Guess I neglected to mention this in full

[azurite]

I got an A+ on the "female professional interview" that I did with cutieme4u for my "Women and Leisure" (RTM 330OL) class! Hip-hip-hurrah! The fulltext, along with my professor's commentary, follows.

But before that: I got into the Disney College Program! I mentioned this on my Facebook and have told a few people in person, but what this means is:
a) I will be moving to Anaheim! (I won't be completely moving "out" of Northridge, mainly because I HAVE to come back, but also because there's no way in heck that I'd be able to have ALL my stuff at the Disney housing)
b) I will be working at Disneyland from May until early January!
c) I will be making more money than I am now!

The role I got was "Store Operations Cast Member," which I take to mean working in one of the stores. Which store, I'm not sure, but since merchandising is something I'm well-familiar with, I don't think I'd mind any store. In any case, my icon's never been MORE appropriate. :)

Thirteen more days until my birthday. No joke. Just letting you know. :P

I'm amazed that things have been working out so well lately. I've been feeling a lot better all-around, been able to be creative and studious (I managed to get my second essay for my "Writing about Literature" class revised and reviewed by a Learning Resource Center tutor today, all EXTREMELY close to deadline), and have some REALLY understanding teachers. I'm hoping that things work out similarly well for my other classes, like my Journalism/SCENE magazine class, because I've been feeling lousy about how it seems like I'm not contributing anything, and my attempts to do just that have sort of flopped (e.g. articles with people that don't want to work with me anymore... :P). But I sent a huge-long email to the prof and the managing editor with some mini-proposals, so let's see if they get back to me tomorrow morning in class. I think I can work well under deadline, and I don't want to get a lousy grade in the class for not having done anything, not have gained SOME experience from the course/process, and of course, NOT want to have to retake the course!

The one cool thing is, for my "Pop Culture" class, I managed to get my web host (Surpass Hosting) to cooperate and help me set up a second Wordpress blog for our group's "Chick Flicks" blog. I was pretty gung-ho in getting it set up, and now pretty much all that's left is to develop a theme (yay for Photoshop and CSS!) and start blogging! I'll provide a link here once we get started, but in the meantime, suggestions are appreciated! What's your favorite chick flick? Chick flick actor? Least favorite chick flick stereotype?

TOTAL – 100 points
An excellent paper! You obviously spent a good amount of time speaking with E. Poon for this interview. You asked very detailed, appropriate questions and included her beliefs and ideas about women currently and in the future.
It’s a very professionally written paper as well. I so enjoyed reading it and I liked your conclusion to the interview. I hope you enjoyed the assignment.

For my female professional interview, I interviewed E. Poon, a 22-year-old reimbursement counselor for the Lash Group in San Bruno, CA. The Lash Group is an organization that looks into providing insurance for doctors who are using Botox injections to assist patients with debilitating disorders.

“I definitely think that society has come a long way, especially when compared to the society that my grandparents grew up in, in terms of being a woman today,” she says.”

“Women today have more freedoms than ever before, and those freedoms range from being able to get an education to having many of the same privileges as men to being able to better control their own bodies.”
She adds that there is still a long way to go before achieving “true equality” with men, but she thinks that being a woman in today’s society is “great because the speed of change is not so fast that we can’t learn the responsibilities that go with [the] freedom, but not so slow that we’re essentially not progressing [at all].”

Her favorite part of being a woman in today’s society, versus that of her mother or grandmother’s era? “The privilege of freedom in that a lot of things that were unacceptable in previous generations are either becoming acceptable or already so,” she says.

“Growing up in a household heavily influenced by my conservative Asian grandma, things were definitely different,” Poon says, recalling her childhood and conflicts on what women and girls were “supposed to be like” in her family.

“In her opinion, women should stay in the house a lot, meaning housework instead of socializing, never staying up late, not even to study or get something important done and no dating until 100% finished with school,” Poon recalls. “But I guess that was what was expected of women when she was my age.”

