another airport post

By Tamika Whitenack

HELLO! it has been so long, as in over a month! Wow. I apologize for the hiatus, remember those technological issues I mentioned? Well, that all culminated in a stressful computer mess in which my laptop became a piece of random metal and I learned how to survive on a college campus without a personal computer (a very humbling and growth-filled experience). During this period, I was not in the mind to be doing anything on the computer apart from school related stuff, and once I received my new computer (so grateful to have the privilege to be able to get a new computer! and treating it like a baby), it was the busy busy season of finals and stuff and then well somehow we got to this december 16 and here I am in terminal 5 of the JFK airport.

Its funny because this is so parallel to last year, when I was also flying home on Dec 16, and writing my last blog post of the semester in the airport. I want to go read that one actually, but even without reading it, I'm kind of overcome because I feel like such a different person from that Tamika, still 100% Tamika but the past year has been a time of growth for me! And I think especially reflecting on this fall semester compared to last fall, my experience and existence at Vassar is so different, and so much better! This semester has honestly been a dream, and as much as I can't wait to be home, it was really hard for me to say good-bye.

Too much has happened in the past month for me to summarize everything, but hopefully you'll get a glimpse through photos (including NYC adventure, Friendsgiving in Montreal, Okihiro talk for our Asian American Studies working group, and much more). I think I'm just going to focus on wrapping up the semester and the things that have been going on in the past week or so.

I would like to start with an account of my baking, which I think demonstrates that I have a bit of a mild compulsive baking addiction. In the past 1.5 weeks, I made snowballs, chocolate chocolate chip cookies, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes and cake (plus cake balls and matcha toffee/brittle using leftovers from this endeavor), banana bread, scones, carrot cake, vegan cookies, banana granola, and spontaneous arepa-like things. Oops. All of it was because I wanted to bake for or with other people. I decided to recreate our little cookie gift tradition from home on a smaller scale myself, and so gifted people who I appreciate here small boxes of snowballs and choc chip cookies, or vegan cookies for my friends so inclined that way. This stemmed from my realization that I really like to appreciate people and to show that through baking, and I'm really happy I did it! I also managed to get a TON of free crafty paper from the ALANA closet clean out (also yarn! so ready for crafting next semester). It was very therapeutic to write my notes of appreciation to people as a before bedtime activity. I know have a tendency to gush, but I am truly so grateful for the friends and mentors and social validation that I've found at Vassar this semester, and I love the special situation that faciliates close proximity and easy hanging out with people. I was in Sylvia's room past 3am twice this past week (she lives 2 floors down from me) and I think that represents how comfortable sharing spaces with people here is. Also, Tamika up past 3AM? I'm sure that elicited a few gasps. Don't worry, it was a conscious decision to maximize spending time with people and not a work-induced sleep deprivation situation.

I could go on forever about the people and social environment here and how happy I am with it, but to be honest I cannot really convey it fully in words and I doubt that y'all care that much and are mainly just happy that I'm happy. I do want to mention one last friendship development that I think people would find interesting.

My friend Tammy and I (when we hang out we call it TAMTAM TIME hehehehe) have taken to having chocolate tastings with each other as we are both big fans of the 80% range. We've conducted two taste tests and one blind tasting. We compared 3 different 85% bars, two different 88% bars, and did a tasting on different flavored bars in the 70-80 range. I always knew I liked chocolate, but doing these tasting is really opening my mind and tongue up to how different each bar is! I feel like I'm eating on a deeper level and aware of the texture and hardness as well as the different undertone flavors such as fruity, earthy, cocoa-y and it's really been quite an awesome experience. We also have to laugh at ourselves because we realize how bougie and wine-tasting-menu a lot of our reflections on the chocolates are (ie, this is opens with a gritty mouthfeel and earthy flavor and leaves hints of taro at the end)...but it's kind of fun to pretend to be chocolate connossieurs (idk how to speel sorry)!

Okay I lied bc this chocolate station reminded me that I also had a snack party with a friend and that was so fun! Basically snack parties consist of lots of healthy snacks ie trail mix granola nuts and nut butter and fresh fruit and dried fruit and hummus and rice cakes and that sort of thing and I absolutely love them and am so happy to have found multiple kindred spirits at Vassar who also appreciate these sorts of snacks and sharing them together! I used my dining meal arlington bucks at the end of the semester to do a little shopping spree at My market, so I'm stocked for more snack parties next semester.

Alright moving on to academics, which have also been a source of joy this semester for me. I’ll just let you know what my final projects and papers have been, since that’s what has been consuming much of my mind for the past couple of weeks. For my environmental science class (the least exciting of my classes tbh), our group sustainability project was to investigate how common lab materials are used and disposed of in Vassar science lab classes and how we could work towards waste minimization to decrease solid waste pollution. While focusing on reducing waste from single use items such as gloves or micropipette tips, we largely did this project so we could talk about the contradictions of science in terms of being environmentally conscious but also how science practices can further contribute to environmental harm, and how we often don’t talk about this. I don’t think we’re trying to say that we should stop doing science at Vassar to reduce our environmental impact, but we do think it’s necessary to talk about these issues and not just give science a free pass because it is ~science~. For my Spanish class, I did a combination art project and essay. The focus of my work was the idea of mapping of islands as a form of power and how countermaps can resist western-imposed ideas of land and give voice to indigenous island peoples. I specifically focused on the notion of borders, so my map attempted to portray the mariana island region without strict borders. I also did a combined art project and essay for my environmental racism/environmental justice class. In response to Naomi Klein’s The Battle for Paradise (I highly recommend this short book about post-Maria Puerto Rico recovery visions), I created two collages of two competing ideas for rebuilding the island: the disaster-capitalism resort plan for an elite “puertopia” that allows tax evasion for wealthy foreigners, or the sustainable, community-based collective sovereignty movement to rebuild with techniques such as solar and agroecology. I then wrote an essay about these two possibilities and incorporated readings and theory from the class into my analysis. Like all papers for this class, I really enjoyed writing this one! And got kind of “go out and save the world-y” at the end which is maybe too much but also, climate change is really truly real and here yall and I am ready to start the massive revolution. For my education class, my group is writing a counterstory! We opted to do this instead of a traditional research paper and our professor was very supportive. A counterstory is a fictional account that centers traditionally marginalized voices in an effort to resist and critique dominant narratives, and since the topic of our research was bilingual students in an English-dominant school system, this felt relevant! We also did a lot of research through personal narratives, and it was really fun to hear peoples stories and to connect them (or realize that I couldn’t connect them) to my own. I LOVE stories and am considering doing an independent study next semester that further builds on this.

Oh! Also, for my community engaged learning with Poughkeepsie Farm Project, I wrote a final reflection paper on how my experiences have informed my future life dream. I think I’ve mentioned before how the ideal dream is some sort of farm-café/restaurant/bakery-school center or program thing, and while this is definitely a dream, I’m very excited about the possibility of making it reality. I’m meeting a lot of people at Vassar with similar interests and ideas and a lot of them are really down to partner with me, so I know I probably sound crazy to you all, but I feel like we’re building a team and we’re gonna make it happen. So exciting, but so scary! Life awaits.

I definitely have more that I could say, but that will always be the case because I am a chatterbox (Sylvia and I laugh at ourselves because we both don’t know when to shut up and narcissistically love to talk about ourselves and our thoughts and opinions). I’ll just share the rest through pictures!