Diversity?

I finally went to campus on Thursday and visited the department where I'll spend the next 5-50 years - it was very scary, as I've posted about before in terms of identity/first impressions - mostly around motherhood and how out to be. I wasn't going to bring it up, but immediately did with the first person I met pretty quickly. It's just so natural to answer a question about how I got to campus with "I drove b/c I had to drop the kids off at a sitter's." No, there was no reason why I had to mention it at all, but it's so much a part of me, it's tough not to. A good friend e-mailed and suggested that with peers or students to be relatively open, but with those "above" me - not to be obvious about it. I think this is great advice and a good rule of thumb. It's so tough - I already feel after a few comments that I'm the diversity applicant they accepted - in terms of old fogie - or as they put it, "underrepresented students." Is that my label? Or will I be referred to as the "mom student" (that sounds like man child or something)? I don't want to be known solely on the basis of my uterus.

One student told me that many of the mother faculty members, let alone the grad students, have tried to get the weekly colloquia changed from 4pm since all of the "moms" have to leave at 5pm to go pick up their kids en masse - and it's a very obvious exit - I'll witness it myself - again, I struggle with trying hard to find extended care so I'm not obviously one of "those" people (I know, wonderful, devoted, academics and parents) - anyway, even the faculty haven't been successful at changing the time for it. What I worry about most, though, is continuing to get late notice about events, meetings, etc. that I won't, then, be able to schedule childcare for. The way cool thing, though, is that the study I mentioned in my Aug 13 post about employment discrimination against mothers is part of our reading for my methods class this fall. As I met with a graduate student mom, I asked the question about the difference between the very progressive Berkeley parent policies versus the reality in terms of discrimination/accomodation, etc., and what I heard was that it was very much a luck of the draw - in terms of who the faculty member is. Brilliant. Ah, the politics begin before I even begin....