Oral History Program Cristine Jennings Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 15 August 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Cristine Jennings Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 15 August 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ___________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Jennings, Cristine, an oral history by Sarah Taylor, 15 August 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Cristine Jennings Circa 2017 Cristine Jennings 15 August 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Cristine Jennings, conducted on August 15, 2019, in Tracy Hall, by Sarah Taylor. In this interview, Cristine discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Marina Kenner, the video technician, is also present during this interview. ST: This an oral history interview with Cristine Jennings. It’s being conducted at 10 a.m. on Thursday, August 15, 2019 in Tracy Hall of Weber State University. CJ: The new Tracy Hall. ST: The new one. The interviewer is Sarah Taylor and the subject of this interview is Cristine’s time at Weber State University as a student and a teacher. Also present is Marina Keener, as our video technician. Thank you again for agreeing to meet with us. CJ: Thank you. ST: Alright let’s start off with when and where were you born? CJ: I was born across the street, a long time ago. There was a McKay-Dee Hospital, and I think it’s kind of a fun Ogden note that my dad was born at the Dee Hospital, kind of close to where I live now. They dug out the foundation—it’s a big bowl. It’s a park on Harrison that’s like a big pit and that had been the Dee Hospital and then they moved the Dee Hospital to across the street from Weber. Then, for most of the time I was at Weber, it was still there. Then recently they moved it even further south, so it’s been going south. 2 Anyway, at two years old, my parents finally got permission to move to Canada so we did that, and that was super awesome. I kind of feel Canadian, even though there was only a small part of my life when I was there, but it was from age 2 to 10 and that’s sort of a lot of development there. I just kind of really love Canada. I really thought, when I was first younger, I would go back and live in Canada, and I always wanted to go back like really bad. So bad it makes me want to cry. Really. But, there are some nice things about being here and my family is here, so I’m still here. ST: And when were you born? CJ: I don’t have to tell you that. ST: Do you really not want to? CJ: I really don’t. Why does that matter? ST: Alright. MK: What brought your family to Canada? CJ: Richard Nixon got re-elected. Electing him once was pretty bad, but re-electing him made them kind of look around their neighbors like, “What’s wrong with you people? I don’t feel safe here.” Hill Air Force Base is a good target for ground zero. If we ever did have something that catastrophic happen, it would probably be pretty bad in Canada too, but you wouldn’t be like right next to the base. Some people in a cave might survive and in B.C. whereas, nobody around here would. Scary stuff. MK: What part of Canada did you guys go to? 3 CJ: Straight north. It was so beautiful. It’s called Cherryville and I just love Cherryville so much. You can easily find it on google but it’s kind of like if you go straight up from Utah and straight over from Vancouver. So not too far north, just like bonk. Anyway, it’s really pretty there. ST: Do you have any specific memories of your time there that you might…? CJ: Oh all of them. I liked being able to graze for snacks. They had tiny strawberries that really pack a punch. They would just grow on the hillsides and you could go and just eat strawberries until you got tired of that because they’re tiny, so they take a while and they squish really easily. They just taste so much more—they take the flavor of a giant strawberry and pack it all into this little thing. Then we had raspberries that were delicious and wild roses that I didn’t really eat, but definitely when I was snacking, I would go through and smell the wild roses and they smelled wonderful. I guess you could eat them if you were, you know, desperate. But it wasn’t. Then, honeysuckles and just various snacks growing all over the place and I had a really good dog. Like, Old Yeller style. I’m going to start crying again, I really am. ST: I’m so sorry. CJ: I’m going to go get a Kleenex now. ST: Do you want us to pause? CJ: Yeah. [Video pauses and resumes] Okay, I’m ready. ST: Alright, where did you go to school? CJ: You mean all of them? ST: You could just start with elementary. 4 CJ: You know, that’s where I started. It’s called Cherryville Elementary. It was kind of cool because it was all grades together. How do I put this? There was like one third grade class and one fourth grade class. Actually, I think second and third shared a room. It was pretty small. I liked that. They had this really cool site where there was this big wooded area that went right down into the playground so when it froze over, you could ride your coat down it. Maybe, I think, some people had sleds… and then when it wasn’t frozen, you could just go sit under a tree and it’s mossy there. Really nice trees. Then elementary here, I was ten. I think the first one I visited was T.O. Smith and I’m not very fond of that as a facility. It’s a really old facility and I definitely felt very outlandish there because I was literally from another country, and everyone was literally not. They all went to the same church, and they all kind of didn’t like people who were different. I didn’t like it there at all, and then after that, I went to Dee, which was much more multi-cultural and people of different income levels. Instead of like all of the same. I read, A Wrinkle in Time and they go to this place called Kamasatz which is this horrible suburb planet and everybody is the same. I felt like T. O. Smith was very much like that. Like if you were not the same, they would come and correct you. “Don’t bounce your ball different from how we do.” At T.O. Smith, everyone had more real concerns on their mind than how to bounce a ball correctly. There was still real world problems there. It was better. They had a pretty cool facility. It was really round. They recently tore it down. I don’t know if you ever saw it, but it was this big cement flying saucer and 5 what was cool about it was all of the classes around the outside ring were partitioned off by—what do you call those? Boards on wheels that you use to partition off things. Like big moveable walls and they would move the walls, and if you wanted to join up and have like two classes be a one class because some special speaker was coming, you could just move the wall and put them back, big or small, and everybody fit into the library. That was pretty cool, like all of the classes radiated out of the library. They had cool library and a cool librarian. The outside had a cool feature this roundness that the whole—do you remember the social building before they turned it down? Like it had a shade all the way around the outside so, no matter what time of day, there was a big shady outside kind of patio situation. The Dee School had that same situation. It’s just nice to find shade in August in Utah. It’s so good. I went there and I went to Central Middle School. There was some shenanigans there where I ended up skipping a grade there. That was a story. You know, it’s an interview I’ll tell a story. MK: We’d love to hear it. CJ: Canada has a much better priority on social services and education and that was true back in the mystery dark ages that I won’t tell you what decade it was. Anyways, I came here basically prepared to graduate American high school—I was in maybe fourth or fifth grade. They give a standardized test. What’s the kids’ standardized test? It’s not the Pre ACT. It’s in high school. MK: They have ACT, the SAT, and there’s a bunch of SAGE Brush tests. CJ: Dibbles and Sage and stuff. No there was an older one in the old days. California Achievement Test. That’s what it was called—CAT. They would give you a report 6 like 4.1 you’re ready to begin fourth grade and 4.6 you’re almost done with fourth grade material. I came out at like 12.1 when I landed and they gave it to me again. They were like, “You’ve maxed out our test. You’re done with high school.” And I’m like, “But I’m ten.” I knew some stuff. I liked to read. The education I received was much higher quality in a smaller school and more socialist country. Was also born in December so somehow, I was younger than all of my classmates anyway. Depending on when your birthday is, you can be amongst the older or younger classmates, so I was amongst the younger. Then I got really mad because we had a spelling test in 5th grade. It had three letter words on it like the difference between two, to, and too, and I’m like, “I’m practically an adult. You can’t give me a spelling test with three letter words on it. I am offended.” Nobody else in the class even had any concerns about wanting their test to be more difficult. That was like, “What are you doing?” So I went in and complained. Like I wouldn’t stop complaining in class and I think I got sent to the principal or I volunteered to go see the principal and they were like, “Okay, let’s get the counselors out here because she’s obviously crazy or something.” They wanted my mom’s permission to give me an IQ test and she said, “Okay, on one condition. You have to IQ test her little brother.” My little brother was always getting in trouble in the school for being like special needs and not with the program and not really getting it. My mom knew he was smart and I kind of took it for granted that he was smart. But the system kind of felt like he was not smart, so she was like, “Okay, bring in your school district, IQ tester 7 person and also test my son.” And they were like, “Okay.” We both came out like, “Yeah, we’re smart.” So they sort of let me skip the seventh grade. Then I got to Ogden High—that’s the end of my fun little Central Middle School story. I had some really good teachers there. There was one, Dr. Eisenstein—so there was a Ph.D. level, brilliant person there that was good at teaching kids. I think she had spent most of her time on the special needs kids—I forget what they called them then. Special ed I think. But she was also available to be smart about just generally child development stuff. Then I had a really good math teacher there, named Maria Parilla. She has a lot of sisters named Maria Parilla, I think. MK: Is one of them… CJ: There’s one of them here. Who got married… de Kokal. I’m not entirely sure they’re sisters, but there are a lot of Maria Parillas. I had this one really inspirational Maria Parilla for my Algebra teacher in middle school, and I think I also had her for like beginning Spanish. Don’t remember. Anyway, I got all done with middle school and they were pretty good to me there. It was kind of like Dee in the sense that there was a mix of different economic