Q: So tell me a little about your background.
A: I grew up in Lincoln, Rhode Island, which is about five miles north of Providence. My parents are both immigrants from the Philippines, so I had kind of a strange childhood. I was one of those kids who did everything. I started out playing tennis very young. I played until I destroyed my rotator cuff tendon, so I had to stop. I played piano because it’s part of Filipino family culture to be playing the piano at parties, and then that carried over into clarinet and then baritone saxophone. In high school, I was president of the drama club, I did jazz band and marching band, I did tennis and cross country. I was also a competitive jump roper. A lot of people don’t know anything about that, but it’s a competitive sport. It was almost in the Olympics. I was really good at it — I competed in New Hampshire and Cape Cod and Maryland, and I did really well. I started dancing when I was four — tap and jazz at this little local studio — but I never really got a solid technical background.
Q: And then what?
A: Freshman year, first semester, I took Beginning Modern Dance with Steve Rooks, and it was absolutely the best experience of my life because I was introduced to this new form of dance. It felt really good on my body, and it was also really just fun to do. In high school, it’s fun to jam with your friends or go to a dance at your school, but to do modern dance was like something completely different. The artistry of it was really interesting to me, and the way Steve taught the class was just so amazing. I’ve worked with him and performed his pieces with VRDT [Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre], and he’s just great.
Q: How did you hear about Vassar?
A: It’s a weird story. I was talking to my friend’s mom about colleges, and at that point I had a list of colleges I was considering, and I thought I wanted to be pre-med and focus on the sciences. And she was like, you know, those are really good schools, but I think Vassar would be a good fit for you.
And it turns out that one of my aunts was a Vassar alum. She was like this quiet aunt who laughed really loud at family parties. I didn’t know anything about her. But it turns out that she was this brilliant, brilliant woman who immigrated to America to go to college, and she went to MIT, and then she got her master’s in chemistry at Vassar. She became a nutritionist and worked in a hospital, but after she retired, she decided that she would go into real estate, and she started buying houses and renovating them, and before you know it, she made a million dollars. And there was just something about her that made her so incredible. So I said, okay, I need to look into Vassar.
I came here for the Focus Weekend, and then I came back again, and again. And it was like, Vassar — there’s no other choice. In contrast to the other schools, it was a no-brainer. I think about it, and I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to any of those other schools, and I think I would have suppressed a lot of who I am and what I want to be.
Q: Are you pre-med?
A: Actually, I’m pre-dentistry. It’s hard for me to say that because my teeth are not so great right now, but that’s because I had a really incredible facial shift towards the end of my high school career. I finished braces when I was a freshman in high school, but then my whole facial structure changed. So now I’m on Invisalign, which is a new, less invasive form of braces that very gradually aligns your teeth. So what I actually want to do in life is go into dentistry and focus on adult orthodontics. It’s one thing when you’re a teenager because everybody has braces, so even though it’s awkward, you’re not alone. It’s a completely different thing when you’re an adult because you’re in a world where nobody has braces. I’m going through this right now, and I know it’s a critical experience for me. Adult-centric orthodontics are not easy to come by.
Q: So you don’t want to be a dancer?
A: I want to be a dancer and a dentist. Last summer, I immersed myself in dance because I wanted to know if I have what it takes to make it in a real dance setting and not just at Vassar. I spent the summer in New York City and enrolled in a dance program at Tisch [New York University Tisch School of the Arts] and apprenticed with the Sean Curran Company — he’s amazing. I had a really good time studying under him and experiencing what it’s like to work with a company. But I got really stressed out because I kept thinking, how am I going to fit into this dance scene in New York City? The people at Tisch are doing dance all day long, and all they have to worry about is getting really good at learning how to dance, whereas I’m trying to get a liberal arts education and study science, technology, and society. Am I ever going to make it if I didn’t start when I was four years old doing ballet?
Q: Didn’t Steve Rooks start dancing when he was in college?
A: Exactly! Yes — so I want to throw myself into it and take a chance. But I also want to be able to support myself while I’m doing it. So I came back to Poughkeepsie, and I took an adult education course to become a dental assistant. By next semester, I’ll have enough experience to get a job as a dental assistant. So hopefully I’ll be able to support myself while I try to become a dancer. And if it doesn’t work out, I have my education from Vassar College.
Q: So you’re majoring in Science, Technology, and Society?
A: Yes, with a correlate in molecular biology.
Q: Is it difficult to move back and forth between your creative side and your analytical side?
A: It’s not that hard — because I’m an STS major, and it allows for that. I don’t take classes that are all strictly science. I mean, I’m taking Immunology right now, and that’s very empirically based. But I’m also taking Perspectives in Deviant Subcultures. There are people in my classes who have a very empirical focus, and that way of thinking allows them to produce different kinds of work than I do. But I don’t feel as though I have to choose between right brain and left brain. I can just put them together. When I write papers, sometimes they’re a little bit out there, but I think they’re a better reflection of what I want to say, and trying to keep them separate would just defeat my educational goals.
Q: What’s the best class you’ve taken at Vassar?
A: I took Queer Theory — that changed my life. Black Feminism changed my life. Perspectives in Deviant Subcultures changed my life. These are classes that wouldn’t be offered at a lot of schools, and they did get me to think about the world in different ways. For example, Queer Theory and Black Feminism really got me involved in activism and civil rights. I worked on the Right to Marry campaign and the Right to Serve campaign — that was the one where we got arrested in Times Square. I was in jail for 28 hours. But it was a very cathartic experience for me. It made me really think about what I was doing and why I was here and what I want to do in life and what’s going on in the world that I need to talk about, or change, or at least create some kind of dialogue. Vassar helped me figure out what I’m passionate about. I’m passionate about dance, I’m passionate about civil rights, I’m passionate about my goals in life.
Q: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned at Vassar?
A: When I was working on the Right to Marry campaign — which was run by an organization called Soulforce, which is an interfaith social justice organization — we met with legislators in New York State, and we also went out and talked to people in the community. I went to this place called the House of Faith Ministries in Castleton-on-Hudson. It’s a very, very small community of very, very religious people. And I just went into their office and started chatting with this girl. We’d had a couple of conversations on the phone where I told her I was interested in working with their youth ministries group and opening up some dialogue, and she was like, oh, that’s totally great. So I came in and sat down, and I asked her, “So how do you feel about same-sex marriage? What does this mean to you?” And we had this really great discussion. I feel as though I was really open to hearing her perspective, because Soulforce is all about nonviolence and opening up dialogue and trying to understand. And I think that Vassar really allowed me to think that way — allowed me to open up that kind of discussion.
Q: Give me an example of a quintessential Vassar experience.
A: I had my thesis proposal meeting with my advisor last Friday. And there’s a lot of stress going into that because you have to write a proposal, you have to do an outline, you have to do an annotated bibliography. And then you get in there and you think they’re just going to tell you everything you’re doing wrong. But we just kind of sat down and started talking about technology. One of the issues I’m discussing in my thesis is how there is no exclusively queer-centric technology. So we started talking about examples that might support my thesis. And we were raising all of these issues and just kind of chatting and brainstorming together. And it wasn’t a stodgy teacher-student conversation. It was just a conversation between intellectuals. It was real, and I like that, and I don’t think you can get that elsewhere.
