rikrok

2006-05-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

Give and take across the border / 1 in 7 Mexican workers migrates -- most send money home

Washington -- The current migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States is one of the largest diasporas in modern history, experts say.

Roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every 7 Mexican workers migrates to the United States.

Mass migration from Mexico began more than a century ago. It is deeply embedded in the history, culture and economies of both nations. The current wave began with Mexico's economic crisis in 1982, accelerated sharply in the 1990s with the U.S. economic boom, and today has reached record dimensions.

It is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.

Interesting story. And it actually should be as scary to the Mexican government as it is to the American government. But sadly, neither government seems very concerned.

2006-05-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

The reason I even started this thing is to, of course, bitch about the goings-on in my sentence as a grad student. However, I find it harder to keep blogging than I've anticipated. I usually find something better to do (sleep, read non-science stuff, go out, etc....sleeping being foremost). Also, it takes a bit of effort to complain in a way that's worth reading by to others (that's one awkward sentence right there, man do I need to brush up on grammar.....4 years of college and 12 years before that and I can't form proper sentences....). So, I think I'm simply trying too hard. Now for the Zen stuff....maybe it's just better to let mental diarrhea take over and let thoughts flow free out of my cluttered mind.

Hey! There it goes.....shitting out my brain. It's working already! It doesn't matter that my thoughts don't contribute to the world's knowledge, or that they hardly make sense, or that they do no credit to human intelligence in the face of any alien lifeform. This is blogging.....it doesn't have to worth anything.....free speech bitch!

2006-02-26T05:03:00.000-08:00

My purpose in starting this blog is NOT the same one that motivated most of my friends, colleagues, and former classmates to do it. I think it's a great way to keep up with people, and to meet new people, but I'm here to make myself write, and to force myself to have some honest communication (even if it's anonymous and unread by others) with myself about my career change, and -- relatedly -- about my writing. And, since I'm trying to add an entry every day when I wake up, here I am!

So, the career change: from academic to ????? It scares me half to death. For the past ten years, my identity has been strongly linked to the idea of being a college English professor, and I'm not sure how to step out of it. And, when I'm honest with myself, I admit that there's nothing I want more than that: if English grad school worked like law school or an MBA: If I knew there was a job for me at the end of the process in a reasonable place making a reasonable amount of money, I would stay in it and continue to be the advocate for such things that I was for the first three years of my grad school career.

But I'm also a pragmatist, and I get that my chances of a real teaching career are slim, and I'm too passionate about the work to compromise into something like high school teaching (it's a great career, but not for me!) And I so, so, so wanted the community college teaching think to work our for me. However, in my current cc system, that's not a real option: the system is stretched too thin, very little real teaching goes on, and a living wage would be years away.

So, here I am, looking for a new career path. It's something I never expected to have to do. I have some interests, some ideas, a lot of skills -- but I'm having trouble pinning it down. Plus, it's freaking me out that I'm getting interviews for a few jobs I consider a stretch for myself, but the ones I'm totally qualified for are rejecting me out of hand. What's that about? For a while, I thought it was because I was finally understanding that I'm over-qualified to be a secretary, even a high-level one (which I have great experience at, from before my time in the ivory tower.) However, I am now back to looking at those jobs, because I'm discovering more and more that I am not temperamentally suited to be a freelancer -- it stresses me out, and the fact that people sometimes pay late -- or not at all -- is just WRONG!!

So, I'm looking for the next incarnations of my career self. Here we go!

2005-12-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

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