backgrounds and racial backgrounds and stuff like that, so I didn’t feel like the only weirdo. I was one of many unique human beings. Then a little bit of that went away to Ogden High. I did not do so well at Ogden High. I think you’re supposed to be 14 when you start, 13… I think I was somehow 11 when I walked in the door at Ogden High, maybe I was 12. I was not ready for like, The Lord of the Flies situation that I walked into. Academically, I was already done. But 8 socially I was not okay. I don’t feel like skipping ahead a grade was a problem. I feel like I would have been younger anyway. I would have been awkward anyway. I might have made it a little worst. But I don’t regret that actual thing. Right now, I’ve got kids approaching that age and if they can do early college and get out, anytime less. Can they get out two weeks early? Can they get out a year early? Can they get out two years early? Just come to college. It’s much better. That’s where we are progressing to. A half an hour later and I’ve barely entered high school. I started cutting class and finally getting in trouble. Like, my brother always was, right? I was always very compliant in doing all of my stuff, but sometime in Ogden High, I realized that it wasn’t doing me any good following all of the rules and stuff. I would show up for tests and I remember being super mad at this evil biology teacher that I showed up for all of his tests and aced all of his tests and he failed me for absences. I was like, “That’s a thing?! I know the material; give me my A in Biology.” And he was like, “Nay, we have a rule. If you have more than eight absences per semester, you get an ‘E’.” And I was like, “What?!” Then my parents moved to North Ogden, and I went to Ben Lomond for a year and that was better. More towards the working class, less snobbery situation over there, but it was still high school. I did okay there, but not great and then somehow my parents finagled me into St. Joe. Like, “Can we challenge this person?” They got some kind of discount based on some standardized test score. They still had to cough up some tuition and I don’t know how they did that because even today, St. Joe costs about the same as Weber State, for 9 tuition…ish. You know, they’re not rolling in money. Dad’s a—he works as a carpenter in a fixture plant. Really low paying and mom had all of these different pink collared jobs. This is before she got hired on at Weber. Even at Weber she made very little wages. It’s what happens when you are an admin kind of thing, you know, a marketing director, but low pay. So they don’t have any money. What was she doing at that time? I can’t remember. Sometime around then she started working for Dyce Chemical, so she was their billing person. She got me in at Dyce on a summer hourly; I filed all of their material safety data sheets. That was always fun, do not eat, get it in your eye, that kind of thing. All of the different, “Oh, scary stuff.” Scary paper work. I noticed a couple of things that they were running a business. They weren’t really as concerned about safety as profits. Also I worked for at my dad’s carpentry plant many years later and they had the same thing. They had me doing posts where you’d clean up the furniture before it goes out. Like scrape off all of the glue and I said, “Where’s the information on the chemicals I’m using?” And they were like, “What?” Then finally, they coughed up their required OSHA documents that says, “Use with gloves while cleaning the area.” And none of this was happening so their response to that is to only have non-native speakers of English do these jobs from now on. I was just pulled to do some other job and I’m like, “Uh.” Obviously I wasn’t going to have a career with this company. They don’t want me here. Anyway, so back to high school. I got to high school; I changed high schools, got into St. Joe, and that sort of settled me in. I had a couple of tough 10 teachers that I learned stuff from. I remember reading, The Lord of the Flies in that school and going, “Oh this explains so much.” It was such a relief that it wasn’t just me, that other people had noticed that people might gang up and terrorize people just because they can. We think of innocent wonderful children and all sitting in rows of their shiny scrubbed faces and they can be downright evil and that was the point of the book and I was like, “Oh that happens” and 1984. I think it was dystopia year in the 11th grade and it really comforted me to know that it wasn’t just me, that other people had noticed that people like to pretend that everything is wonderful. My mom definitely works really hard at seeing the positive side of everything, and I’m not sure if she’s wrong, but my family has this, “If it’s negative, don’t talk about it,” and my culture has this, “What do you mean it’s negative? Everything is wonderful. We are so blessed.” I have that all around me and finally I get to some nice good pessimist caboom and I was like, “Yeah! This is my stuff.” Really got into The Cure around this time, so that might help you about calculate how old I am. Women of mystery here and they didn’t call it goth but that was kind of the vibe that we have now is just inspired by this—The Cure is like the founding goths I think. Maybe joined division or something, but they are doing something else. Anyway, I just loved those guys and got really into music and like pop music. I always liked classical music, but that was the first time I liked kind of more, “It’s not rock ‘n roll.” It’s definitely called New Wave. I thought punkers were a bit too trashy. I wasn’t all of the way punk rock. But some of my friends still think punk rock is pretty awesome. I’m like, “Okay.” They’re not kind and gentle people, and the New 11 Wavers are totally like just, “Aww, can’t we just all hug and cry?” You know, “I love it.” Okay, so I found my people a little bit. Not in real life but in album covers and I spent a lot of time with the headphones on. Not being here. Yeah, that was really super important. I did two years and graduated from St. Joe. I had some good teachers. Some good literature. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have to take math and chose not to. I think they stopped doing this, but if you maxed out on like Algebra II or whatever, you wouldn’t have to take more math classes. You could just do it, and I think now, they realize that that’s really dumb. You have to keep in practice. If you take Algebra II, then how about Trig, how about Calculus? Let’s just keep going with this. But, that was like, “I don’t have to? Okay.” And I didn’t. I got a really super nice scholarship to the U at 16. They paid for everything and I went there and I screwed it all up. I fell in love with this guy named Mike and I started hanging out with Mike all of the time instead of doing homework. Then Mike broke my heart because he’s a dude and he’s young and so was I. I failed out of everything. I lost my scholarship and just like came home all crushed and ruined and went to Weber. I don’t know how I scrapped up—I think I had enough Pell Grant. I didn’t have a super fine scholarship, but I had a Pell Grant. I did my Pell Grant my sophomore year, my second year of college. The credit hours are a bit iffy since I failed out of everything… but I put it together. I got together at Weber and I remember thinking it was a big deal that my name was Cristine at Weber. At the U, my name was my social security number. 12 It was W numbers now, the weber number, but back in the day they used to use social security numbers as a student ID. Nobody wanted to know my name, none of the teachers, none of the administrators. I’d go in and they’d be like, “Your number?” You’d recite off your number and then they would commence to help you. People didn’t have a computer in front of them at all times though. There were computers obviously but some of them still had the card you put in with the holes in it. It wasn’t like carry on with the computer. It’s just normal to have a computer in front of you and they would have you fill out bubble sheets that the computer would read later. You would register by phone. You’d type in your social security number, and then the CRN of the course you wanted. Weber was like that. But, some people actually called me by my name here at Weber as opposed to my social security number, so I thought that was really nice. I was in much smaller classes and, at the U, I was in a math class that had a couple hundred people and it was taught by a brilliant and unintelligible Chinese grad student. He was doing his Ph.D. in “I don’t care about students at the U.” Like, theoretical math modeling of not students. That was his thing and then as part of his penance, he had to teach undergraduates Math 1050, which I already knew. I failed out of it and go and then I came here and I had a good math teacher somehow. Another good math teacher, another good math teacher, and got my math back on. That was nice and that’s the main thing I noticed about Weber was it was very, very good teaching. I had amazing teachers in multiple departments. 13 I wasn’t a math major at first; I was a geoscience major. I had really good teachers. One of them, Fred Pashley. Recently passed away and one of them, Dr. Yonkee is still here and still does things. Super good teacher and then they got a lot of new people since I left. But they are good teachers too. Then to pay my bills, I ended up—I really liked Physics labs. That’s where I am now. As an undergrad, I took beginning Physics lab and I liked it. Somehow I kind of recruited myself to be a Physics lab aid and I did that for pocket change through the rest of my career. I loved it. That particular set of faculty were the most encouraging to me. I asked one of them about it once, like, “How come you guys are so awesome?” There was a lot of gendered stuff going on there. Specifically, “How come you guys see me as a person, instead of as a female?” I wanted to know, and they said, “Well we had so many revolutions in physics and specifically in the ‘20s where we thought we had all of the Newtonian physics figured out in the ‘30s and Einstein comes along and goes, ‘How about we turn it this way?’” And everyone has to, “Oh, let’s adjust and not stay in the same rut we had been in for hundreds of years.” I think not many disciplines have had quite that much of an upset.