Every Monday and Friday at 9 AM, Assistant Professor of Sociology Afshan Jafar strides into her sociology class ready to discuss controversial issues plaguing the world. She’s alert, passionate, knowledgeable and ready to get down to business. She engages her students on relevant topics and challenges them to seriously analyze and question social norms.
Professor Jafar’s thought-provoking teachings and points of view made me want to learn more about her upbringing and path towards her current career as a sociologist.
Born in Pakistan to a close-knit family, Jafar is proud of her upbringing and the values it imparted to her: “I am grateful for how much family we had around us with extended family living all over the neighborhood. We would just come over to each other’s houses. We didn’t have to call and let them know we were coming.” She hopes to pass those values on to her two daughters.
Jafar went to a British school where she learned English. When asked about the difference between school in Pakistan and school in America, she remarked on the “very strict educational system in Pakistan.” Students were to dress in uniforms and show their upmost respect for the teacher. Although school was a rigorous environment, there were no rules governing interactions between boys and girls like there were at home: “I wasn’t allowed to have boys over even for birthday parties.” In recent years, places like cafés, restaurants and coffee shops have become popular places for young people to meet and interact with one another.
By the time she was ready for college, Jafar was set to head oversees. She went to an elite high school where “it was almost the norm to go abroad.” After seeing her brothers leave for college, Jafar knew she wanted to travel. Additionally, college campuses, in Pakistan, are run by political parties and use the colleges to recruit people. The political parties were behind the violence and riots that occurred in her town of Karachi.
Because of the dangerous state of affairs, her parents “made a deal. If I got funded, I could go.” Ohio Wesleyan University gave her a full scholarship and, in 1995, she came to the United States. “It was my first time out of the country and America was not what I had expected it to be.”
Jafar was ecstatic about being a college student, although nervous about “knowing what rules to follow.” She pictured having intellectual conversations with other students but what she encountered ended up being a big culture shock. “I was surprised by how little interest people had in college.”
“I couldn’t believe people would show up to class in their pajamas with a doughnut and a coffee in hand and then create their own breakfast space on the table,” she recalled.
Jafar was also surprised to learn how much of the social life revolved around drinking. She playfully recalled, “I love to dance and when I would go to parties, all people would do was drink so I would be dancing and someone would point to me and be like ‘you’re drunk’ and I was like ‘no you are drunk.’”
Food was probably one of the biggest adjustments. Compared to meals in Pakistan, where everything is flavorful and prepared fresh, she found American food to be bland and processed.
After the initial shock wore off, Jafar immersed herself in college life. “I had always wanted to take sociology in high school, but the classes filled up fast.” At college, she had the opportunity to take a wide range of classes.
In one of her earlier classes, she was thrilled to learn that her professor was Iranian and Muslim. “I couldn’t believe my professor was Muslim. I just thought that was so cool.”
Jafar kept collecting majors and ended up majoring in humanities/classics along with sociology. She always felt called towards sociology. “Sociology was new and I was always interested in things that were new.”
When Jafar finished college, she didn’t feel ready to return to Pakistan, so she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “I loved being a student and I wanted to stay one a little longer. I could either get go back to school or get a job where my employer would have to sponsor me.”
The biggest shock of her life was going from a small liberal arts school to a massive state university. She disliked the impersonal feeling. As a teaching assistant she would correct an incredible amount of papers at a time. “One of the classes had 300 students in it. I was one of three TAs so I had to correct a hundred papers in a strategic and quick manner.”
Jafar always had a fascination with the teaching world. As the youngest in her family, she wanted to be in an environment where she could speak openly and debate important issues.
Jafar says she loves her students and considers them to be the “best part of her job.” This certainly shows as she has taken on many additional responsibilities outside the classroom, such as her involvement in CISLA, where she gets to interact mainly with students.
A passionate advocate of the liberal arts education Jafar believes that the “culture of a liberal arts college encourages students to push themselves.” When interacting with a professor such as Jafar, it becomes easy to push oneself and feel excited about acquiring knowledge and information.
