Ministry is much like academia.  Nothing ends. Nothing ends and chaos is swirling about.  Nothing ends, chaos is swirling about, tasks must be completed, and deadlines met.  This is the life of ministry. This is the life of a pastor. There is rarely a beginning or end to the tasks and projects in the life of a church.  I have found that my starting point, as the incoming pastor, may have been the end or middle of the previous pastor’s task or project. Then, there are relationships to be managed with church members, other ongoing tasks and projects to be completed, and seeds of new ministry ideas that have yet to come to fruition.  And I must, somehow, hold and manage it all. So, I have learned to appreciate the process in arriving at the “end” of any task or project. I have learned to appreciate the process – the steps, the liminal spaces, the meantime moments – on the way to achieving the goal. This appreciation is essential for ministry praxis because everything is in process all the time – sitting in the presence of dying people, listening to church members, praying with and for church members, and facilitating conflict resolution.  Over the course of my ministry years, I have realized that I not only pastor people, I pastor processes too.
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Academia, at all levels, is much like ministry too.  I may not have pastored people in my classes, or prayed with professors, but learning to appreciate the process is half the battle in managing the rigors of academia.  While pursuing my degree in social responsibility and sustainable communities, I took a class called “Community Based Research Methods.” I learned to engage in community-based research realizing how vital the processes and tools were that the researcher used.  In fact, the processes and tools used to mine the research were more important than the findings themselves. Randy Stoecker, author of Research Methods for Community Change: A Project-Based Approach, wrote a chapter in the book titled “Implementing: When Research Is the Project.”  As I read that whole chapter – even the chapter title itself – I could not help but remember the praxis of ministry.  Like academia (and community-based research), having the proper processes and tools in ministry directly affects the results, and the proper processes and tools are directly related to the gifts and skills of the individual.  David, in his battle against the Philistine, Goliath, almost used the wrong tools in the fight. At the time, King Saul gave David his tools with which to fight – a sword, a shield, and armor. But, when David put them on and tried to walk into battle, he could not do it.  David took them off, then used the tools related to his gifts and skills – a sling, five smooth stones, and a shepherd’s staff. Likewise, in academia I learned that I could not write like someone else. I could not conduct research like someone else. I could not understand like someone else because the processes and tools with which I engaged my learning were particular to me – Enger – a young adult, educated, middle class, black woman from Prince George’s County, Maryland.  The practice of ministry cultivated a deeper resilience and tenacity in me for academia. Sure, there is most definitely an end to academic pursuits – the degree. But, no one tells you how to take care of you in the meantime. No one tells you how to stay in academia when it gets hard. No one tells you that academic failures are not a waste, but much needed seeds for success and self-discovery. Here are a few ministry lessons I’ve learned to navigate academia well – at any level:

1. Take care of you.  Do not neglect the basics of drinking water, exercising, eating well, resting.
2. No person is an island.  Seek out a village of love, laughter, accountability, and support.
3. Ask for help.  You do not know everything, nor can you do everything.  Be kind to yourself.
4. No is a complete answer.  This short yet powerful word reminds you that everyone has limits - even you - and that is okay.
5. Risk failing boldly.  Then, examine the failures with your village and learn from them.
6. Learn to laugh at yourself.  Laughter is good for the soul, and laughing at your mistakes reminds you that you are human.
7. The work will always be there, but you may not be.  So, bring the best and healthiest you to the work.

​Last summer, my father passed away suddenly. I and other people have written elsewhere about the mourning and grief while in graduate school. It’s a long and exhausting process that makes the demands of graduate school much more difficult. It was also a reminder of the strength of my community and the different resources that are (and aren’t) available to me as I move forward into a new reality. Last Fall, I got engaged. Our proposal was a complete surprise – I truly had no idea – and I was over the moon excited to come back from Thanksgiving break and tackle what was sure to be a really challenging end of the semester. I shared the news with my friends from school and from other chapters of my life. Once again, I was reminded of how dope my community is. I was lucky to be able to share my joy with the many wonderful people I’d grown close to over the years. However, during both of these hugely life-changing moments, I found myself asking the same question: who should I tell at school?

