Although I do believe it was the right decision for me to come to Bangladesh this semester, it still doesn’t make life here any easier. At least I have the luxuries of the city, but as I prefer walking to rickshaws to being chauffeured around, Dhaka’s dark side is inescapable. Some days I’m able to ignore the beggars, the staring, the catcalls, the near misses with cars and buses that have no qualms about hitting pedestrians, and even the constant and blaring horns from traffic seem a little more subdued. Most days the cold showers are fine, if not a pleasant relief from the heat.
Other days, when my ears start ringing and tears fill my eyes as I see babies too young to be on the street (but where else can they go?) and I can’t take the smells and the heat and being constantly surrounded by Bangladeshi men anymore, that’s when I miss home the most.
We don’t know how good we have it.
We can say we’re living paycheck to paycheck, but most of us, even if we lost our job, would still have some sort of back up, whether its relatives or a government program. Here, that infrastructure is not there (unless you are extremely lucky to have a wealthy relative). Farmers and their families live from flood to flood. Women live their lives, too often, from beating to beating. It’s hard to believe until you’ve seen and heard it, and still I try to convince myself “it’s not really that bad.” Yes, it is. People may be one step away from starving, but even small gains thanks to NGOs are not enough to bring rural families into the global economy, much less give their children a university level education.
Being exposed to so many contrasts has awakened my own identity as a middle-class Midwesterner. I’m here in the global South, in a country where the middle class is practically nonexistent, and I’m surrounded by other Westerners educated at East Coast Universities or in the U.K. This is totally foreign to me. Even though I’ve traveled to Europe, New Zealand, and now Bangladesh, I’ve spent the past three years and past three summers in Michigan, doing Michigan things, living my middle class life.
And you know what? I like it. I’m hopelessly in love with Michigan State University. The people, the research, the place. I am so ecstatic about spending another year and a half there and will appreciate it like never before. Where else could I have lived, worked, ate, and met (and shared a bathroom with) some of my very best friends—all in one building? Where else could I have began with no research experience and been published my very first year? Where else could I have taught a biology lab as an undergraduate student (and enjoyed it)? Where else could I have planned a statewide student environmental summit in the same beautiful building that is home to world-class scientists? But now that I’ve been through the ranks of science and research, I’m ready to make the switch to sociology. To my surprise, MSU’s graduate program looks increasingly attractive.
What would it mean for me to stay at my undergraduate school for another 4 or more years as a graduate student? Is this settling for less? Is this securing my position as an average scholar, destined to stay a middle-class Midwesterner? I suppose what I really want to know is if I can make an impact (big plans brewin’ the in the brain) and also be a middle-class Midwesterner. Perhaps I could do better, go somewhere with more academic prestige, but MSU has everything I could want in a graduate program, and they do it well. Their FEAST program in Sociology- Food, Environment, Agriculture, Science, and Technology, along with the graduate specialization in Gender, Justice, and Environmental Change, encompass all of my interests and the professors aren’t stuck in an ivory tower. It’s got interdisciplinary collaboration and local and global outreach- two things I would hope to do as a professor. MSU also has the largest concentration of Environmental Sociology professors of any other university. So what do you think? The identity crisis about this was last month (Dani, if you’re reading this, you were there); I’m ready to hear your opinion.
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