… After that, accepting women as people, that’s really not such a big deal. Then many of them today still proclaim different women heroes. Everyone has heard of Marie Curie and there’s a whole bunch of ladies like that that revolutionized physics and the physicists are pretty cool about it. Also to pay the bills, I ended up tutoring math and that turned into my career. I worked in the library tutoring math and I remember this really religious moment that I had where I was tutoring someone on logarithms, and they didn’t 14 get it. Instead of just like giving up, they asked me questions and they just grilled me. Like the Spanish inquisition about logarithms and I’m explaining it this way and that way and drawing her pictures and going back and forth. I think she ended up passing her class but she didn’t really quite get it. But I did. Like this ray of light came from the heavens, through the—there was no sky light in there—but I can still smell the air around me and see how I was sitting at the desk there. After all of this time, this ray of light came in and hit me on the head and it said, “Logs make a curve into a straight line.” That didn’t really do anything for her, but my mind was blown. You could have an x squared curve that’s pretty steep and it makes a line that’s too steep and then you have an x cubed curve and it makes it three steep and four steep and five steep. Straight lines, I still… that was a wonderful moment. I loved having to think of different ways to explain this material to people and I just loved it. I might have made like $6.15 an hour or something. It wasn’t really a lot but books were also—like I’d be, “I can’t believe my book was $60 this semester.” Now people are like, “I can’t believe my book is $600 this semester.” Pre-Med or something, but just it was enough to buy my books. I loved the geology lab too. I loved labs. They would pass around all of these beautiful rocks and you’d have to look at them and break them and put acid on them and just explore the rocks. I loved that, so I ended up kind of backstage in the rocks and I would file the maps and break the larger rocks into smaller samples and just generally clean up the rocks. I loved that. Then I had another job building and striking sets for Utah Musical Theater and I loved that 15 and I had a job vacuuming the library in the middle of the night. That wasn’t the greatest, but my crew that I worked with—the night crew—it was kind of like night court. Like just a bunch of lovable weirdos. Then when I got off work, it was often dawn. It was neat to just walk out of the library and the sun’s coming up and everything is just quiet. Really nice, I liked the night shift in that way. So I had every campus job you could ever possibly have—I would highly recommend that to anyone starting out at school. I didn’t just stay in my department, doing my one thing. I know that that’s a necessity when you have a family. A lot of our Weber State students need to come in, do their Weber State, and then get out as soon as possible to go take care of their family. But if you’re 16, 17, 19, 23 years old and you don’t have little ones yet, if you can work in every single department doing their odd jobs, that just really gave me a better education. Cleaning stuff really helps you get to know it. I just loved it. Then I went to grad school and that whole part should be taken out. It didn’t work out like I’d hoped. I came back. I had been in the Ph.D. program for seven years and I came back with a master’s degree and a lot of bitterness and despair. I came back to Weber and I went to my old tutoring supervisor and I said, “Lanae, can I have my old job back as a tutor?” And she was like, “Nah, you’re overqualified. But you can have a job as a tutoring supervisor.” I was like, “Okay!” I did that and I loved the hell out of it. I started out with, I think, 6 tutors and open a few hours per week. Then I ended up with like 35 tutors and we were open 64 hours per week, so early morning, late night, weekends, had an online tutoring… and I just loved managing the math tutors. It’s the only time I’ve ever managed people and I 16 thought I would be terrible at it. But it turns out, math tutors generally show up early and are very great to employ. They are sweethearts. I had these wonderful go getters and we had different professional development for them. We ended up taking a couple of them to a national conference where they did really well. They did their poster on like, “Using humor to tutor.” I’m like, “Awww! Really you did that?!” I can’t remember some of the other titles right now. I wish I would have looked that up. But just different investigations on how to tutor better. One of them won a Weber State prize for one of their early undergraduate research conferences. She did kind of a business analysis of what times of day people were coming through our door. 10 a.m. turns out to be a good time to help students out. Anyway, so she did analysis of our traffic and ended up winning a prize for doing a good job on that. Just like whatever they tried to do, they did a good job on because they were just great people. I loved that, so staff at Weber for a long time. Not a long time. 2002, I asked for my old job back and didn’t get. But I got this better job and then around 2003-2004, I’d been here for a minute and they needed adjunct 1010 teachers. I was like, “That sounds pretty awesome.” I ended up doing adjunct 1010, 950… I can’t remember if I did 960, 990. We’ve got a couple of different changes, but I know I ended up doing that for a long time. 2008, right around there, we did a transition from traditional lecture style to more computer assisted. And right around then, I had my first child. I fell in love and that was all beautiful. Fell in love with a Weber guy. We had a purple and white wedding because we love Weber so much, both of us. Had a baby and 17 kind of checked out of the staff job—the tutoring supervisor job—and then kind of moved into a different direction. But I kept my adjunct job. I didn’t just teach for math. I kind of scaled away back from work from being pregnant. But I remember being super pregnant and teaching astronomy, like waddling around like, “Stars explode and create material.” I was like, “Whoa, this is wow.” I did that. I taught astronomy a couple of times and then I taught geology 1030 or 1010 way back in the day. Like in the 2000s. Like 2002, adjunct here and there. But anyway, kind of way back on the adjuncting in math and other subjects and still did a little. Then I quit my staff job and then after the kids were like old enough for preschool, Weber State preschool, love that place too. I got the youngest one parked in Weber State preschool and then started adjuncting more. Like the most you could teach as an adjunct. I did that for awhile. About five years ago. Actually in 2011, I applied for a full-time job and I made like third place—they were going to hire two people. But the two people they hired ahead of me were like outstanding, so I wasn’t even mad. I was like, “Yeah, go hire them, they’re cool.” Then the next year, I applied again, and was among four adjunct to full-time hires. Then I think we’ve hired one other full-time person—no two… no three. Anyway, we are trickling some more full-time people as some retirements have happened. I got in full-time and that was a pretty big milestone, so now I have healthcare and so forth. I mean, I would because my husband is staff. I would have healthcare through him but, I don’t know, there’s just something about having a real job. 18 From being really good at school and kind of a go-getter, I ended up not getting a retirement savings until I was 40-something, so my retirement is going to be pretty pathetic. You know what I mean, if you get in when you’re 22 in your dad’s firm and you start putting into retirement as a young go-getter, you can have a nice pension or whatever. I got nothing. The adjunct thing was all just kind of like hourly pay, no benefits. Anyway, I get paid in benefits and health insurance and that was a really big deal to get hired. I really, really, really wanted it so bad. What’s funny is now that I’ve had it, I’m getting about twice as much money, and I’m working about twice as hard. When I was first looking at twice as much money, I was like, “Wahoo! I’ll be making twice as much money.” But no, you earn it. Putting in a lot of hours and yeah. ST: Alright. CJ: Did we do the whole thing? ST: I do have a few… CJ: I went off your list, didn’t I? ST: Oh no, it was perfect. It was like a whole life story. CJ: I did my whole life story of Weber State and that’s good. Let’s hit the ones I skipped. ST: One of the ones I wanted to ask you—This kind of goes back a bit, but when you were a young girl, who were some of the women you looked up to? CJ: A lot of fiction. I’ve lately fallen out of love with Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I thought she was pretty dang awesome when I was a kid. Now that sort of more has come to light about American genocide and they were basically colonizing the west and 19 taking it from people who were there and I’m like, “Oh my hero is not as awesome.” I mean, she was an innocent kid, but only recently, like the past two or three years, I’ve fallen out of love with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her whole family. I just loved the heck out of them. Then as far as real life, I really looked up to Helen Keller. Paris Celsus is not a lady, but boy I sure hero-worshipped him and the different astronomers. I guess anonymous has always been a big hero of mine. A lot of historical innovations and progress have been made by anonymous women and we just don’t know her name and revere her and maybe somebody else may have even taken credit for it. You know, just people weaving things on looms and weaving baskets and kind of doing almost computer science in the Stone Age. They had a way of making that pattern come out that they were thinking in really awesome ways, and we just didn’t write their name down and put them on the history book. Helen Keller made the history books. Huge fan of her perseverance and stuff. I’m actually kind of creeped out by Marie Curie. She’s not a good hero for me because it killed her. I’m proud of her and then like the double helix lady. Rachel Carson is not who I was originally talking about—a hero—She did Silent Spring and kind of help people be aware of the doom and gloom and pessimism instead of, “Well everything is fine,” how about we don’t poison all of the birds? Huge hero of mine. Rosalyn Franklin! The fact that she was a participant in finding out the DNA. She was in the lab doing lab work, and that these two jerk faces basically stole the credit and won the Nobel Prize. It didn’t turn out really 20 good for her either but at least she didn’t die of radiation poisoning. It’s all very complicated. Really dead musicians. Really fan girl of Beethoven. ST: I had that phase too. CJ: I love Beethoven still. Correli? ST: For musicians? CJ: He’s very old and dead. Kind of Bach-like. Not very exciting. Like just very peaceful and good. Okay… ST: Alright, were you encouraged to pursue an education? CJ: Oh yeah. So it’s kind of… it’s my life. Definitely. ST: Alright. You kind of covered this a bit when you were telling us the life story, but why did you choose to attend Weber State University? CJ: It was cheap and right down the street from my parents’ house. But I also think it was a lucky break for me. I think it’s a great school. ST: What did you study at Weber State University? I know a lot of departments were mentioned. CJ: Yeah, my primary major was geoscience and I did graduate with geoscience. But I wanted to fill this in. I found a really good math teacher that I really got. There were actually two. There was one like every semester I just looked on the schedule, and I was like, “I wonder what he’s teaching.” Took all of his classes and sometime around graduation, they were like, “Oh you only need one more class to get a math major.” I was like, “I’ll take your one more class” and did. With all the physics, again, I was just, “I really, really want to take these classes because these teachers are just so good.” And I ended up with a physics minor. 