Tuesday, 20 June 2000 1:40am, Wednesday Morning

S

o now it's summer. I've started working at CAPE again. Yesterday we check out our new offices in Sequoyah Hall. We will be moving into them next Wednesday. They are very nice, and I have my own office, with its own door, separate from the rest of the CAPE office. It is just like any of the other offices that the professors who are in the same building. So I decided to make a little placard for the thing in the door that holds it that reads:

And why not Critical Men's Studies? I mean, UCSD has had a Women's Studies department for decades, which recently changed its name to Critical Gender Studies because I guess not even Women's Studies was politically correct enough for them, probably because it doesn't include gays which are also repressed by the evil heterosexual white anglo-saxon protestant male.

But my Critical Men's Studies department won't actually deal with any of those issues. All the classes will be about beer, cars, pizza, sports, sex (including picking up chicks), commitment, and interpereting female communication/behavior... everything a man needs to be a manly, yet sensitive man.

I'm very happy about this office, not only because it is the exactly the same kind of office that professors have, but because this is the first time the CAPE office has been on the ground floor of a building. Yes, we have windows, and we can see outside. Usually we have been forced to take office space that is in the basement of some huge concrete building, with no link to the outside world. Not even radio penetrates into our current office, and your cellular phone? Forget about it!

So yes, my office has a window. If you stand at just the right spot, you can even see a tiny sliver of the ocean from behind the trees. A very tiny sliver, but still, it still technically gives my office an ocean view. The main view out the window is of Marshall Field, and well, a big grass field is not a bad view to have out yoru window at all, and it's definitely much better than having a view of another building or something lame like that!

And out my window on that particular day, I saw that everything was still set up from the graduation ceremonies from the day before. All the chairs, the stage, and everything! So I was thinking... hey, this is my chance to graduate! So me and the rest of the CAPE staff went out there and discovered that there were two gigantic boxes full of those blue diploma cover things that they hand out at graduations to the people who are walking. So I had one person say my name, then I walked across the stage, shook one guy's hand, then I shook the hand of the "chancellor" and then someone else handed my "diploma". I even gave a little graduation speech, all about acheiving our goals, success, and venturing out into the real world. How touching and original. I delivered it to about 7,000 empty chairs.

I suppose that if I am supposed to be Dr. Bryan, that must mean the diploma I got yesterday was a PhD. And I gotta go by Dr. Bryan because my dad is a doctor... and all my life the name "Dr. Hong" has always referred to my dad, so it would just seem weird to me to have someone identify me as "Dr. Hong" because every time I heard it I would think the person was talking about my dad. I'd get all confused. And if you get a masters degree in something, do you gain the title of "master"? That would be kind of cool to be called "Master Hong".

Anyways, starting mid-next week you should be able to find Dr. Bryan's office at 212 Sequoyah Hall. My office hours are 10am to 3pm, monday through friday :)