Unboxing- The email message that had informed me about my admission to Rice Anthro…

19 February 2001

Among myriad tasks and projects, I continue unboxing my personal history. Here is the print of the email from Prof. George Marcus. He announced my acceptance to the Rice Anthropology PhD program. I remember that day vividly. I got the message while working as a TA at the Bilgi Media Department. It was a usual TA day in our Dolapdere Campus. It was raining slowly. I was so happy. I decided to take a walk. I walked up to Taksim, reaching the Istiklal Street from the side street that faces the Galatasaray High School campus. There was a leftist demonstration there—a usual site of protest. The police were about to intervene. I thought, “not today!” not just after getting an acceptance letter from my dream program. I was not among the protesters, but in such situations, you never know. I got stressed momentarily, moved away, and then continued to walk around in Istiklal Street before notifying my loved ones.

Then I received the formal letter:

Late 1990s

Here, I found some of my “analogue archiving” attempts. I could not figure out when exactly I created these files, but they should have been during my college years.

These three files above include clippings about “natural disasters,” the “12 September coup,” the Sivas Massacre, and other social-political crises.

1999

I guess you can now send your GRE test scores online, but at that time, you had to fill in forms like this one. I got accepted to York among the four universities there but decided to go to Rice.

Here is the first part of a syllabus in my MA class in Sociology. I owe a lot to Prof. Sirman and also her orientation towards poststructualist thinking at that time!

2000-2001

Prof. Sirman was also my MA thesis advisor. I found some prints from my MA thesis preparation. I conducted fieldwork in a factory for a year.

Working on the interview transcripts.

Advisory notes:

The title would change, but it was the first version.

2000

Finally, here’s an invoice for the earliest Amazon book orders! I’ll receive a book in one month. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I received the books! In my first orders, I did not even have a credit card, and it would take some time to borrow one to order the books. At that time, it was a big deal; even some of my professors would borrow my books and copy them.