21 Then I kind of could have had a music minor except they have a thing that, to this day, they require you have a basic piano proficiency and it’s kind of like the math requirement for a social science major. That like, “Why do we have to know this very basic elementary thing? I don’t want to know even anything about math, not the first thing, so I won’t even graduate because this math requirement is keeping me from doing it.” That’s how I feel about the piano proficiency requirement. Like I tried, but all of the instruments I play, you’re doing the same thing with this hand and this note. They are both playing a C or they are both playing a bunch of Fs. Like they are together. On the piano, you have to have independent hands, where this one is playing different notes and rhythms and this one—I’m like, “What?! No!” I kind of tried it and it probably would have been super good for me to learn. It’s not hard, piano. You don’t have to be an awesome piano player. You just have to basically accompany a folk song. I think you have to be able to play a patriotic song. Pretty sure it’s America the Beautiful; I remember practicing a lot. I could not do it, so I almost had a music major but, nope! Couldn’t do the piano proficiency. I’m still mad about it. But anyway, so lots of academics all over the place in every department ever. As long as it was physical—I like the physical sciences. Life sciences creep me out. I’m not really good with the goopy smelly bloody things. But I’m glad there are people who are into that so if I cut myself, or you know, get the plague or something, they can address these things. We need people like that in this world. I’m just not that. 22 ST: Alright, so you said that your major was geoscience. Did you keep it as geoscience, because you also mentioned math. Did you switch majors? CJ: No I had two full majors. Not a double major. A double major you can put part of this one and make like Franken-major. But I had everything you need for a geoscience major and everything you need for a math major… I took all of them. Okay, my math bachelor’s is actually applied math, which is maybe like the step-child of math. It’s like the theoretical math is the one with the top hat and the bow tie, and the applied math is the one with the mop and bucket like, “Are you done with your dinner sir? I’d like to mop the floor.” Kind of that for sure. Those are my people. Do you remember Carol Burnett? ST: I’m afraid I don’t. CJ: Remember Women Heroes? Put that down. I love her. She was a comedian in the ‘70s, so she was already in reruns when I was watching her. But, she is just a funny lady and I also recently became disillusioned with some of it. A lot of her humor—she’s a great physical comedian, like falling down and making faces and stuff like that—but a lot of her humor is, “Isn’t it funny to be sexually harassed?” It was funny in the ‘70s, but it’s not funny anymore. Like times have moved on a little bit. There was also this really offensive bit she did with Cher about, “Ha ha, Native American.” And I’m like, “People kind of died over that… and it’s not as funny as you think it is now.” Yeah. So some of the humor has gone by the wayside. But what humor doesn’t, you know? Lucy Kay isn’t funny anymore either. Used to be hilarious. Not so funny anymore. Okay, you have major 23 academics… where are we at? Oh yeah, applied math is not quite as fancy as theoretical math and that’s probably true in a lot of fields. ST: Alright, you might have already kind of answered this one too because you said that you followed the teachers a lot. But what started your interest in like geosciences and applied math? Is there anything else? CJ: I like all of the things. A lot of times you get people that are into just writing or just music or something. Music and sciences go together pretty well. A lot of math and science people have a sideline in music. Anyway, I’m interested in all the things, and one of the things that drew me to math and science is that there was a need. Lots of people can write a paper I feel. I don’t know how brilliant it is, but you know. Not as many people are willing to do the math and science jobs. I felt like there was a need, and there really isn’t a need for another cellist. Another brilliant cellist, yeah. But another pretty good cellist? There’s a lot of people wanting the cello jobs. There’s a lot of people that want the math jobs, but not compared to the number of people... Another thing that’s really specific to math and the physical sciences at Weber, it’s not about your personality and I just love that. Like if I calculate a bunch of stuff and I get two and some dude gets two. My two is just as good as his two. It’s just a two. It doesn’t matter that it came from me and how charismatic I may or may not be, what physical characteristics I have, or who my dad knows in the business. None of that has anything to do with it where I feel that music does. The performer is judged as well as the product. 24 I thought high school was pretty bad. Then I got to Weber and I was like, “Oh this is what the grown-up world is about now.” It’s all going to be about a life of the mind and not kind of this class-based, gendered-based thing, and I was like, “Oh it’s so good to be out of high school.” Then I got to grad school and I was like, “Wait! No! Weber was weird. Grad school is like junior high.” Just like all of this evil and fighting politicking… “I don’t like the look on your face, so I’m going to do everything I can to get in your way and scramble over the top of other people.” Like, “I’m going to get ahead by putting you down.” Just, “Rawr.” So it turns out that it is not the utopia I thought it was, but when I was an undergrad, I really thought that science was about very pure, non-people oriented thing. Like you drop something, it falls down. It doesn’t matter if you like me or not. I love that. So, I came back to my little bubble where it’s nice here and, of course, Weber has politics, but I do think that it’s pretty good here. People are really interested in education and sharing their love of their subject as opposed to just like, “What stepping stone am I on my way to go to the next place and use all of you people to pad my resume?” Doesn’t seem like it’s very political that way. I love it here. It’s so nice. ST: Alright, well the next one you kind of answered it. What was Weber State like when you started as a student? CJ: Yeah very teachy, and kind of small compared to the U. It’s probably big compared to somewhere else, but it was small and cozy and friendly and welcoming. 25 MK: Were you involved in any clubs and organizations while you were here at Weber? CJ: I’m pretty sure. Okay so the clubbiest I ever felt was in orchestra. I mean, it’s not a club like the clubs and organizations club. I joined the bowling team for some reason. Not like the competitive team, I don’t even know if there is one. But it was more like intermural bowling. I liked that. I don’t remember which ones, but I’m a joiner. “Let’s check out your thing and see what it’s like.” But I didn’t like run for office or do any of the more clubbier clubs. MK: More organizations and student life stuff. CJ: Yeah like there was an association of women geoscientists. I signed up for that. The more social club I ever was part of was the orchestra. They would get together every once in a while and just eat, eat, eat, and I was like, “You guys are wonderful.” Other college students, including the people I was friends with, would get together and drink beer, and the nice wholesome orchestra members would get together and eat different desserts. They were good and I liked that about them, and they might play some wholesome board games or something. What sweethearts. You hardly get into as much trouble at a party like that as you did if people are drinking. No trouble. ST: What events did you attend at Weber? Do you remember any? CJ: Oh all of them. I was just reminiscing recently about when the Polynesian dancers came. We watched them perform and I don’t remember the name or the year or anything. I was still pretty young, but afterwards we went to the host family’s house and they had just put on an addition to their house. One of those 26 glass rooms that’s like a greenhouse, but they had made it into a dining room. They had a nice house and then they put this glass room off the back of their house. It had just basically a dining room and some chairs in it. But just really nice and beautiful and I kind of never been in a private space that nice before. Like Tracy Hall is nice now. You look around, it’s really pretty, big lobby and stuff, so I’ve been in public institutions like that where the surroundings were nice. But I hadn’t really been in someone’s home that was that nice. We got to sit with the performers and have dinner and the grownups all talked and I just kind of went [open-mouth gape]… and they were like these big bowery guys with tattoos but they were so nice. Like they were scary physically but then their personalities were just that wonderful, relaxed kind of happy personality. Which is just great on a big guy. Then I saw the Bulgarian Women’s Choir and I saw them live and they yell. They’re like punk rock of folk music. Have you ever heard them? Oh, they are… check them out sometime. They look like this [shows an image of choir]. Yeah, they yell and they do a thing like—do you remember being little and doing trick-or-treat and you and your friends voice would go, yeeeee. They do that on purpose to like get you excited. Like they’ll sing notes so close together that it makes an interference. Like not all of the time, it was an accent. I saw some really great theatrical performances. I saw Walter Alvarez: my big hero of geology. He came and spoke here and I was just so inspired by that. Basically I went to all of the things and did all of the things. Events and speakers—oh, the 27 flag guys, my mom made me go and I didn’t really want to go. The Blue Devils, I think they are called. MK: They are awesome. CJ: Marching Band… They are so awesome. MK: They are so cool. CJ: And it’s like not my thing, but I went to it because my mom made me go in the stadium. It’s like kind of footballville up there. But I went up there and watched. It was a competition of a bunch of marching bands and the Blue Devils. MK: They still do those. CJ: Yeah, I hear them practicing all of the time. I’m like, “x + y” And they’re like, [makes trumpet sound] outside. I love it. Yeah, they have competitions here still in