Some disjointed reflections on the private and the public

Jayadev, Arjun (2016) Some disjointed reflections on the private and the public. Learning Curve (25). pp. 45-46.

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Abstract

In the late 1990s I went to the US for graduate school. As young graduate students, experiences are often similar between people- the same classes inspire, the same anxieties about life and the same adventures arise and we often deal with them in similar manner. My fellow graduate students came from places like Canada, the UK, China, Europe, Korea, Turkey and, of course, the US. The enormous energy and vitality that sprung from those encounters continue to reverberate in my life more than a decade later. I did not find myself better equipped in any way to face life than them. Only years later when talking to one of them did I realize that there was only one deep structural difference between my fellow graduate adventurers (one that was not evident at all in our engagement with our work and life) and me: they were educated in public schools, while I, like almost all the South Asians there, was educated entirely in a private school. As it happened, I married one of my fellow graduate students who, throughout her life, from kindergarten to PhD, was in the public system.

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Articles in APF Magazines

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Jayadev, Arjun

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