Search the site...

Blackademia
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Book Club
  • Contact
  • SHOP
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Book Club
  • Contact
  • SHOP

blog

How Dance Helped Me Prepare for the Rigors of Academia

4/25/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I’ll never forget my first heartbreaking rejection. It came in the form of a thin envelope - a rejection letter from my dream dance company. I felt utterly defeated and found myself ruminating over what could have been, rather than celebrating the slew of acceptances that did come my way. I trudged around with my shoulders low as if the confidence I fought so hard to build was snatched away from me with one simple sentence, “We regret to inform you…” My mom neatly folded up the letter, put it back in its envelope and told me, “Something better is always on the horizon.”

As a dancer for almost twenty years, the art form taught me more about myself in preparation for the rigors of academia than I ever could have envisioned. One of the most trying lessons I’ve learned is to let rejection roll off my back and harness my energy into the acceptances. In the dance world, many auditions are a grueling day-long or week-long process where you must mentally prepare to push through fatigue, bruises, and sweat beyond limits and bounds. Oftentimes, you leave an audition without the role, position, or spot you visualized.

It’s a lot like academia. You pour your time into crafting a research question, selecting a methodology to test your hypothesis, writing your results to make your argument as effective as possible, and spending copious amounts of energy editing and rewriting to pull your work together. You edit your writing and study the literature of the most well-known and commonly cited scholars as dancers enhance their technique, stretching their limbs and ensuring alignment, and watch other dancers for inspiration and motivation. You spend months and years perfecting your craft as a researcher, as dancers spend months and years working on their body placement and showmanship.

Even with the preparation, rejections come frequently. With every rejection, as I remind myself in my dance career, “There is always something better on the horizon,” but even more so that there is another opportunity, another journal, another conference that has exactly what I’m looking for and they’re looking for my work too.

For me, there is no feeling in the world greater than being able to tell my story through combined eight counts of rhythmic contracts and releases of my muscles.  As a woman of color, I’ve tried to shrink myself to simply fit the rigid societal standards of society but with dance, I am able to stretch and make myself physically larger as an act of empowerment. As a researcher, I also use my platform to highlight untold stories by employing creative methodology in my work and making sure that student voice is at the heart and center any time my pen hits paper. Dancing taught me to pour a whole, creative heart into everything I do, to think critically, and to always dedicate myself to becoming a little better each day, all skills necessary in navigating and persisting through the rigors of academia.

Dancing also taught me how to challenge spaces that were not meant for me. Although the paradigm is starting to shift, academic spaces perpetuate systemic and structural barriers through a multitude of practices such as funding and institutional politics. Ballerina Misty Copeland talks about how Black bodies are not celebrated in ballet, but rather criticized and ridiculed. We see that happening in institutions across the country, where Black bodies are being policed and controlled in the same educational spaces that promise diversity and equity.

I had to learn to love my curves and natural hair as a dancer, which set the foundation for me to love the sound of my quiet, yet dynamic voice in meetings and classrooms. Imposter syndrome is pervasive and I struggle with it almost daily.

If I’m able to get on stage and show the rawest and most purest version of my soul through movement, I can speak up in class and I can certainly speak up in meetings, recognizing that my voice, my body, my soul is valid and valuable, no matter the space. Whether it be facing countless rejections or grappling with feelings of self-doubt, dance prepared me to traverse through the murky depths of academia with confidence and grace - something I hope to continue to instill in the little Black ballerinas I teach.

Picture
Cierra Kaler-Jones is a PhD student whose research focuses on using storytelling and artistic expression as effective strategies to teach students about social justice issues. When she isn’t researching trends in education or speaking to students about the power of sharing their stories, she dances professionally and leads arts, movement, and mindfulness workshops. She has a strong case of wanderlust, loves chasing sunsets, and is in constant pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. Check her out at cierrakalerjones.com or find her on Twitter @_cierrajade_. ​

0 Comments

I Stopped Wearing Blazers to Class

4/14/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
The month leading up to my first teaching assignment was full of unsolicited, well-intentioned advice from older graduate students who stressed the importance of establishing authority in the classroom.