the nice big stadium and that was pretty exciting. When you are not expecting to like something and then it turns out to be awesome, it makes it even more awesome in a way. Yeah, so many performances and speakers here. It’s been a lot of years and I’ve been to so many, and I hope they keep doing it. They have a really expensive math speaker series where they pay like nationally famous people to come at night and it’s named after one of the math professors, Frank Richards Lecture Series. Those are always like, “Wow! So good!” Always good. ST: Alright, what were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degree? CJ: Being a lady. ST: Can you go more into that? 28 CJ: Somehow people think that your career is more valuable if you have a penis. It doesn’t make any sense to me except for historically I guess we’ve kind of needed women to do all of the crappy work so that the guys would be free to do more interesting things. I just wish it had been, for my sake, the other way around. Like, the men, you know, they are big and strong right? So you do the freaking laundry. Go gather all of the nuts and I’ll sit over here and think about Algebra with my delicate, feminine form. I’ll just be like, “Pen and paper.” But it didn’t work out. We’ve got thousands of years of giving a man knowledge is important for him to support his family and giving a woman knowledge is important because the government made us do it. We have to let women in. It’s just this huge weight and we’ve come so far. My life is much more open to me than at any other time in history. I could go to school; I was allowed in; I was allowed a diploma. That’s all fairly new. It’s not like I’m ungrateful, but people who think we’re done now, “Oh it’s all fair and nice.” No. If you look at teacher responses, I definitely have had experienced this from both men and women teachers. Like they’ll go, “Who knows the answer to this one?” If the guy answers, they’re like, “Oh you’re so brilliant. You remind me of myself as a young man.” Then if I answer it, they’re like, “Yeah, you study all of the time. Course you know, you’re just a good studier.” ST: Were there any other sort of things or examples? Because that’s kind of like a specific example of where you experienced it. But was there anything else like that that you can remember? CJ: What? Every single moment of my life? 29 ST: No. Any key ones that stood out to you? I’m not asking you to recount everything. CJ: Well we’ve got our Me Too moments and that was one of the things that I was dreading is like, “It is important to have the knowledge out there that women put up with crap. But I don’t want to get into it.” If I were to explain some of those, we would be like editing that right out, you know what I mean? ST: Alright then. Fair enough. CJ: But yeah, gender and class. My parents haven’t been very well off financially and just mixing in circles there’s unspoken rules of how you act like you have money. I’m missing out on all of that, so I feel in that way I’m kind of crippled. Like there’s just different things you don’t say. You don’t go there. I don’t feel at home with my relatives. Like they’re kind of hostile to educated people. Not my mom and my dad, but on different sides of the families. Like, “You think you’re better than us.” It’s not like I am a working class person in higher ed. Or I’m a higher ed person in a working class environment. I’m neither. It’s not that I’m both. I’m none of the above. I like being a person, not a thing. Anyway, just interacting with people who are used to things like, “Why don’t you just get your car fixed?” That kind of thing. That they just take it for granted that you’re going to have certain creature comforts in your life that will help your school be easier. They are like, “I worked really hard to get to where I am today.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you did. But you also started from a really cushy position.” Basically gender and class, I am really lucky to be fully abled because like when I think of different things that could of held me back. Lately, as I’m getting old, I’m getting disabled, so I can’t hear as well and it really puts a crimp 30 on things. But I didn’t experience that until recently. Like I sprained my ankle, I’ve become very aware of how the handicapped access is a bit iffy to this building in particular, you have to…[makes zig zag motions] hot sun beats down. It takes me longer to get down the hallway and just like all of these things have come up with ageing that I’m like, “I was pretty lucky to get through life with all of the legs, ears, and eyes working pretty good.” I mean, my eyes are terrible but they are correctable. Yeah, I met some really good people to help me along. Especially those physicists, they’re pretty awesome. ST: That kind of leads to my next question of what mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program and career? Like support. CJ: Yeah, the physicists really stand out. They gave me a job that more importantly gave me just a feeling of not like, “What are you doing here?” They knew why I was here. I wanted to learn physics, like the obvious reason, and there was a guy that I haven’t mentioned yet called, Leonard. He worked in the back room. That’s our back room [points to area in room] now, but in the old building we had a similar setup where all the equipment was back there. There was this guy named Leonard whose job was to put the labs out for students to use and put them back and the lab aid could help him, but it was his job to make sure everything worked and things would break and he’d solder them back together and whatever. He’d order stuff from the supply company and he just had all of these skills and he was always tinkering. He was this older dude and most older science dudes were not really interested in helping me out, and he just didn’t even care. Like it wasn’t that I was a female person; I was a person. I’d be like, “Hey Lance, what’s up on 31 the bench today?” And he would just chit chat with me in a normal relaxed way and just that sort of idea. He would show me stuff and welcome me in and it was just awesome. He was a fun—like he would crack jokes and was not perving on me at all. They were way interested in the physics and the facts and stuff and what not. Being a Me Too moment, there was none of that, just completely innocent, lovely, over there in the physics department and then the two professors that I really liked in math that really inspired me. They were ESL, so they didn’t use articles at all—instead of “take the coefficient of x,” they would just say, “Take coefficient of x.” I don’t know why taking that one little word out, made it so much more clear. That was part of it, but another part of it was the style they had was very much—you never started high, so you’d start the lecture really low. One plus one is two everybody, right? And we’d go, “Yeah.” They would just build on that throughout until we got pretty arcane but then we’d see them again, and they would say to the class, “Do you remember yesterday when we started at one plus one and got all the way up to this other stuff?” They would kind of bring you in every time in this wonderful stable scaffold where you never wondered where you were. Always knew exactly where you were and not get lost. I just loved those guys and then Palumbo, I haven’t talked about him at all, but he was the orchestra conductor. So important to me. Like, they say when people get involved in clubs and organizations and stuff like that, they stay in school. When things get dark, they want to not let their tribe down. That’s how I feel about orchestra. Came in, never had private lessons, so that’s one of those moments where I was saying, there’s class differences. Like the other people 32 around me obviously, they’ve been taking private lessons since childhood. Then, no, I just went to orchestra class and tried not to make too many horrible noises, and it didn’t work great. Like when I started out as a freshman in orchestra, I was pretty bad. He helped me get better and it was awesome and he’s just a really good conductor. He has a way of bringing people together that—it’s terrifying. He’s not encouraging in the way of like, “You sound terrific.” None of that. But he just has this way of making people sound terrific together, so he’ll say like, “You all sound terrific together, but one individual or another…” Maybe there were other people that got that, but I certainly never did. He’s just really good at bringing people together and he’s still doing it. He retired from Weber State, not too long ago. Now he’s doing a community orchestra. I’m in it. I get to play. I really like it. He was a really big part of like morale at Weber, and I did get half tuition for participating my heart out in orchestra, so I remember that was pretty different, my experience from the general experiences. I would have orchestra class all morning, and I had orchestra Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2:30-4:30 and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have a lab, whether it was physics lab, geology lab. I had basically a 2:30-4:30 slot full every day. Then sometimes I’d have night classes 7:30-9:30. A lot of people either had their orchestra and then Tuesdays and Thursdays free, or their physics lab and then Monday, Wednesday, Fridays free. I was like, “Nope. Don’t get the afternoons off.” But I just loved it. In exchange for all of this time I spent and effort, I got an orchestra scholarship. I think maybe nowadays, they’re harder to get. It was half 33 tuition and I think it’s more competitive now. At the time, it wasn’t necessarily an audition where I played really great. It was I showed up early all of the time, practiced. I was just ready for this, and they really helped me through financially and emotionally. ST: It’s all good. Alright, what role do you think education has played in empowering women? CJ: That’s pretty huge. I think since I’ve rambled on so long about other topics, I would just say when my grandmother was young and before, if you had a horrible husband, you really couldn’t leave him because you really couldn’t get a job to feed your kids. Even now it’s hard. Women’s wages are lower but you can get a job and an apartment and feed your kids, and education will help you get a better job. You’re not as much in servitude. Women are free to leave if the guy happens to be drinking too much, or beating people, or just being horrible. You know, not all men, but when a guy does mistreat a lady, it’s a lot easier for her to leave. She used to not have very many options for leaving. I’m really glad that I can read and write and vote and own property and credit cards and all of these things. I’ve kind of always thought that was super secure, but it’s not. It might be slipping a bit, so I hope we can hold the line and continue to have human rights. It’s pretty important. I have a daughter and she’s just on the edge of being a grownup. She’s eleven; she’s really tall so she looks like a young