<Begin Segment 9>

PN: But my brother helped me, and I decided to apply to all-women's colleges. I decided that I wanted to get out of the whole social scene and get into a more academic setting, which was pretty bizarre for this kid from the farm, who was very social, dating two guys in one night at Oregon State and doing all that, and I was the "ideal girl" of a fraternity there and all that stuff. And my biggest decision was, do I try out for varsity cheerleading at Oregon State or do I transfer to Vassar College? And that was really a serious -- 'cause I'd never been east of Boise. My parents didn't want me to go, but I decided I would go. It was an all-women's college, I was actually in the last class of all women at Vassar. Totally different experience, had no idea what I was getting into.

TI: Well, yeah, that is a huge shift in terms of going to the East Coast, pretty elite women's, private women's college.

PN: Yes.

TI: So tell me about that. Describe what it felt like going to Vassar.

PN: I would tell you that I'm the kind of person that makes a decision, that does it, but really doesn't think too much about it. And then, you know, having never been east of Boise and I'm flying to JFK by myself, and thinking that there's a, from JFK I would take another plane to Poughkeepsie. So I get to JFK, I've got these three large suitcases, and there's no plane to Poughkeepsie. So I'm there, I'm nineteen, or eighteen, and I don't know what to do. So I figure it out, I get in this cab, the cab driver starts yelling at me because the fare's too short. I don't even know, I've never been in a cab before. And takes me over to this bus and I get on this bus to go to Grand Central Station in New York City. I get to Grand Central Station, there are no porters, I've got three large suitcases. I sit in the middle of Grand Central Station until somebody feels sorry for me and helps me with my luggage. I figure out which train to go to Poughkeepsie. It was a nightmare. [Laughs] I've got to change trains at Croton-Harmon, I get to Poughkeepsie and I'm thinking, "Why in the world did I ever think of coming here?" I mean, I was a wreck. And it was a total culture shock.

And I get there, I'm a sophomore and not a freshman, thank goodness. I take these classes, and one of my, my sociology professor says, "Oregon State? Maybe you ought to take basic sociology again." I mean, at Oregon State, my sociology professor, third term, said, "You're going to get an 'A' in the course, so just go out and do something fun that you like to do." And then this is the message I hear, so of course I think I'm going to flunk out. So I'm calling my brother Jerry thinking, "My god, I'm going to flunk out here, I don't know what I'm doing." It really was educationally a culture shock, an educational shock. Most students had been in private school since they were two. I went to a public high school where they'd rather buy new jerseys, football jerseys, than new books. My guidance counselor in high school, even though I was a valedictorian, told me to live at home and go to Mount Hood community college. And that's why I got very few scholarships, that's why I didn't apply to very many schools, that's why I went to Oregon State. So to go from there to Vassar was just a huge, huge leap. So my first semester was just miserable, 'cause I thought I was going to flunk out and all the adjustments. But lo and behold, I didn't flunk out, and by the time I... I was a psychology major and then my junior year I switched to East Asian studies. That was really beneficial for me just for my identity. It was the early '70s, so there was a lot of anti-war stuff. Do you want to ask a question?

TI: Well, and like students of color, I mean, when you went to Vassar, how many students of color were there?

PN: Well, there was one Asian male in the entire school, in the entire college. 'Cause after my class, the classes were 50/50 men and women. But my class was the last class of all women with forty transfer men.

TI: So your class on up, there were no, no other Asians?

PN: There were a few, and they were in East Asian, several of them were in East Asian Studies. But I would say there were less than twenty.

TI: African Americans?

PN: There were African Americans. There was an African American house, there were probably twenty to thirty. It also, though, was a place, an environment that said, as a woman, you can do anything and twice as good as any man, so just go out and do it. I had never heard that message. Not that people said it overtly, it was just the environment that said that. And so it was, it was really important for me to hear that message. On the other hand, I had these incidents like my senior year, I took a personality class, or maybe it was in my junior year, I can't remember, personality. And I remember getting, writing one paper, and I got a C-plus or something and I said, "Oh, that will never do." So the next week I got, I wrote a paper and I got an A-minus. And then she called me into her office and accused me of cheating. And so things like that, when you come from public education and you know that you were educationally disadvantaged, it just sort of threw me for a loop because both being accused of cheating and not having done that but working my ass off, those incidences, I guess, they imprinted something in me about how to be, how to have to be tougher than I really felt. That if you cave in or really show how much it hurt, the world isn't necessarily kind. If you're strong and you are saying, are angry or whatever, and you push back, I think the world is different, at least the white world. That's what it felt like to me.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.