The magical number of increase

The good news is, I'm smart about my finances, especially for a young person. The bad news is, I'm smart about my finances, especially for a young person.

I had just finished filing my 2012 taxes, and because of the messy, messy issues involved with co-signing a loan (especially with a not-so-responsible second party), I'm stuck paying a $3151 tax bill. I was smart enough to book a massage before going to the tax lady so I was calm and fairly complacent over hearing the news that by April 13, 2013, I had better pay the tax man $3151.

This is an outrageous issue in so many ways. One, I've been very, very responsible with my finances for a very long time. I keep out of debt, I pay my rent and bills weeks ahead of schedule, and I own everything free and clear. Two, this isn't my tax bill, not even close. The second party had taken out $32,000 against the home loan because she wanted to live la dolce vita, and she was accustomed to a certain lifestyle. All this is fine and all, except when other people are stuck paying the bill, and feelings (already raw and bloodied) are sent through the robo-coupe one more time.

Once again, the stroke of fear I had felt signing the loan is coursing through my veins. I remember the way I had issued a dire warning to all parties involved, you will regret this, you will regret your opulent lifestyle and taking out a loan, nothing is ever free and clear.

A few years and a battered checkbook later, my terribly sharp instincts have been proven right, once more. So was my uneasy feeling that a short sale will rid us of the house debt, once and for all. Once again, I was right, I knew all along that a bill will come along and slap us right in the face. Only, it was my face that got slapped and everybody else can move on with their lives.

A tax bill would never have been so terrible except that I've come up with the exact amount of money to pay for spring quarter in college. I was bouyant knowing I came up with the money, on my own, only for all of it to be taken away. I'm four months away from joining the graduation ceremony, and five months from officially receiving my diploma. My road to graduation is slowly turning into The Odyssey, and I can't even begin to tell anyone how much it sucks the hope out of me.

I'm slowly regretting not applying for another scholarship, because I was morally opposed taking from other people what they should have. My stellar finances stood in the way of erasing the tax bill. I was too responsible, too smart with my money, the tax lady had said to me. Most days loans and credit card debt are bad news, but not today, she said. Not today.

And so, I must pay for the tax bill in cash--my tuition fee next quarter remains in limbo. I had just sent my proposed independent learning contract earlier during the day, alongside my academic statement essay--two documents that will be sealed into my official transcripts.

I couldn't sleep, I started looking for part time jobs (selling coffee, at the least), but with my erratic work schedule and commitments at the NGO, I don't know how I'll manage to pick up a part time gig. I e-mailed my old staffing agency about keeping me in the loop for barista jobs, the hours are bad and the pay is terrible, but what can I do? I'm a mover, it doesn't do me any good sitting around enjoying my personal rain cloud.

I'm a shark, I have to keep moving.

Against the Grain: In Pursuit of an Intellectual Life

 
Henry Etzkowitz wrote in his book, “Athena Unbound,” about the statistics he came across, concerning minority women with STEM careers (2000). Columbia, India and the Philippines are one of the many developing countries, who employ a higher proportion of female university employees (in the Math department) more than any other place in the world (2000).

I’ve had a year of university coursework before I migrated to the US, and based on my limited experience, a great majority of my Math teachers were female. And as if to overcompensate for gender bias, my female Math teachers were unforgiving, and gave rigorous exams as opposed to the more ‘relaxed’ approach of the very few male Math teachers.

Gender-based achievement was less emphasized as well. The consensus, collectively-speaking, was everybody needed to get a STEM-based career, no questions asked. Boys and girls were all trained vigorously in STEM classes and coursework. There were very few who didn’t buy in to the STEM ideology, such as me, of course. We had required Pre-Calculus and Analytic Geometry classes in HS, and I regret to say I don’t know how I passed the classes, other than the fact that my teachers felt bad for me and gave me a passing grade.

The sad truth was, no matter how talented of a STEM student was (in the Philippines), well-paid STEM careers are practically a myth. And when they migrate to the US, the crushing pressure to provide for the family derailed everybody’s STEM careers, or at least their STEM education. Women, of course, were especially vulnerable. I was never a STEM student, but my own college education was derailed to help the family. When once we were all forced into STEM careers, the strain was alleviated; only to be replaced with the pressure to take low-paying, soul-crushing labor in the healthcare field.

I’ve lost track of how many girls and women I know who migrated to the US and ended up working as a Certified Nursing Assistant. This job, for the uninformed, is a glorified cleaning lady job.  The pay is terrible, and the hours and working conditions are worse. I know, because I went from a published poet and journalist in the Philippines, to a C.N.A. my first year in the US.