lady. She’s got to go out into this big bad world and I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t think I left it in a better place than when I arrived.” It could be either holding the line or maybe slipping a 34 bit. Oh boy. Yeah, education is super important for women’s freedom. That’s the nutshell. ST: Alright. I think it’s a good nutshell. CJ: Thank you. MK: I have a question going back just a little bit. CJ: Yeah. MK: Do you remember your math teachers that really inspired you? Do you remember their names? CJ: It was Maria Parilla and my mom because her dad was a grocer before computers, so she had all of these cool little, “We’re going to order gross of these for our grocery business.” Just ways to do math. She was always really good when we shopped and explained to me like, “Okay, that’s 20% off, and this is how you knock off a zero and get it to know how much you’re going to pay.” Comparison shop and stuff. She always involved me in math and then a lot of it was me. I just really like figuring out patterns, so part of my job is to explain to my students that there are patterns and you should look for them. Because it just seems pretty random when it’s coming at them. Like, the slope of a line. To me, it’s really awesome that a two line gets steeper and a three line. “Oh it’s more steep.” Over one and up three! Four… Boom! It makes me so happy to find those things and it is a challenge to not only explain to people that they’re there and they should look for those things, but why it helps. You can put together to one big picture instead of nitpicky little detail, detail, detail. I’m really not very good at details. But when I have the big picture, it helps me think in details. I don’t 35 remember rules. I just remember, “Oh that’s why that makes sense. Oh! If you double that, that’s half over there to keep it balanced.” Then the name of my super awesome math teacher that made me get a math major was Dr. Borgie. He doesn’t work here anymore, but man, he was such a good teacher. A lot of the people that I had have moved on because time. I have a math teacher now, who I never had a class from, but she is probably my best mentor for the past 20 years. Her name is Carrie Cannell and she is one of the math teachers and when I get stuck I’m like, “How do I explain this to people? How do I handle this particular complaint? People are not generally thrilled to be taking math.” She helps me with some of the psychology and some of the teaching strategies and if I can’t figure out a way to explain—I love figuring out a way to explain something. But, if I tried my moves and the students, “What are you talking about?” I’ll be like, “Here, how do you do this?” And she’ll explain it. So Carrie Cannell, go Carrie. She has a way of helping me without making me feel stupid for asking. I love that. MK: It’s important. CJ: So important. Yeah, she just seems like she just really wants to get the job done. Like, “I’ll help you do a good job because I want it to be done right.” And I’m like, “Me too!” I really appreciate her mentorship. ST: You might have mentioned this already. I don’t have it in my notes. When did you graduate from Weber State University? CJ: 1995. 36 ST: Alright. 1995. Okay, what resistance/battles did you have and faced as you’ve progressed in the career aspect? Is there anything like new that you haven’t… CJ: No, I just utterly failed to be male. Then you can be a particularly charming, clever, manipulative woman with good political skills—fail. One of the things that I’m seeing a lot on social media is badass, and it really bothers me. Like that’s the only way to succeed is if you’re a badass.… I’m more mellow than that, so I’m not a badass, and I utterly fail to be a badass. When the going gets tough, I start crying. I don’t start kicking and fighting or like, “I’m just going to do better and get fired up.” When things get hard, I fall apart. I’m not really proud of it. It’s just like I’ve been fighting this all of my life and I’m “badass-er” than I was as a child. But, I’m really not ever going to make it all of the way to badass. It’s just not going to happen. ST: What degrees and certifications do you have? Just to like state for the record. CJ: Yeah, sure. I have two bachelors from Weber and a master’s degree from the world’s crappiest university in the world. Then in the process of that, I got a nuclear safety certification that has expired. The metal shop certification that I don’t think those expire. That might be it. I can’t remember. Nothing really impressive other than that. Well, there’s that Noble Prize I won. Just kidding. MK: It was an awesome time. CJ: It was awesome. Good times. MK: A speech? CJ: Yeah. Thousands of dollars. MK: Yep. 37 CJ: Millions. ST: Are you comfortable giving us a name for the world’s crappiest university? Or we just going to leave it at that? CJ: No, they can just. . . vulgarity. ST: Alright, we’ll leave it at that. What committees and organizations have you or are you a member of? CJ: Yeah, I was on the… Diversity First Generation Task Force? That just really fizzled out much to my dismay. I don’t know what happened there. I was on the Dev Math Curriculum Committee and that fizzled out in a good way like task accomplished, move on to next committee. I’m not anything right now. Summer. I’ve been on stuff and I’ve forgot about that. ST: You can edit it back in once… CJ: Oh no, nah. Committees, I’m not really delighted to be on committees. ST: Fair enough. MK: I have a question about the geoscience committee you were involved with as a student. Is that still around do you know? CJ: Yeah, the Association of Women Geoscientists. They try to network and help each other break into career progress. MK: Is there something like that in the math department for women going into math? CJ: Probably. MK: Okay, you don’t know. CJ: No, there’s definitely a student organization that I’ve seen a lot of advertising for that I should go and support them now, but I haven’t yet. It might be all of STEM 38 or just math, but it’s like a grassroots, women, Weber, networking thing. They sound pretty awesome, but I don’t know anything more. ST: Kind of jumping off with what you said with STEM—I’m kind of making this question up on the fly. CJ: Yeah, you’re good. ST: Which means it’s going to come out weird and jumbled. CJ: Yeah. ST: But—because I’m in English, I don’t know too much about like women’s experience… trying to break into the STEM fields. What is that kind of like based off your experiences both as student and teacher here? CJ: It’s better. ST: Okay. Do you want to just leave it there? CJ: Yeah, I do think we have some badasses that are better able to address that. Physics, always my favorite department I keep coming back to, they keep hiring these badass ladies. If I had an undergrad that I wanted to do well, I would say, “Go talk to Stacy. Go talk to Kylie. Go talk to Kristin. They will help you.” Michelle, so many… they might be 50/50. It’s up there which is pretty unusual that they have a good balanced ratio of male to female on the faculty. They’re really supportive of each other and it’s really kind of getting the focus away from gender and more towards the science. They’re not as obsessed with it as maybe I am. They have a more positive experience. There are people—and I know the engineering people are throwing all of these cool things for trying to get women to feel encouraged. The welding class has been a huge success with everyone 39 that I have talked to about it. That they’ve had a kid go through it or they went through it. I think Stacey, the physicist actually welded some stuff, like tried it out, so it’s a girls can weld, go team thing. They make stuff, and it’s a very good experience for all. So I like that one. ST: You kind of already went into this, but what advice would you give to students or women starting in your field? CJ: Talk to somebody else. That would be my awesome advice for them. Talk to someone with a great attitude of gratitude and all of that. ST: Here’s one: How did attending Weber State help you in your career field? I know you might have touched on this, but is there anything else? CJ: I think they just have really great teachers, so I went in with good scores on the GRE and good knowledge of the fundamentals. They really helped my confidence a lot. It was later utterly demolished, but I don’t think that was Weber’s fault. They prepared me well to go out and do well in the world as best they could. ST: Alright. And then I know you mentioned coming back to Weber. What year was that again? Was it 2002? CJ: That’s right. MK: Were you here when the Olympics were here at Weber? CJ: Somehow no. That was February-ish and I think I got back in May or June. Like the end of Spring semester I came home and I had missed the Olympics. I saw the facilities because I’ve skated on them since. But yeah, I wasn’t here for the actual thing. 40 MK: Okay. CJ: [To Marina] You were? MK: No, we just like to ask about what Weber was like during that time because it was crazy. CJ: Let’s see. 2019… you presumably were an infant. MK: Yeah, I lived in Colorado when that was going on, so I skipped the whole mess. CJ: Yeah, I skipped it too. Right, but wait go back really quick. Where were we at? The one right before the Olympics? MK: Jobs. CJ: Oh but that’s how Weber prepared me to go on in life is also all of those jobs I had. The student work opportunities I think are really good for preparing people to go on and do well. In particularly, in teaching. If you can do any tutoring or teaching before you commit to a career in that, that’s a good idea because it turns out that it’s not as easy as we make it look. You might want to try that out a bit before you actually graduate. ST: Alright. CJ: Jobs. Good, okay. MK: Nailed it. ST: You might have already covered this one a bit, but what drew you back to Weber State? CJ: My mommy. I came home all beaten and horrible and lived in her basement and tried to get my old job back and that’s what happened. ST: Alright. I think you mentioned that already. 