こんにちは!

it also comes off as arrogant and silly for white linguistics students to assume that just because they study language in general, or a certain language in a clinical way, that they have the ability to speak that language well enough to presume upon a native speaker. even if you did speak the language well enough, you wouldn’t have that right.

On another hand, yeah, one only has so much energy to teach people to say a name, and some days it’s not worth it. Lucky me, my fam set me up with an English name too (which lol my Canto fam can’t say accurately at all) because folks who don’t speak Chinese can’t usually handle the tones of my Cantonese name, even though all the phonemes exist in English too. Whatever messy argument is happening in the notes right now, sometimes no matter how much you try, the best you can get with a name from an entirely different phonological system from yours might be an approximation, and each of us gets to decide how much of an approximation we’re willing to tolerate from others at any given time, and some days (all days) that might be zero(0).

Like @kipplekipple above said, and @flange5 said in her tags: it’s about consent. It’s one thing if someone is a racist jerk imposing a nickname or English name on you because they ‘can’t be bothered’ or ‘it’s too hard.’ It’s an entirely different thing for someone to tell you - hey this is how I’m called. Use this name.

“My name is technically [Chinese name approximated as Lingjie, but pronounced correctly]” “So… [best attempt at real pronunciation]?” “No, [real pronunciation].” “[best attempt at correct pronunciation]?” “No.”

At this point, I got a little upset, because I wanted to say my friend’s name right, but I literally couldn’t hear any difference between what she was saying and what I was saying.

“It’s really hard for people who grew up speaking English,” she told me. “So I just stick with Lingjie. It’s okay, you did pretty good for not knowing how to do it right!”

She’d decided that, at least for that period of her life, she would rather have an Anglicized pronunciation of her name than force herself to listen to her name be SUPER butchered by people who couldn’t figure out how they could be butchering it. If she’d wanted to have the proper pronunciation used, that would’ve been her right and I would’ve done my damn best to pronounce it correctly, but because she preferred the anglicized version, I used that instead.

Here's the general art style Chinese mountains are drawn in:

And here's how some of them actually look:

time yourself, please: i practiced once with the presentation in front of me, twice more while driving, and then again in front of a couple of colleagues. each  stop time was different, but i had a good gauge of how much content i would be able to cover. be the person who finishes two minutes early, you’ll win hearts.

use notes if you want, just don’t go overboard: depending on your field, the norm might be to stand up and just read your paper. if that’s you, ignore this, i guess? print out your presentation (at least a version of it), and jot down notes to help clear your head. make sure they’re easy to follow. honestly, notes are a smidge overrated. two of my colleagues were unable to use their (quite extensive) notes during their presentations, and did perfectly! trust yourself to know your material / research…you are the expert!

be comfortable: no need to dress ritzy, just dress confidently. whatever that looks like for you, that’s what i’m talking about. i wore a skirt and shirt, and some wedges (in hindsight, a great choice because the the podium was really tall…and i’m not). someone else wore a smart blouse and pants, and was sitting on the floor playing with a puppy right before our panel! they were definitely comfortable. 

breathe: if you don’t have time to edit, fine. if you do have time, then don’t. you know how it goes, when an artist is never satisfied, and eventually their changes ruin their entire work? applicable here. if you have anything to add, it’ll come to you during the presentation, or someone will ask you about during the Q&A session. what’s done is done, and within the next two hours, this will all be over!

do not rush your presentation: know what the main points of your presentation are. there have to be some things that are more important than others. if your moderator is flashing five minutes, skip the little details! DON’T speed read your notes / the presentation / talk at 200 wpm. your audience will not be able to keep up. maintain your poise and control. the important thing about practicing your presentation is learning how to adapt it to the time constraints you have. 

enjoy the Q&A session: if you are getting questions, that means your presentation really made an impact. congrats! don’t drop the ball here, but continue to have that confidence. if someone asks you a difficult question / one you didn’t consider, thank them for bringing up the topic, and say that you would like to look into that further (even if you never do lol). heck, you may come away with some helpful information!

finally, some short points:

do not read from your slides. explain / illustrate them. your audience can read!

do not read from your notes. they are there for little reminders (key words, quotes), not as a crutch.

gesture and move about. have some energy in your presence, and loosen up. if you seem happy and excited, your audience will feed from that.

it’s okay to pause. if you’re out of breath, stop. if you need to collect your thoughts, stop. do not follow it with an apology, it’s natural!

you actually DO need a binder (or two + a folder)

apparently you’re supposed to be a nerd and save all your homeworks and papers because they might be useful to refer to once you’re in your phd program (if you go that route)

if you suck at getting organized then….get organized. there’s just no choice. half the time, the stuff you need to be lined up and ready affects others (like presentations and whatnot). no cutting corners!

stick around the offices after and before class and learn what’s going on … closed mouth open ears helps you navigate the different dynamics and figure out who has issues with who … don’t put a word in yourself, though

stay on top of the paperwork, make sure your email has filters for the important people in your department so you don’t lose anything, and pin or save necessary emails so that you don’t have to hunt them down at the end of the semester

this may just be a personal thing, but i have printed versions of 90% of my readings and only physical books … i have to be on my computer enough doing write-ups and attendance and course admin that my eyes would be tired out if i had to study online too .. take care of your eyes

set goals in regard to how much time you want to spend, NOT how many things you want to accomplish … the change up is just because there’s going to be too much to do on any given day for it to make sense otherwise

work on a routine, but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t follow everything every day, this first month will still be a rollercoaster no matter what you do (i say this with papers and shredded envelopes all over my desk, my sheets halfway off my bed somehow, and random curly strands of hair everywhere)

find one (at least) person that you can really depend on, or be findable! the first day of orientation, an old classmate spotted me out of nowhere and seemed relieved that they weren’t going to be alone in the program, and was glued to me the entire week. we’re each other’s emergency contacts for certain obligations and ask questions throughout the week … have someone’s back! 

that leads to my next point, which is to not do things alone (me preaching to myself). make sure someone knows what you’re up to, and have contacts in graduate school and outside of it so that you can breathe. 

keep 30% of your sanity for the times you have to be flexible and scrap plans A through Y. the first week of school, i had to start sharing a car with my mother. the second and third week, a hurricane threatened us and four days of class were canceled.