“You look young,” they said, “and you’re Black and a woman, so it’ll be harder for you.”

I was advised to dress up and assert myself. One friend even suggested I have students refer to me by my last name —Ms. Taylor. I tried saying it out loud to myself, and it sounded strange even to me. So with assurances from my godmother I quickly abandoned that piece of advice. “Hi, I’m Ebony.” I practiced it over and over. In the mirror, walking to the train, even in phone calls with my sister, and my anxiety around the question of authority grew.

I spent hundreds of dollars on clothes in a concerted effort to look older — a basically impossible task. At twenty-three I wasn’t much older than my class of predominately juniors and seniors, and in undergrad my friends used to joke that I should try and pass for twelve so I could participate in “Kids Eat Free” at IHOP. Even so, my jumbled collection of athleisure soon made way for blazers, blouses, and dress pants. Converse gave way to heels. I passed the last week of summer assembling the mountains of new clothes into outfits for the new quarter, and the action reminded me more of a  freshman in high school than a first time teaching assistant.

Then of course there was the race question. Or rather, all of these decisions in some way came from my anxieties about the race question — a limitation to my authority which mattered more than my ability to pass for a fifteen year old or being a woman in front of the classroom. Black people have to work twice-as-hard and look twice-as-good while maintaining perfect composure. In-spite of this, upper-years warned me, white students still might not recognize your authority in the classroom. So I prepared myself the only way I knew how — I’d have to know everything and dress up everyday. I even decided to wear my hair straight for the quarter to really drill in the respectability politics.

Then I walked into class on my first day, forgot rivers are fresh water bodies (as opposed to salt), let the students laugh about it, and I realized…authority is overrated, and not that complicated. My authority in the classroom came from the fact that I was grading their assignments and that I could answer their questions. I started coming to class in leggings and knock-off UGGs. I took advice from my undergrads about the weather as a Floridian in Chicago. We talked about football and the benefits of getting YouTubeRED, and they filled in gaps of knowledge I didn’t have. In the end, building camaraderie with my students took me further than I think exerting authority ever could have.

While I’ve only taught two classes at this point, I think I’ve learned a few things worth sharing.
  1. Trust Yourself. Professors and upper-years in my program constantly repeat the same advice. “You know more than your students.” At first, it seems impossible. How do you know? What if I have a genius in my class? What if I’m brand new to the topic? The truth is, as a graduate student you have the ability to synthesize information faster and more completely than the average undergraduate. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never get a student who has obsessively read about WWII for ten years in your class. You might. But you have to believe in your ability as a teacher to learn and convey material. It’s what you’ve been trained for. And also, that WWII buff can actually be an asset to the classroom. Most likely, that’s who you’ll be looking to when the rest of the class has fallen into a confused silence.
  2. Disagreement Can Be Good. In today’s political climate it might seem strange to advocate for what some like to call “diversity of thought,” but the whole point of a liberal arts education is to engage with knowledge. That means all knowledge not just the academy’s preferred brand of liberalism. In the humanities, undergraduates are often working through their own politics as they encounter new information. Students are whole people who come with their politics, race, religion, sexuality, class, etc. And they might not have the same views as you or the other students. That’s fine. A humanities classroom is a place where you engage with tough questions and sometimes come to uncomfortable answers. This isn’t possible if only certain students feel comfortable to speak-up because we’ve set a classroom tone where students with deviating views are treated as pariahs.
  3. It’s Okay to Mess Up. As previously mentioned, my first day of class I mentioned that I thought rivers had salt water. Another class, I got the dates of the Great Migration wrong. And yeah, mistakes are embarrassing, but so what if a student corrects you? I sat in on a professor who spelled words wrong on the board and mixed up names. We’re all humans, and humans aren’t perfect. I started asking my students to spell words for me or to go on Wikipedia and find dates for me. Suddenly they’re more involved in this thing we call knowledge production, and the pressure is off of you to perform. Also, mistakes are a good reminder for the perfectionist in most academics that the world will not explode if you prove yourself fallible.

