On Academic Silos, Belonging, and Writing Pathways
MY BA honed my critical thinking on education as a practice and an ideal. It also gave me the freedom to explore hip hop as a lens from which to do this, somewhat before hip hop ed became the all the rage at traditional PWIs.
My MA made me well versed in K-12 education problems, and I focused particularly on those of charter schools (stares at DC and NOLA), urban ed, and barriers to the college transition.
I spent my doctorate coming to deeply understand colleges as organizations/ environments. It was there I sought to better comprehend how college students develop (especially from the HS-college transition) through co-curricular experiences. It was also there that I focused on how graduate prep programs develop the very practitioners tasked with facilitating college students’ growth.
I did a study abroad program rooted in early childhood education where I spent my time mapping how that translates to adult learning and what that could mean for re-envisioning US higher education. I was in Ghana afterall.
I deep read public health process and policy and do on the ground interpersonal HIV advocacy. I’m a heterosexual Black woman and publicly open PrEP for HIV prevention user.
I am a proud PK-20+ scholar who intentionally focuses on Black women and girls. My work is rooted in both the personal and the credentialed precisely because the personal is political.
I am all of these things and right now I feel lost and adrift.
I got annoyed a few weeks ago when Tressie mentioned that she doesn’t get writer’s block. It wasn’t until I slept for 18 hours straight during what should have been my writing retreat in Seattle that I realized why: I sort of don’t either.
I write when I feel like it.
I write when I’m inspired.
I write when I feel like a certain truth need be spoken to power.
And I write when I can get over my shame.
I have always felt deep shame about my ability to churn words out that are darn good for a first draft and a second that’s better than some folks’ dream. I slept for two 8 hour time blocks that I spent $1,000 creating in order to get writing done, and I still finished all but one thing on my to-do list for that trip.
Who does that?
And what’s that gotta do with feeling lost and adrift?
Glad you asked. Well, it’s because it wasn’t until this week in the midst of a breakdown and talking to Mama Williams that I realized I am struggling to write because I am completely frustrated with my professional life, not because of the writing specifically.
I guess being an interdisciplinary scholar illuminating systemic oppression is not for the faint of heart, I cried into the phone to Mama.
The academy is inherently siloed — yes I know this. And I chose the path of (supposed) least resistance by choosing to plant my interdisciplinary flag in the HESA field in part because we tout ourselves as holistic-focused educators. It wasn’t until I sat on the phone yesterday crying to my mother and then to my good friend Kelli about how deeply upsetting the recent HIV testing stats were, that I realized what’s wrong: I feel deeply pained by what is nothing more than intellectual, institutional betrayal.
Journal reviewers are telling me to pick a side in my work; but why?
Grant reviewers are telling me to pick a side in my work; but why?
One reviewer straight up wrote that they didn’t see the purpose of studying HIV in college environments because it’s such a small population. -_-
Another, in a different paper, asked me to clarify why studying mistreatment of Black women specifically in higher education matters, since that mistreatment happens *everywhere*. :-|
I am being told all research matters when I dare to illuminate how Black women’s precarious placement at the nexus of capitalism, necropolitics, and higher education intersect in a subfield that proclaims to care about the entirety of our students.
I feel betrayed because this field, like all of the academic camps I traversed before it, is not designed to fully appreciate multi and interdisciplinary work. But it is a betrayal of the highest order because this field is the main one that claims to be holistic.
The academy fundamentally does not know what to do with it (interdisciplinary foci) — nor us. And neither do the people who claim to care about holistic development.
I’ve spent the last three months staring at a mountain of R&Rs. Most of them would take normal Brit 4–6 hours to turn back around… OK; Maybe 4–6 days if I’m into a new Netflix show. And instead of making or taking the time to just do it, I keep staring at my R&Rs staring back at me while wondering if any of this is worth it.
Were the student loans worth it?
Is being over 1,000 miles away from my family worth it?
Is truly, truly caring about the systemic, intersectional pains Black women and girls endure going to do anything other than put me in an early grave? Is it worth it?
I know that bridge building work is exhausting and unappreciated. In fact, I often joke that I should have been a scholar of leadership, because that’s easy and everyone wants to talk about it. It couches the hard stuff and it makes systemic problems seem like things we can fix with individual actions. F̶u̶n̶n̶i̶l̶y̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶,̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶d̶e̶r̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶r̶n̶a̶l̶.̶
But I’m sitting here and wondering to myself: if I can’t do my interdisciplinary work in HESA, where can I do it in the academy?
And, well, is any of this worth it?
I write all of this to say — I am having trouble writing because I have no idea if this is where I belong anymore. I have 100,000 things to say, and even more ideas, but are they worth writing if no one will ever listen? Is it worth saying if I can’t contribute to systemic changes? To changes to policy?
Is any of this worth it if I’m wide awake at 3am questioning everything?
Perhaps these thoughts are the hallmarks of being good at this. Maybe. But for now, I keep questioning if I belong, can I belong, and the worse question of all: do I even want to belong in academe?
Do I? Stay tuned.
