Excerpt from her book Heartland. I think people should think about the following quote:
“ There was no language for whatever I represented on campus. Scholarships and student organizations existed to boost kids from disadvantaged groups such as racial minorities, international students and the LGBTQ community. I was none of those things, and professors and other students often assumed from looking at me or hearing me speak that I was a middle-class kid with parents sending me money.”
To add to that: I was an international grad student at Purdue in mid 90s, and didn’t see any boosting. In fact the grad assistant pay was so little that in the first year I either skipped breakfast and lunch or just ate a Snickers bar from a vending machine, for a quarter, because that was the cheapest thing to eat. Once a week I splurged on the Big Mac menu, I still remember the price: $3.14, I think they had a special discount on those days. We were forbidden to work since the assistantship covered the whole 50% work allowance given to H1-B holders.
I grew up in rural Minnesota (half-hour drive to the nearest grocery store) and currently live in rural Washington (about the same drive for food that we or our neighbors don't grow or raise), and in between I lived in cities. A suburb is the last place I'd want to live, in part because I love walking as transportation. Vehicles are only tools to me, never toys (not to say I have not experienced the thrill of zipping 70mph across a field on a snow machine, just that I have no interest in ever doing that again). I try to live and let live, and let people like what they like, but these big shiny toy trucks (macro machines for man-children who used to play with Micro Machines) get stuck in my craw:
"The people who drive them often live in suburbs and have big, clean garages full of all-terrain vehicles that they call “toys” next to a row of shiny helmets, a very good option I didn’t have as I drove three-wheelers from one pasture to another with buckets of feed."
“ There was no language for whatever I represented on campus. Scholarships and student organizations existed to boost kids from disadvantaged groups such as racial minorities, international students and the LGBTQ community. I was none of those things, and professors and other students often assumed from looking at me or hearing me speak that I was a middle-class kid with parents sending me money.”
To add to that: I was an international grad student at Purdue in mid 90s, and didn’t see any boosting. In fact the grad assistant pay was so little that in the first year I either skipped breakfast and lunch or just ate a Snickers bar from a vending machine, for a quarter, because that was the cheapest thing to eat. Once a week I splurged on the Big Mac menu, I still remember the price: $3.14, I think they had a special discount on those days. We were forbidden to work since the assistantship covered the whole 50% work allowance given to H1-B holders.
Good old times.