Before I started my Ph.D. program, I worked at a non-profit for five years. While there, I developed great relationships with my colleagues and tried to stay professionally collegial with my supervisors. As casual as my workplace was, the boundaries were clear. I knew who to grab a drink with, who I could gossip with, and who I absolutely could not talk to about my personal life. And then I started grad school and everything turned on its head. Although I was eager to get to know fellow graduate students, I wasn’t sure what to do about the professors. I was now in a world where people had casual drinks with faculty and the teacher-student relationship was heightened by genuine friendship as well. Mentors were also friends; former students became colleagues. While there was a tangible hierarchy that people acknowledged, the fact that we were training to also be academics entering our advisors’ fields makes our interactions with professors different from those with teachers and professors in our younger years.

When faced with an opportunity to divulge personal information, I try to ask myself one question:  how does sharing this information help? When my father passed away, I told one professor because I owed her a paper. Throughout my classes this year, I talked about my father with my professors to give them a heads up that I might be out of it. Grief is unpredictable and requires me to constantly check in with myself. I happen to be in the same field as my father, so I run into his work quite often. While I would normally soldier on and save the personal anecdotes for my therapist, I felt in this case it was important for some of my professors to know what I was going through. I was still in course work this year, and how I showed up in class was still very important. But in making that decision, I had to also be ok knowing this information would spread. In my first year, a professor of mine shared his “grad school survival pointers.” Several of them stuck with me, including his point-blank assertion that faculty gossip about students as much as students gossip about faculty. Since that first week of classes, I have found myself in many situations that confirmed this. People gossip at every level. My goal is to give them  very little fodder about myself to pass around at the water cooler.

Recently, I was talking to two friends of mine about this question. All three of us have jobs as research assistants and we were trying to quantify how to balance our supervising professors' demands, our personal lives, department requirements, and prep for our coursework. Teaching, working for our professors, writing comprehensive exams and dissertation proposals, and doing coursework at the same time meant that time was precious. On top of that, it was important for us, as people who came back to school from the workforce, to have time to decompress and spend with our partners, families, and friends. We debated whether telling our supervisors about our personal lives would push them to be more reasonable about the hours they required from us. But, academic culture still normalizes working all day, every day, and while there are some academic advocates for thinking about life outside of work, those people are a noticeable minority.  In the end, we decided that rather than talk to these professors about our lives outside of school (which exist, believe it or not), we should meticulously record the hours we work for the professors so our compensation actually reflects the time we’ve spent on each task.
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As a woman of color, I’m decidedly guarded in graduate school. Unlike some of my cohort-mates, I’ve avoided adding faculty on social media. I don’t tell them about my personal life and I rarely ask about theirs. With other graduate students, I’m slightly less guarded. Of course, there are many people I consider friends; I’m very lucky to be on great terms with my cohort- and department-mates. Thankfully, my departments aren’t tensely competitive, and graduate students generally get along with one another. But, given the now common knowledge that academia remains a hostile environment for women, I’m choosing to be very selective about how much of myself I share. In talking about my personal life, I’ve chosen to operate with a need-to-know policy.  I’m learning that there’s no absolute right or wrong way to do graduate school. Different people adopt different approaches. Mine is to think of graduate school like I would a job, a very demanding, extremely exhausting one. In the spirit of self-preservation and drawing clear limits, I’m resisting allowing academia to take over my whole life. For me, that means keeping my personal and academic life separate – at least for the time being. 

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_. ​

​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.

Steph Ox (@Hazelmonet3) is a relatable writer of many genres. Her work is rooted in her ability to understand many perspectives and point of view. Steph prides herself on being an empath and with her poetry, articles, stories, think pieces, songs and book series, it's clear she has the ability to reach and relate to different audiences of all ages and backgrounds. She recently published the first book in her Children's Book series aiming to provide relate-able lessons for millennial children with values that shape our children in the right direction. Steph is passionate about changing the world through the art of writing and storytelling. Most of us believe the lessons and experiences we individually face explains our content point of view on the world. However, understanding that by allowing your perspective to be open helps hangs the world for the better and how you see it.