“I personally saw a lot of this outside of the house, both in the media and in people that I actually knew personally, so I thought a lot of the things she believed in just weren't relevant, at least not for me.”
Poon says that her mother falls between her grandmother’s expectations of what a woman should be and the “ideal modern woman.”

She also says that society has come a long way in regards to harassment and the demeaning of women, and most women today don’t experience as severely as women did in the past.

“But I think there is one place in society where that often does not hold true,” Poon adds. “That place is in a woman's dating or romantic life.” She goes on to say that

“when women fall in love, they tend to give a lot of power to the men that they fall in love with. Men often either abuse that power or simply don’t know how to handle it.”

“The worst part is that even if a woman knows they’re giving the man they love this power, a lot of them don't do anything about it at all because their feelings for him let him continue to have power over her,” Poon says. She thinks that, for most people, dating is considered a form of leisure, or a leisure activity, but for her at the moment, it isn’t.

Poon enjoys leisure pursuits such as reading up on current events, listening to music, shopping, spending time with friends and family, and going to the gym. Of those activities, Poon says that most of them are easily accessible, with the exception of the gym, which she cites to be a problem due to locality, as the nearest gym can be more than 40 minutes each way from her home, depending on traffic. She was surprised by the fact that none of her leisure activities, again citing going to the gym, were difficult to pursue because of her gender.

“Actually, I was amazed to find the amount of women that I do normally see at the gym,” Poon says. “In my grandma's generation, [gym attendance was] not an activity that the typical woman would actually do and enjoy.” But she says that despite the number of women she sees at her gym on a regular basis, there’s still gender equality-- in the weight room. “Even though weight training has been praised very recently for all its health benefits beyond just building muscle, if you look in the weight room of any gym, you'll see that it's a predominately male activity,” Poon says, adding that “fortunately,” she’s not too interested in weight training herself.

“I think that for most women, family obligations do get in the way of leisure,” Poon says, “at least in today’s society.” But speaking from her personal experience, Poon says that at her stage in life, her familial obligations are so few that they don’t get in the way of her leisure time. She does believe that those obligations will increase in number as she ages, and many people who have such obligations already probably place a higher priority on them, decreasing their available leisure time. Poon cites an example of a co-worker that she and her other co-workers have invited to dinner and happy hour after work. However, this co-worker has always had to decline the invitations due to the fact that she is a mother of two, and places her familial obligations higher than any leisure time she might enjoy with her co-workers. This co-worker has expressed a desire to go, Poon says, but she simply can’t because she has to care for her children.

“I think that’s one role [that of mother] that hasn’t changed over the generations,” Poon says. “In my grandmother’s age, women were expected to take care of children, especially when they [the children] were young.” Poon thinks that, despite the rise in available tutors, nannies, and babysitters, the necessity of women taking care of children, putting that as a priority over their own leisure time, is something that has been going on for generations.

“I think that I am very lucky in that for the most part, family obligations and societal expectations don't play a large role in hindering my ability to explore leisure activities,” Poon says. Currently, what really causes her difficulties in her ability to explore leisure activities are a lack of leisure time in the first place, and monetary issues, though she does admit societal expectations do play a role. Going back to her earlier gym example, she says that “if I was really interested in weight training, I think the fact that I'd have to walk into a room full of men and do something that is typically their domain would not only be very intimidating ... but also very strange for the men already [in the room doing weight training].”

“The same goes for the basketball courts,” Poon adds, “although there are even [fewer] women playing basketball than lifting weights. [A]s intimidating as going into a weight room full of men [would be], it must be a hundred times more intimidating going up to a group of men already playing basketball and asking to join in.”
She says that time is an issue between work, self-maintenance, and her current leisure activities, preventing her from exploring or trying any new leisure activities.

Poon surmises that time and money are probably the two biggest constraints on women wishing to have more leisure time. She says she believes the best way of dealing with such constraints are to have a set budget and schedule.