41 MK: For the record, what are your parents’ names? CJ: Caril and Lee. Caril Jennings and Lee Jennings. Yeah, and he’s good too. He’s more of the quiet type. Mom’s awesome. She’s actually a badass that I can only aspire to be. She’s a firecracker. ST: Yes. CJ: Yep. Yep, she’s great. She’s very supportive. ST: Can we also get the name of your kids? I think you’ve mentioned that. CJ: Yeah Eleanore is eleven right now, and Aldous is eight but he’s going to be nine. He’s eight and a lot. Yeah, they’re strong and healthy and aggravating and energetic and intelligent and caring and they’re good kids. They really have me outnumbered. ST: You also mentioned you are married. Can I get his name too? CJ: His name is Allen and he works here at kind of the IT service help desk. I was working on a tutor training project where we were making videos of master teachers explaining how they do stuff. Got all of this raw footage to edit and it took a long time. We talk about the “blue bar,” that’s how I fell in love. We’d get it going and then we’d hit go and the blue bar would creep across and he was like, “So tell me about your childhood?” And I was like, “Well, I really miss Canada.” We got to talking a lot and that’s how that happened. ST: That’s a cute story. CJ: I feel like we really met cute and it’s a very much Weber romance… MK: Yeah it is. 42 CJ: We weren’t in the same department so there was no icky squeaky and he feels like Weber gave him an opportunity as well and so we are just really super loyal. He’ll go on about his teachers that helped him that they’re in computer science and electrical engineering. He’ll go on about them and I’m like, “Yeah me too! I had the same thing.” So we had a purple and white wedding. It was Weber State on purpose and it’s not sports, which I do think a lot of the school colors are sort of sports associated. But for us, it’s more of the teaching thing that we really just liked the Weber community of teachers. Then, research is done here. But at that “school that shall not be named,” research was really how it was directed. You wanted more grants and more money to come into the school and more impressive publications that make everything look shiny to outside world. The teaching was something like, “Yeah… we have to do that because we’re a school, but it would be so much nicer if that wasn’t in our way from our most important work.” I think the ideal balance is having both for society, but the ideal balance for a student is to be at the place that’s at a balanced way in the teaching. Anyway, Allen. He’s still around. We’ve stayed married for 12 years now and it feels like it just happened. There’s a thing about getting older that the years just flash by. It seems like I just met him and we’ve got almost grown up people that we made that are you know… the eleven year old is almost as tall as me. My little baby. It just seemed like that just happened a minute ago that I had this tiny little baby and I’m like, “What do I do? I don’t know how to be a mom?” 43 Apparently, I did it because she’s still alive and is mostly sane and she’s alright. But the mommy thing is way scarier than anything else that I’ve ever done. ST: How did you balance kind of your responsibilities between the workplace and the home? CJ: I don’t. I’m a train wreck. I have no work life balance at all. My mom does a lot of the—she’s watching my kids right now. I should probably wrap up and get back. She’s taking care of them for me while I come here. Then Allen is really good about like I have to proctor a test special for a student who had circumstances. And I’m like, “Honey, hospital tragedy. I need you to drop everything and watch the kids so I can go do this off schedule thing.” And he can do that for me. Like he understands things are different every semester. Things come up; things happen, and so he’ll take the kids. Mom will take the kids. The public schools take the kids. That’s so great. Like I miss them when they’re gone. They start Monday. That’s six hours that I don’t have to rely on someone to keep my children safe. That’s a worry. It’s on the news. There’s a shooting every day, so I don’t know how safe they are, but I like being able to put them in school all day so I can come here and work. It’s nice. I can’t wait. They’re also looking forward to it. ST: It’s good for everyone. CJ: Yeah. Yeah. ST: Alright, my next one is what was Weber State like when you started working here as compared to when you were a student here? 44 CJ: I don’t know how much of it is perception. It feels so much more corporate now, like all of the team building exercise and conferences and lots of jargon. Like continuous quality improvement initiative. Assessment. I think there was less of that going on when I was a student and also I was not involved in these committee meetings and decisions and team building exercises and stuff like that. That’s more of a staff thing. But I do think that more, a higher proportion of Weber State’s total budget is spent on non-teaching sort of more administrative things, and I’m not a fan. ST: Alright. You have mentioned this as we have gone along. But what positions have you held at Weber State? CJ: Yeah so student, lab aid, math tutor, janitor—I think that’s important. Then I was math tutoring supervisor—I think the official title was tutoring specialist. Then adjunct in a couple of different departments. Then full-time in the developmental math program. ST: Alright great. How has the math program changed over time? CJ: Well it went computer-y pretty hard in like the 2006-2008 era. Students hated math as a general population before computers, during computers, and now we are kind of in the post-computer phase where we still hate it. There’s this idea that if we change the delivery of instruction that students are going to enjoy it more. I actually do think that if we change the K-12 instruction, students will enjoy it more. But what we’re tinkering with at the outer end here, it’s not such a big impact. It’s kind of settled down where a couple of years ago, there was a lot of chatter about the common core and how we do things the hard way. And I’m like, 45 “Yeah, you get what you pay for.” Right now, they’re trying to teach my kids why math makes sense, and that was always the part that I enjoyed. I enjoy like just the rules, rules, rules, and stuff like that, but why the rules mesh, why it all makes sense. They didn’t use to teach that. You either figure it out on your own or you hated math. That’s the new way to try to teach here at Weber and in the K-12. It’s not necessarily, can you do this procedure, but do you know why this procedure works? We have to have both. Like you could philosophize about it all day long, you need to know why it works, but you also need to be able to do it, right? So it’s a balance now where it used to be, just, “I don’t even care why it works. Just do it. Just get the right answer.” It’s the rules, because “why do you do it this way? Well because I said so.” Last night, we were up pretty late in a training meeting where they’re having us draw different methods or explaining why dividing a fraction by a fraction works and you can kind of draw it up like by a big pizza. Cut it where all the fractions are parts of a pizza and just try to get it really visual and concrete. Then, part of it is when you introduce the material, you make sure everybody understands what’s going on. But then you graduate from that and start doing it the quick way, and I think that’s something that people missed about the common core. Is you don’t want to do the work the hard way all of the time. You want to understand it using the hard way and then you can switch over to just the little routine that you do. But now you know why you do the steps that you’re doing. Where, when I went to school, they just went straight to the, “Here’s 46 the shortcut. Here’s how you get it done.” And people are like, “But it doesn’t make any sense?” So we do it the hard way. There’s a big push towards more deeply understanding it over drill and, “Do you know your multiplication tables?” One of the things that other people that aren’t in the field might relate to is your multiplication tables. They’re doing them as a grid. If you want to know five by five, you can get out a piece of graph paper and make it five this way and five that and then count the squares in there. There’s 25 in there! It works for all of the multiplication. If you count the number of squares inside of that five by five or six by three or whatever, it’s the thing you memorized as your multiplication tables, so they’re kind of trying to move towards more understanding than memorizing. It’s super awesome and way harder. It’s more difficult to do anything right, than do it the quick and easy cheap way that falls apart right away. If you really want to build a strong understanding, you have to work really hard to get there. It’s worth it. It’s easy later if you put in all of this ground work where it’s so hard in the beginning. Later on, then it’s not hard anymore. But if you always do the cheap and easy, it kind of stays equal amount of hard at all times. You never get to that plateau where things are copasetic now, and it’s nice once you can get up there and I’m like, “Oh I see around.” ST: Alright, thank you. That was great. CJ: Cool. But, there’s still a blank one, but that was just that one question…. How has math changed? ST: What does a typical semester look like for you? 47 CJ: You mean, do I have four classes and faculty meeting every week? A bunch of homework. MK: I usually get the answer: busy. CJ: Okay. Yeah, I’ll subscribe to it’s busy. ST: Alright. CJ: Sorry. ST: Nope, it’s alright. Now that I’m thinking about it…. Alright, what topics have you written about? CJ: Well, I have like two measly little published papers from my grad school days. They were about barium isotopes in exploding AGB stars, and how you can tell the temperature and pressure inside of the star from how the neutrons bombarded the atom and made it like bigger or smaller. Wahoo. It’s really sort of a genesis story in it that these types of stars are shedding carbon among other things. But they’re putting a lot of carbon out into the universe, and it’s kind of like the sands on the beach. That’s silicon. I don’t want to mix my metaphors too bad, but it’s just the stuff that we are made of that we are; they’re just piling carbon out into the universe. Hydrogen and helium are the big players, but we are not made of hydrogen and helium. We’re wet carbon, so there’s some water and oxygen in there. But anyway, carbon is super important in the carbon-based life forms. That’s part of how it’s made looking at the temperature and pressure. The conditions in the star. What else have I written? Like, “Dear Diary, I am yet again tired. Goodnight.” I write a lot of like super Eeyore Facebook posts. That’s not 48 what you meant. I’m like, “Oh the end is near. We’re never going to have fish or bees again. Wah.” I do a lot of that. MK: Not what I was expecting to hear. ST: The next one is what recognition have you received for your accomplishments? CJ: I have the two degrees and I got an award in the tutoring job as I was leaving. I think they realized that I’d done a really good job and worked really hard for no recognition. When it’s time for me to leave the one I’m in, maybe I’ll get a little print out certificate from them too. Oh the one that meant the most to me ever was “most improved orchestra member.” I got that my first year, and like I went from completely sucked to just kind of sucked, and they noticed and like they gave me a little certificate that said, “Most Improved Orchestra Member.” And I was like, “Really? Me? You Picked me?” I was so happy. That made a big impact on me. Like and it was that Sally Fields moment, “You really like me?” Because I’m just awkward and stuff, and they were definitely the upper-class private lessons bunch of white kids that I normally struggled with being around. Completely white. Like not