In 2012 Stanford’s Human Resources Department is making a video to help orient new employees, and I am invited to participate in it. They want to portray my perspective as a dean and woman of color about the Stanford community.
I sit up straight in my chair under the hot lights and answer the producer’s questions. Fifteen minutes later it is done.
“You’re so articulate,” the producer says, shaking my hand.
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. You’re just, I don’t know, somehow incredibly articulate.”
“You can’t—Are we really going there? You shouldn’t say that.”
I am forty-four and have been a dean for ten years.
I am old enough not to take this shit anymore. I am old enough to remove the microphone clipped to my lapel, shake her hand while shaking my head, leave this small television studio, and walk confidently back to my office. I am old enough not to get emotional about it.
Holding my shit together is a victory as America works me over.