15 June 2024
The paragraphs below are from my acceptance speech when I received the 2024 Madeleine Capicchiano Scholarship by Graduate Women Victoria. I was given three mins to speak so there are a number of dear friends and mentors who have opened and held doors for me–those who have been providing me with mentorship, friendship, opportunities, and love as I settle in Australia — but whom I couldn’t thank in this speech. You know who you are!
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“I just want to start by thanking Graduate Women Victoria, and the Scholarship Committee, for recognising my work, my scholarship, as well as the challenges I have faced in my academic journey. It’s a great honour to be here and share with you all about my educational journey, as well as about those who have helped me to make it possible.
I also wish to acknowledge that this event takes place on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples, whose sovereignty has never been ceded. This thread of colonialism is still so much alive, as what we have seen in the unfolding genocide in Gaza. As someone who migrated to Australia in a relatively peaceful time, I also want to reflect on how the Australian dream of Asians like me is very much predicated on the dispossessions of Indigenous Australian lands. And thus the story I am about to share, is of hardship and sacrifice but, they are, to a certain degree, to my own volition, of hard choices but still choices nevertheless.
Six year ago, I left Vietnam to come here to reunite with my then long distance partner and my now husband. Now this is a familiar story to many migrants, that if you come from a developing nation, your previous degree and skill sets often don’t translate, for which reason I used up all my savings to do a master degree (note:that only covered the tuition of one and a half semester.) It was costly, but I absolutely loved every bit of it. I had a professional background in advertising, and thanks to the master degree, I discovered my profound interest in media studies as a discipline. I graduated and got into a PhD program amid one of the strictest lockdowns in Melbourne while also cooking up a baby inside. Despite those challenges, I have managed to survive the PhD, and publish. I’m really proud to say that I have a few publications that came out from my PhD, as well as some that are forthcoming.
What I have achieved, however, is not so much a story of individual capacity, resilience, and strength to overcome adverse circumstances. Rather, it is about how much one can accomplish in the face of challenges when they have the necessary support. For that, there are a number of people I want to thank today (though of course there are more people to whom I owe yet the 3 minute time doesn’t allow me!)
First, my heartfelt thank you to my awesome supervisory team, Prof Mark Andrejevic, Dr Thao Phan, and Dr Verity Trott, for not only providing intellectual inspiration and mentorship but also for always believing in me. They are those who never doubt me and my academic potential, when I doubt myself the most.
Second, I want to thank Dr Maura Edmond, who used to be the Program Director of the Master of Communications and Media Studies at Monash. I thank Maura for helping me find my feet as I settle in Australia, from getting my first full time job after the master degree, to getting into the PhD program, and to offering me the very first tutoring position at Monash.
Most importantly, I want to thank my mom, whose visa extension application was, unfortunately, not approved and who had to return to Vietnam last month and couldn’t be here to celebrate with me today. I was on the verge of drop out as my son was on the 1st percentile; they got COVID at the age of one, then suffered persistent illnesses which prevented them to attend childcare on a stable basis. Thank you for enduring Melbourne’s weather and loneliness, and for happily agreeing to be uprooted from your community at the age of 70 to come to Melbourne and help me care for Bao. The mental load of motherhood is exhausting, and I can only survive, finish the sentences, my ideas can only spark, when mom came here and took care those mental load for me for a while until Bao was more ready to be left in care centre.
Finally, I want to thank my partner, without whom I would have never started, much less travelled this far in my academic journey.
I dedicate this award to my son, Bao! I hope you understand that I did try hard to be both a good mom and a good PhD student, though sometimes I also dropped the ball.”
Trang Le 