But the ignorance surrounding it is even more debilitating, more so than anybody could fathom. The ideology that any STEM-job is a good job crushes everybody’s potential. I have a friend who graduated with a Civil Engineering degree from the UW, and he truly believes that his job at the Amazon warehouse is a “good job” because it’s a Tech company. The ideology has always been a STEM-job trumps any other kind of job; whereas my job in an organic food store is a “bad job,” despite my excellent benefits, extravagant pay raises and upward mobility, because it’s not STEM-based employment.

Nothing kills ambition and potential more than a tainted ideology that’s been re-gifted and passed on to the next generation. For decades, Filipinos have been herded into STEM jobs as if we had no control over our careers and our personal fulfillment. Its concealed slave labor—the legacy of the Spaniards, Americans and the Japanese who brainwashed our community into believing we’re meant for offal, and not the rich fatty tenderloin steak.

I suppose there isn’t much hope in convincing millions of people to pursue their true passions, and there isn’t a huge market for intellectuals in a society that despises intelligence. Everywhere we go, we are programmed to satisfy our visceral and basic desires and disregard our cerebral and holistic selves. The take-away from this learning contract is to embrace my intellectual self, and even aspire for an intellectual life—if only to prove and exemplify that people aren’t disposable and replaceable, even in the new economy.

 

 

Reference

Etzkowitz, Henry, Carol Kemelgor and Brian Uzzi. Athena Unbound: The Advancement of Women in Science and Technology. Cambridge University Press: 2000. Print.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux: 2000. Print.

SEA Lobby Day at the State's Capitol

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “why not have a big life?” these are the words I kept close to heart when I joined the SEA staff and my fellow members of the SEA Student Advisory Board Council for the SEA Lobby Day. I’ve never been to the State Capitol, and the closest I’ve ever been to encounter a powerful lawmaker is when I met Rep. Bob Hasegawa for an educational advocacy group’s annual breakfast fundraiser. Little did I know, a few years later with SEA, I would see him again in a Senate Hearing.

I’ve been fortunate to have been awarded scholarships that are exclusive to “bankable” majors, and to have even won any scholarships at all knowing the intense competition for scholarships in academia. I told the Senate Majority Leader Legislative Aide about the financial struggles facing students like me—ambitious and driven, yet every semester or quarter in school threatens to be the last one. Students like me work harder, and try to achieve more, because most of us are pioneers of our communities, and we have more at stake than our counterparts.

 

I’m the first person in my family to interview for a tech company with a team of Harvard MBA-ers. I interviewed at Boeing twice despite my Humanities degree, and their aggressive hiring of STEM students. Most importantly, I’m the first person in my family who has had the opportunity to meet with powerful lawmakers in Olympia; people who can change the destinies of millions of low-income and marginalized students.

 

“You’re going to have my job one day,” the Senate Majority Leader Legislative Aide told me a few minutes after speaking to me. That statement can only be true if I had a college degree, and have the opportunity to pursue further training and schooling. Exorbitant college costs are discounting most of us to even hold an associate degree, and we can’t compete in a global economy without an education.

I’m not speaking for myself when I say that for SEA students, a big life means an education and a chance to even be considered for powerful positions. Careers that are immediately closed to us because of our immigration status, our low-wages, and everything else that prevents us from our visions of success. I encourage everyone, to join the fight against rising college costs and make school affordable for everyone.  

Grace

Money goes to money, a wise woman once said.

Yes, I have an almost unhealthy obsession with money, wealth, and everything else involved with it. I suppose it's because I've never fully dealt with my money issues--no matter how much money I make, or how little, I always feel like a welfare queen (despite never being on welfare).

I was at HR Block a few days ago and I found out I made $10,000 last year than I did the year before, and this is on one-income, and going to school full time. After I went back to school, I dropped all my weird side jobs to focus on schooling, and I had worried about my plunging wages--only to find out later that I would double my salary in less than a year.

The irony of it all. I had briefly considered applying for food stamps to alleviate all my college costs, pick up catering shifts somewhere. It's a good thing I was too tired to seriously pursue any of these options, or I would have worked myself to my demise.

But money, I have the absolute lack of balance surrounding this issue; I want to say because there's been such an extreme cases of wealth, and lack thereof in my gene pool that to this day, I'm still feeling the ill effects of it. The petit mal seizure of lives lost, and lives forever altered by greed, money, and everything else in between ripples in my veins, almost everyday it seems like.

And so, I intentionally live the life of a pauper, at least on paper. My clothes are secondhand, and if not, they're on sale. My possessions are minimal, and I de-clutter way more than people do in a whole year. I give money to charity on a fairly regular basis, I look at the prices in a menu when I consider what to order.

