Why did you choose this area of focus and particular university?

i chose education because everytime i work in the social justice/racial justice field i hit up upon root causes of inequity, whether in juvenile justice, housing, etc. and one way to work on equity is to work on education. seems the most basic, primary, and inequitable area in my mind. so i feel passionately about it. and so i applied to one school (the best one in the field) for a PhD and got pushed out of the applicant pool into the MA program and got in.

6. Will you have to write a thesis?

yeah. even though the program is 9 mths.

7. What will it be about?

it will have to do with politics, education (uhm, of course) and will use or support the method of research called "community based participatory research" and be anti-racist in nature.

8. What are you most excited about learning?

how to make systemic change using anti-racist principles.

9. What do you want to do with your degree?

make systemic change.

10. If you could have any job, what would it be?

i'd be a state senator, an education "tzar" of a major city like NYC, a professor at a state university/ community college. and i want to have babies.

11. Do you think you'll move back to the Bay Area?

who knows? the world is my oyster.