This summer I will definitely be taking a long, much-needed break before starting graduate school in the fall- Beginning with a cruise to Bermuda right after graduation with a few close friends (you know who you are). We will loaf around on deck, down a few drinks, and eat lots of yummy food . But after a few weeks hiatus, which may or may not involve a road trip to Boston, I might be broke and my OCD and anxieties will probably start kicking in when I think about grad school.

So, to prepare for classes in the fall, Sharon, Chris, and I will be participating in a summer reading group with Professor Hong on Asian American literature and theory. I won’t bore you with the whole list, but here are a few highlights:

• Kandice Chuh’s Imagine Otherwise
• David Eng’s Racial Castration
• Karen Tei Yamashita’s I. Hotel
• Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture
• Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large
• Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora (Eds. Kandice Chuh & Karen Shimakawa)
• Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions (Eds. Rhacel Parrenas & Lok Siu) 

The entire list will include about sixteen books, which is definitely intimidating, but I think it will also stimulate a lot of interesting discussions. Hopefully, it might even prepare us grad school freshmen for our oral exams in the distant future- I really have to work on more “eloquently” phrasing theoretical and critical arguments in my own words.

Over the summer, Sharon and I have also been talking about getting involved in some kind of volunteer program or internship. One definite possibility is the Asian American Writer’s workshop, which I thought would be a cool opportunity to engage with authors and other scholars in the field, but that also depends on how busy we will be with the reading group, maintaining our blog (Emergentia), and of course our own research.

Finally, in addition to everything I already mentioned, I have to spend my summer desperately searching for an apartment so that my commute to the Grad Center will be under an hour. Right now it takes me approximately two hours to get to the city and back (if the trains and buses are on time)… I am totally open to any suggestions, but  I have heard that Brooklyn, Astoria, and Roosevelt Island (?) might be good places to look. I just need an affordable place, preferably bug-and-rodent-free, but then again, even that might be a bit picky for struggling grad students…

Wow. Now that I wrote everything out, this summer feels like it’s going to be extremely busy, but hopefully a good kind of busy. Of course, I will try to make it fun and live a little before actually facing the horrors of grad school.

By the way, I would love to hear everyone else’s post-grad/ summer plans!