Go and be great!

Picture
​Ebony Taylor is a PhD student at Northwestern University studying African-American history. She occasionally blogs on her website ebonyptaylor.com. She is also in the process of developing a digital history project. While her research focuses on business and economic history, her dream is to write fantasy fiction. Follow her on Twitter @ebonyptaylor.

0 Comments

Ease on Down the Road

4/5/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Have you ever seen pictures of mountain climbers on their journeys? They have their backpacks and the necessary gear. That is it.
​
When I see pictures like that, I am reminded of the main song from The Wiz “Ease on down, Ease on down the road…don’t you carry nothing that may be a load, just ease on down ease on down the road!” (I want you to imagine me holding that last note all the way out!)
 
Anyway, I reminded of these things because this is a perfect analogy for what is like to be a graduate student having to determine what and who—mainly who—you have to leave behind on this upcoming climb.
 
I know that you are probably reading this and wondering why you may have to leave some people behind when you go to graduate school. But the truth is that you can’t ascend to your fullest potential (and heights) with a lot of things weighing you down, and unfortunately that includes people.
 
I think this was one of the hardest realizations that I had to come to in my graduate school career. The realization that some people are heavy loads and they cannot be carried and they must be left behind.
 
Graduate school is not for the weak at heart. There will be times that you will be faced with situations that will make you want to quit. That will make you want to not only quit, but burn all of your books in the process. And in those moments, you must be surrounded by people who will support you through that process properly. Honestly, there is no rule book on how to be a friend to someone in graduate school; however, when you get there you will know the kind of friend that you need.
 
The hardest part about figuring out the type of friend you need is realizing that not everyone you thought was your friend is that person. And unfortunately, they may not even understand how to be the friend you need in that season. But I am writing this piece so you know not to feel guilty.
 
I know that that is also easier said than done, but take it from someone who has had to drop some people off along the way: it gets easier as time goes on. And to be quite honest, you will be so busy trying to master graduate school that you will not even have time to think about it.
 
So how do you evaluate who needs to go and who can stay? Well one thing someone once told me was that you must determine why that person is in your life?  Is it because you have known them forever and you feel some sense of loyalty and duty? Or is that person actually pouring into your life as much as you are pouring in theirs?
 
Do not get me wrong, these types of questions are hard to ask yourself; however, they are necessary for your own personal growth. And you are not being selfish in a bad way when you put yourself first. In this world of academia, you only need people on your team who are just as committed to your success as you are. You need people who are not afraid to check on your shit. And who also able to support you through difficult times—cause this grad school stuff is not for the faint of heart and there will be difficult times ahead. Basically, you must only take what is necessary.
 
I myself have been doing a relationship cleanse. Taking a friendventory so to speak. And each time I do, I mentally become lighter and lighter. Letting go of people that may have been toxic is the most liberating thing ever.
 
How are some ways you and your circle support each other in this academia world? I would love to hear how u have had to take “friendventory.”

Picture
Joy Melody is a graduate student at the University of Iowa. When she is not studying about the sociology of education and sports, she is blogging about her journey with depression, anxiety, and learning disabilities on her website withoutaspace.com. She also hosts a podcast. She enjoys reading for fun and going on walks with her 50 lb fur baby (a lab-blue heeler mix).

1 Comment

Reflections on Dr. King in the Classroom 50 Years Later

4/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
It has been exactly 50 years since Dr. King was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 50 years since we first began the changing of his narrative. 50 years since the day his dream began to die.
 
In anticipation of this day, I’ve been doing some work to remind myself of who Dr. King was, what he stood for, and what his vision for this country truly was. In my reflections, I couldn’t help but think of what we’re teaching our children about his legacy. About what we ourselves have been taught about his legacy.
 