“I find it easier to do what I need to do when I have a realistically-allotted amount of time in which I should do and finish what I am supposed to,” Poon says. She also says that getting into a routine, such as setting aside a certain amount of dollars per month for gym membership, and going to the gym on a regular, repetitive basis helps her.

“I don't think that's [setting a routine] true of everyone, but I know that for me, getting into a routine of ‘going to work at this time, going to the gym at that time, eating at this time’ actually does help me make the most of my time.”

When asked if she really considers going to the gym “leisure time,” considering it involves the exertion of effort, and she says she “needs” to do it, she says that the time she spends at the gym is actually a mix of leisure time and necessity.

“I go partially because it's good for me, partially to watch cable television, partially to listen to music, and partially to spend time with friends.”

Poon also says the same could be said of someone who has children. “When they take care of their kids, is it work because they have to do it, or do they consider it their leisure [time], because they enjoy spending time with their kids even if they are doing something like helping their kids with homework?”

Poon cites her own mother as an example, saying that her mother used to wake up early to make her breakfast. Though Poon told her mother she didn’t have to, her mother told her that she did it because “she liked knowing that we [Poon and her younger brother] weren't sitting in class hungry in the morning.”

But “as a whole family, leisure [time] was rare,” Poon recalls. “As a group of people with different schedules, it’s just hard to match up everyone's schedule to be at the same place at the same time,” she says. “I’m sure that's true of any group, not just families.” Luckily, Poon and her family always had holidays, during which they spent more time sharing meals together, especially when she was younger, or traveling when she was older, about 12 years old. Poon finds empowerment and inspiration from sources both in and outside her home, especially now that she is older.

“The CEO of my company, as well as the CFO are both women, and out of the three managers that supervise me, two of them are women,” Poon says. “I think looking to women like them is definitely a source of empowerment.” But she also cites her mother as a source of inspiration, especially because of the small things that she did for Poon and her brother when they were younger, such as making them breakfast early when the children told her she didn’t have to.

Poon says she has heard that women are behind men in terms of equality
because they tend to compete with one another, “as is the case when women compete over the same man.” Poon adds that such competition can get “unruly” and just “hold all the women in just hold all the women involved down.” She does admit that men can also be competitive with each other, but “they have more experience in doing it in such a way that doesn't demean or hurt the other men, especially not in the long run.”

“Women have not had as much experience with this, because in the past, women were traditionally bound to their own homes, with no unrelated women who they could be competitive with.”

She says that she has personally been trying to stay clear of that competitive environments like that, and in a way, that might count as a form of empowerment. She also encourages and helps friends to achieve their goals, but considers it empowering them on a “small scale, because it doesn't influence a large group of women, just the few that I do know personally.”

As for the future, Poon says that, while she’s unsure if it will happen for all women, at least for herself, she believes that “leisure and things that may be considered work” would merge for women. She adds that “things that women traditionally do, like laundry, cooking, cleaning,” and so forth “women will only do [them], not because they are obligated to do [such things], but they will do [them] because they enjoy doing [the activity] or have come to enjoy doing [such things].”

“The women who do not enjoy doing [those sorts of things] will pass these obligations off to hired maids, housekeepers, nannies, babysitters,” and so forth, Poon states. Those that do such things will do it because they enjoy the activities, and in the long run, it will get rid of some obligations traditionally reserved for women.

Speaking with E. Poon was an insightful experience; though we both grew up in the same area and even attended the same schools, we had very different familial surroundings, and therefore expectations for our leisure or recreational time. This could be traced to her race, the fact that her family immigrated to the United States, or due simply to her family structure, which includes a mother, father, and younger brother, versus mine, which was with a single mother and an older half-sister. The variables might very well be endless, and each could have their own influence, whether major or minor, on a woman’s leisure time.

We both have similar hopes for the future of women and leisure time, as neither of us see ourselves taking part in leisure activities that are still very dominated by men. However, we are open to being influenced by other women, and are open-minded enough to consider roles or jobs that are traditionally considered “women’s work” as a form of leisure time in and of themselves.