Something I wish for, nearly every day: finding balance, knowing I have enough.

The King

Once when I was 18, an astrologer cum palm reader at the Pike Place Market asked me about my father. “Is he in the military?” Her steely blue eyes looked into mine, and I smirked, “no, but he might as well be.” I never talk about my father, much less write about him. My mother has been the subject of many an essay—it’s a lot easier to write about my dilettante mother. She’s well past fifty and she still lives a Pollyanna fantasy. I lived with her for many years, and after she decided to retire and move back to the Philippines, I finally felt free of her and the crushing weight of her unfulfilled ambition.

Most girls, especially Filipino girls, when they turn 18 they get a fabulous coming out party—not unlike the quinceniera. I’ve been planning my coming out ball for years—only for my life to be uprooted and transplanted into the US, and while most of my friends received balls, presents and roses on their 18^th birthday, I received an inheritance. Well, not quite an inheritance. The moment I turned 18, my father decided he was finished taking care of his wife, financially and otherwise. After I turned 18, it was understood, although it was never discussed or never even talked about that I was to take care of my mother, and my younger sister, and a few years later, her child born right out of high school.

I take after my father, in so many ways. I have his exacting perfectionism, and his absolute inability to forgive people’s shortcomings. He has a strong obsession about his health, and this has lead him to try every kind of new age cure there is. His medicine cabinet, if he had one, would look exactly like mine—a pharmacy of pills, potions, and liquids to drive away all the maladies waiting to strike us dead.

He’s a Chief Engineer, I’m especially proud of telling people. He started making serious money at the age of 30. Not bad for a boy who is one of nine children, and his only way out of the farm is a two year vocational degree. He’s third of nine children, I’m third of four; but somehow, the chronological order of our births is skewed—we both acted like the oldest, the one which had to care for everyone else. Everybody else can do as they pleased, but not us, we were the responsible ones.

It’s a great childhood to have lived in a massive house, with cars, and clothes and candy bars that came from America. All our neighbors were poor, most of them so poor they lived in a cardboard house, but we were not. Our name was synonymous with money, a hateful giant house, and cars that suck up petroleum. I would have lived in that cardboard house in exchange for a father who was at home most nights. I would have given up the cars and the private schooling, to have a father who saidI love you, and didn’t look so angry all the time if he had to spend time with his children.

In grade school, I had gotten a zero on an assignment asking about my parents. I was seven, and I knew nothing about my father. My mother told me to lie and come up with an answer. I vaguely remember saying, “I don’t know what fathers do.” I do remember the awe I felt, looking at other people’s homework. Pages filled with stories about their fathers, and I had nothing to write. Not one word. For other people, having a father around was normal. I guess I was lucky, he wasn’t around because he was too busy making all that money. Some people don’t have parents at all, and some, walked away in the middle of the night and never came back. What people didn’t know was, despite his placid appearance, he had the temperament of a jealous Greek god. You never knew when his outbursts or angry, spiteful words would fly out.

He reminded me of King Midas, he’s had tremendous material success but his own family can’t touch him—his callous heart could ruin anyone. I suppose, one could say the same thing about me. I’ve had tremendous success with the physical, and the material plane. Just don’t let me near anyone—my angry, bitter heart poisons quietly and without much notice.

I wish he knew that I'm one of the highest paid Filipino employees in a notoriously clique-ish, Euroamerican midlevel company. Even better, there are less than a dozen Filipino employees in a 500-employee strong company and I happen to be one of the highest paid. My ascent to the top pay scale is extraordinary, less than a year and my name should be on the company record book somewhere. This is the kind of accomplishment that would make any parent proud, but he's always looked at my work choice as something akin to migrant labor, or even prostitution. He has zero respect for people in the food industry, despite the fact that I've been running restaurants with P&L statements upwards of $5 million, and I have an arsenal of people under my command.

Replace food industry with the words "shipping industry" and inflate the P&L figures, and you have his career. A couple years shy of 30, and I've been running businesses for so long it's become thankless, derivative. Unlike him, I started making good money at 28. He started at 30, and we both had to fight off bottom feeders, more than anyone would stand for, to get to the upper wage scale.

When I think about him, which never happens at all, I think about the wall of ice around his heart. A man whose money mattered most to him, more than anyone, he’s like Thierry Le Tresset in The Girl with No Shadow, he never lights up. For all his material wealth and success, so many people’s lives he can’t touch.


Works Cited

Harris, Joanne. The Girl with No Shadow. New York, NY: Wm Morrow. Second Edition. 2008. Print.
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012. Print.
Sundeen, Mark. The Man Who Quit Money. Riverhead Trade/Penguin. 2012. Print.