After seeing minimal think pieces on social media, hearing of few events going on in the nearby area, and learning that my own university had nothing planned to honor King’s legacy, I reached out to a high school teacher of mine as a last ditch effort at scrounging up some hope. I asked if my alma mater had in fact planned anything to commemorate this monumental day. If maybe, just maybe, they had planned something that would begin to change King’s narrative in schools and shed some light on the real King (or as Cornel West so eloquently called him, The Radical King).  I was unsurprisingly disappointed when she told me that to her knowledge they hadn’t done anything. There was, she said, a quote this morning over the announcements, but nothing more.
 
In that moment I became overwhelmed with both sadness and anger. I was angry thinking about the fact that schools are ignoring that it has been 50 years since the man who called for radical justice and equity on a national stage had been murdered because of his love for people and his hope for a better country. I was annoyed that it seemed like educators were ignoring the surveillance and terrorism King was subject to in his days on this earth. Ignoring that before his story became one of a peace-loving, hand-holding pacifist, he was number 6 on the list of most hated Americans in a Gallup poll. I was furious that I had never learned in school that Reagan publicly chastised this man, blaming him for his own assassination and then created a holiday JUST to improve his own approval ratings. I was livid that I was never taught and students today are not being taught that White clergy rebuked him, saying he wasn’t doing the work of God; enraged that I hadn’t read his response to the White moderate until after I graduated from undergrad. My heart hurt at the continual whitewashing, diminishing, and erasure of King’s true legacy.
 
The lack of acknowledgement of this day in schools and the perpetual narrative changing speaks to the overwhelming desire of those who benefit from a White supremacist and capitalist regime to preserve the status quo. There’s simply no other explanation.
 
Our children don’t need to learn a diluted version of Dr. King. That doesn’t help them. It doesn’t prepare them for the world they will encounter or help them navigate the world in which they currently reside. It doesn’t help them to think of how they can disrupt injustice, agitate corruption, or infiltrate systems. It doesn’t help them to think critically about what it means to civically disobey (hint: it doesn’t mean making anyone comfortable; in fact, it means inconveniencing those that are most comfortable until they acknowledge the problem at hand).
 
Today, like many days, I was disappointed in our educational system. We have to do better. Our kids deserve better.
 
Oh yeah – and let’s start putting some respect on his name. He was Dr. King.
Thanks.
 
For those seeking to be co-conspirators with me in changing how we teach our students about Dr. King, here are some resources (feel free to drop more below):
 
Quotes:
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.” – 1964, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
 
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." – Letter from a Birmingham Jail
 
Articles:
The Atlantic’s Special Edition
Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Radical. We Must Respect His Legacy

Picture
Autumn is not a carefree Black girl, although, she hopes that one day she will be able to be. Autumn holds more degrees than your president and is more qualified than your secretary of education. She is a lifelong educator who loves and believes in the potential of Black and Brown children, especially girls. Autumn is currently pursuing her doctoral degree and thinks she has finally devised a master post-graduation plan. Stay tuned. Follow her on twitter @AutumnAdia; follow the blog @ReadBlackademia. ​​​​​​

0 Comments

      follow BLACKADEMIA

    SUBSCRIBE
    Write with us!

    Blackademia the blog

    Two Black women navigating the world of academia. Read about how Tiffany & Autumn discuss (and bring levity to) issues of education (both secondary and higher) in America. .

    POPULAR posts

    Blackademia of The Month

    TO MY VILLAGE

    token
    ​

      have ideas for the blog?

      Let us know!

    Submit

    Archives

    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    About Blackademia
    Affirmations
    Autumn Griffin
    Back To School
    Blackademia
    Dialogue
    Grad School
    Professional
    Survival Tips
    The Crisis In Black Education
    Tiffany Lee
    Welcome

    RSS Feed

SUPPORT BLACKADEMIA!


DONATE

Picture

WHY DONATE?

SHOP

SHOP BLACKADEMIA

FOLLOW BLACKADEMIA

SUBSCRIBE

CONNECT

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.