Our roundtable discussion centers on the reality of work life immediately after the PhD. As 1st generation scholar-activists, who feel lucky enough to find a home in the community college system, we nonetheless have felt that our training, and time with the university, did not prepare us to navigate our new terrain. This liminal period of transitioning from the environment of a graduate student to full time professor, on many occasions is jarring. Without practice, mentorship, or simple conversations within the ivory tower on how to manage our time and responsibilities to our communities, while trying to survive our new workloads (of anywhere from 3-6 classes on diverse subjects that do not always align with our fields, but with the needs of the college), such discussions in our training would have better eased us into the workflow of life outside of the academy.

Other tasks within the community college system as new professors include building new curriculum for new divisions and departments in Ethnic Studies, participating and collaborating with local community organizations and student clubs and outreach are a number of the additional tasks we scholars of color have taken on. This cultural taxation, to serve as diversity representatives on multiple committees, who bring with them new literature, pedagogy, and social justice praxis into our decolonial curriculum, are also still expected to remain moored to research and contemporary literature in their respective fields. We barely were able to survive the university as first generation scholars. We feel that we have been thrown into yet another environment of scarcity where we continue to advocate and maintain our departments that intersect or house branches of Ethnic Studies. How do we as new Asian American Studies scholar-activists maintain our momentum and drive to preserve and teach the many lessons of social justice, community building, and abolition that is inherent to the formation and initial purpose of Asian American Studies?

Our papers and reflections ask this question to fellow Asian American scholar activists, both long tenured in their fields and those who are also just entering and settling into the academic workforce: How is this workload sustainable?