Exhausted and bored after ten years of waiting tables full time, I started my career right here at SRJC. Then, though I was a single working-mom and it was tough, I managed to transfer to Sonoma State University, eventually graduating with a B.A. in psychology: mostly Humanistic, lots of Jung, mythology, ecopsychology, and existentialism. Whereas the field of psychology focused mainly on family systems, I was more interested in societal systems and wondered how culture--in particular our "modern" one--shapes our lived daily experience, our very thoughts and dreams. Those questions led me to an M.A. in English, which is a degree that mixes philosophy and art, going beyond the self. I earned my M.A. at SSU, focusing on Modernism, with an emphasis in African American literature and theory. For my Master's thesis, I wrote about how Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was doing Foucauldian studies of power before Foucault. 

In September 2010, I earned a PhD in English Literature from UC Davis, specializing in 20th Century American Literature and Technocultural Studies (a branch of modernity theory). My dissertation is entitled "Dark Side of the Machine,...etc., etc.," wherein I examine relationships between technology and race, categories that have tended to remain separate in academia (for extremely interesting reasons, I found out).  My educational road took over twenty years to complete, and it all started here at SRJC.