mixed heritage or anything. But I just don’t kind of get along with Utah people. I’m Canadian, you know? Anyway, I was always felt so rejected by that group of people and for some reason in orchestra, they just welcomed me. I loved them back so much forever, for welcoming me and voting me most improved orchestra member. Huge. ST: So nice. That you loved them so much. CJ: I loved them. I was so grateful. They let me join their club. 49 ST: Alright, I’ve got another one and I’m checking to make sure it’s not a double. CJ: That’s alright. ST: Anyway, you might have gone over this one, but I can’t find it. But, how have you become a mentor to others in your field? CJ: Well the math tutoring supervisor was the big time when I got to be a mentor and I miss that so much. A lot of them want to be teachers so I’m like, “Good, try this out. Let’s see how you like being a teacher.” Some of them have decided, “Actually I want to be a programmer.” I’m like, “Good we need all types of people in the world.” I love being able to mentor the math students and the math tutors and I would sit by their side and watch them tutor. When things got really busy, we just would all be tutoring. Like, “We’re crowded. People are not going to pass their test.” We are in there, all just working together so they’ll learn by doing thing. Then going to the conference, I think is really big learning to stand by your poster and explain how cool you are to strangers. You’re like, “But I’m not cool. I’m just a nerd.” And they’re like, “No you’re cool.” All of that, so good. Then in the physics lab, I had a student—a lab aid. I feel like I was able to mentor her to some degree. She was not my employee the way the math tutors were, so she would come in and do her lab aid for three hours. I wasn’t her only boss, and she didn’t have me for 20 hours a week. It was more loose than the math tutoring supervisor mentoring, but one of the things I was able to do was to stay out of her way. She decided she wanted to do a couple of things like show humorous songs of science. Like, “Let It Go.” They changed the words to “Let It Go” to be scienc-y. Yeah. There’s humorous science songs; I’m sure you’ve 50 heard of YouTube. She would just show some YouTube up there and I’d be like, “Oh man, okay. Good job.” The students responded to it. I didn’t stop her… like, “What does this have to do with the topic today?” It always had something in it and it was something she wanted to try. She called herself a motivator, like people would come in for a three hour lab and unlike me not think, “Oh play time!” They’re like, “Ugh, three hours and I have to fill out this report.” They are not happy about it, so she was trying to get them jazzed about it and I thought she did a good job, so that was my mentoring like, “I’m not going to stop you and good job.” Where with the math tutors I would say, “You should try these specific things.” Give them more direction and basically—she had her own direction and I was like, “Yeah, go. Nice.” I really enjoy the feeling of mentoring and that’s funny because earlier, you were asking me what would I tell people… and I’d be like, “Go talk to somebody else.” I want them to talk to somebody else for the mental space of like being fired up about going in their career and having opportunities and stuff. What I want to do is, work with me. I don’t necessarily want to do the mental motivation. It’s like, “Let’s just teach together.” Let’s just work side by side, maybe build something physical and apply it. Not really into the theory as much. ST: You mentioned like multiple times like your work with the math tutoring center and I know that you’ve covered it quite a bit. CJ: That’s like the orchestra. Like I just, “Love these guys forever.” ST: That’s great. CJ: Yeah. 51 ST: What are some of like the challenges that you encountered with the math tutoring center? CJ: The girls being too nice was one, and it’s not “nice.” We need a better vocabulary for this, but you get a bunch of 20 year olds together, some of the boys are going to be kind of skeeby and some of young women, instead of like just, “Knock that off. This is unacceptable. I’m here to work. I’m not here to date.” They just didn’t have a natural way of putting them off, and they would just, “But I didn’t want to be rude.” And I’m like, “Be rude, you don’t have to put up with that kind of thing.” That was hard because it’s very social and icky and sticky and different for different types of people. But trying to protect the young women from the occasional skive, that was hard. I’m not even sure how to arm my child with this information. For some reason, I was just born lucky—I don’t have to reject advances. Like, even when I was younger, they just wouldn’t dare. There’s all kinds of people in the world, and some of them are really kind and like, “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” And I’m like, “Hurt the hell out of them.” That’s hard, like just… where do you make that personal judgement call? It just seems like I don’t have a lot of experience with rejecting advances. People have not hit that ball across the court to me that many times. Like just be your natural bitch self? It will take care of itself? I mean, that’s not good advice you could give to people that aren’t naturally awkward and off putting. That was hard, just to try to get people to manage their—but they didn’t want to. I just don’t want to hurt his feelings? I’m like, “How could you not want to hurt his feelings? He’s being gross.” They were like, “But that wouldn’t be nice.” 52 “So?” I didn’t like that part for sure. It certainly wasn’t all of the guys. It would be 150 people involved, two guys. Not a very high occurrence, but just not something you even want to deal with. I’d just rather everyone just be really professional and not make me have to do that. My least favorite part of that story was romance. Just no. ST: Alright, well said. What were some of your roles and responsibilities. Like related to your specific position? CJ: At the tutoring center? ST: At the tutoring center, yeah. CJ: Just running the place. The breakdown of that would be, you need to hire tutors so I would try to talk to professors about who was doing good when I was actually teaching if I noticed someone that was helpful to their classmates. They’d be like, “Oh, we really need someone to come in and be a tutor and it looks really good on your résumé and it helps you build your own skills.” Because it really does. Working as a tutor helps you understand things so much better than just working as a student. It’s like the icing on the cake that is just so good. Anyway, hiring and then training. Payroll is kind of a pain in the butt. You have to actually verify like this person and this person. You have to go through spreadsheets, and like, “Monday, Wednesday, Friday clock in, clock out.” And we had to manage a number of students per hour. That’s kind of how that project came about is we need to know like, “How many people do you need to schedule on Wednesdays at 3?” You need to figure that out. Letting people go, not very often. I usually just coached them to death. Not only did I have a lot more clients 53 behaving badly, I had a couple of male tutors that were behaving badly on the job. Like trying to get dates while at work and I’m like, “Mmmhmmm.” So I come on in, “This is unacceptable. You can’t act like this.” And not fire them, but, eventually they kind of figured out that they wanted to work somewhere else because they don’t like having these uncomfortable conversations with me where I’m like, “Remember that time last Tuesday when you asked what she was doing later? You can’t do that.” Mostly hiring a lot of maintenance and then your occasional coach them to death so they quit. Nobody ever did anything bad enough to get fired for. Just like asking a girl out on a date because you’re super awkward and you don’t know about dating, that’s a coaching. But like actually putting your hands on somebody, fired. But it never got that far. Yeah, just go do something else. This is not the job for you, kind of thing. But you can’t really say that. It happened. What else? We planned social party thank you things for them. Like, at the spring tutor of the year, and everybody gets together and has some food and games and Frisbees and pencils and we’d like make a little kind of swag bag. Just fun things like that. ST: You were hired in 2002 to the math tutoring center. How long were you there for? CJ: Till 2008. Maybe 2007. It had to do with having my first child and her birthdate is in the middle of 2008. I’m pretty sure it was like January of 2008, somewhere around there I was like, “Mhhmm.” Oh no, she got born. I did my maternity leave. I was off for six weeks or something, very short. Then came back and I gave my two weeks notice within very recently of coming back because it was horrible. Horrible. Horrible. 54 ST: I believe you. CJ: She’s big now. ST: Very tall. CJ: She really is. She looks like a grown-up but she’s still only 11. Do you remember when you were 11? ST: I kind of don’t actually. I have snippets of childhood. CJ: Yeah. ST: I just don’t remember. I don’t have them time stamped. CJ: Right. You should get a really good interviewer in there with like two pages of questions that just really draw it out. Have you done this? ST: Before? CJ: No, been interviewed? ST: No. CJ: You should do it. ST: I probably will one day. CJ: Like before and after so we have a comparison shot. ST: Alright, if it ever happens, I’ll remember you. CJ: Yeah, send me the link when it’s finally all edited and the umm’s are taken out and stuff. You should just interview each other. ST: There we go! So let’s see. I think that’s most of my questions. CJ: Oh good because I’ve got to go. ST: [to Marina] Alright then, do you have any other? 55 MK: We just have one last question that’s super important and then we should be done. ST: Do you have anything else to ask before I ask that one? MK: Nope. ST: Alright, alright. Our final question is how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? CJ: Okay personally, I vote in every election and my candidate never wins, but I just keep doing it. I think it’s a very important part of the humor, just keep voting even though. I feel pretty disenfranchised with the electoral college and all of that, but my vote is symbolic only. But, way back when women got the right to vote, I think it’s one more step towards being considered equal under the law and that we’re people. I like being a person. Start over, so we did getting the right to vote, and then the middle thing, and then personally. What was the middle thing? ST: Community. CJ: I’d really like to say that women having the right to vote made a lot of progress as far as like children’s rights and animal rights and things that women care about. I don’t know. It’s hard to say, like when you look at how women vote versus how men vote, I don’t know that it’s majorly different. I just really think it’s one more step towards being treated as a human being.