you can take the girl outta bakersfield, but you can't...

i have one campus visit and two job interviews scheduled for next week.

i have to confess that i'm a little bit shocked. it's hard for me to believe that they want to interview me.

growing up in bakersfield , everyone thought that i was a crazy liberal because i self-identified as a--gasp!--democrat. i thought that i was smart and progressive. i couldn't wait to go away to college.

then i got to stanford. i was one of the most conservative people around. i remember my roommates taking pleasure in scandalizing me, the small town girl in the suite. it was true. i was small town. there were so many things that i had never been exposed to before. so many different kinds of people, cultures, divergent politics, different value systems. i realized later that a lot of the difference between me and the people i met at stanford was that they had money (not that i ever thought that i didn't!). but these people had been exposed to much more than i had. they'd traveled, gone to out-of-state prep schools. their worldviews were much more broad than mine were.

i eventually found my niche at stanford. not among the trustfund babies or the young millionaires, as you can imagine. rather, i found community among other chicanos and asian americans. (i'll leave the class and race analysis for that scenario for a later date).

what does all of this have to do with my job hunt?

just this: i'm nervous because i'm at the point where i feel smart and progressive. and there are big universities calling. and i'm starting to feel like that small town girl all over again.

@>-->>---