Friday, May 24: @ NYU

Being at work while being in a Fridays in May felt like going to a field day during elementary school. We were at school, but we were not in class. I got to play! When I was able to chime in here and there about the building as we gave a tour, it was like showing off my homeroom class to my classmates. 

It was my home turf, I was comfortable, my office was literally just a few floors down from where we were. So when we talked about more of the LIS field and the job overall, it felt more like what I thought the Fridays in May would get into before the start of this program. 

Still, there was a kind of freedom that I felt when talking with other QBIPOC people about the nature of the job and the landscape of the field that differed from how I would talk about it with my other colleagues and peers, particularly those who were straight and white.

I’d also add that this was our fourth Friday and we’d spent three weeks together already, so we’d become friendly towards one another, so that helped in being open with one another. The kind of circle we gathered around was something I wished happened more often (which isn’t to say that it can’t happen after this program, but that ease in which we were able to congregate is hard to replicate when you’re not given the space and time to do so). 

The recognition with each other, the desire to learn more from one another, was something that was, simply, nice to share. 

When we talked about the Manifold project, I started wondering if how I wanted to approach it was too academic, too technical, too much like I was trying to just milk out something that I could add to my tenure portfolio. 

Yet as I progress with these reflections, I find that I have centered them more in my feelings and my musings; a more inward look than I would have expected, to be perfectly frank. 

The thing is that I know that there are complex dynamics and problematic systemic structures that exist in our fields and our institutions that should be critically looked at (at all times, no less). Except something about the freedom of this Manifold project let me lean into the softer and more tenderhearted. So often I feel like it’s required for queer people, for people of color, for women, to constantly persevere. We must always be persevering lest we lose ourselves. Because the world can be so rough, so mean, so cruel. 

But I deserve the softness. 

I deserve to be soft. I deserve to play. I deserve that same wistful feeling of having a field day in elementary school thinking nothing could be better than this.