‘LL: What advice do you have for someone who wants to pursue an academic career?
Padilla Peralta: I would ask them to take a long, sober look at the job market. I would also ask them to come to terms with a few things: academic work is lonely. It can be very isolating, especially the process of writing a dissertation and books. It’s not always the most comfortable thing. Then there’s [the] isolation that can be felt by men and women of color who enter disciplines heavily dominated by white men and women—the disciplines that have traditionally been the bastions of certain kinds of white privilege.
‘LL: What was the biggest mistake or regret you feel like you’ve made? What, if anything, did you learn from it?
Padilla Peralta: I wish that as a teenager I would have been more comfortable talking out some of the problems I was having. I felt so profoundly uncomfortable and so unwilling to do so, that over time it led to this build up of not only anxiety but also a kind of jadedness and cynicism that made it difficult to even be friendly to people in my life. And so, I have regrets about that and my tendency to keep my truest feelings from people was only something that I was able to sort out in my twenties and it took a lot of work.