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Coronavirus, Dissertation, Other Resources, Projects, publishing, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 6, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

Job Hunting, Preparing to Pivot and Finishing Up

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Another semester is sliding to a close, and for the first time since I started graduate school, this was a semester in which I didn’t write a single Black Girl Does Grad School post. It’s an odd feeling. While I did write a “beginning-of-the-end”/good-bye post over the summer, knowing that I didn’t add anything to this project to which I dedicated five years of my life left me a little heart sore.

For five years, I wrote about everything grad school related. I wrote about the victories, the hard moments, the moments when I felt like I wasn’t taking care of myself, when I shifted gears and tried pursuing different paths. Now, as I’m crawling toward the finish line of this chapter and beginning to curate my post-grad life, it feels weird to not write about how the stars are finally aligning. And so, here we are once again.

Along with dedicated time to finish my dissertation, the Halleran Dissertation Completion Fellowship I was awarded through my institution’s provost’s office gives me time to job hunt. I spent most of the semester shifting between revising my dissertation and perfecting my job materials. As I’ve said for the last few years, I am prepared to shift out of academia. I’ve spent the last two years building my resume as a freelance essayist and an agented fiction writer while I finished my dissertation. Editor Matt Ortile picked up my first essay for Catapult around this time two years ago and I’ve stayed very close to the magazine since, writing more essays and a column dedicated to superhero girlfriends, reading fiction from their Submittable queue, teaching a one-day course on creative non-fiction for academics, and even motivational consulting. Catapult has provided me with a launchpad to explore many of the skills I’ve gained in grad school in spaces outside of the academy. It gave me the confidence to know that I could make it if I decided to pivot out and write, edit and teach elsewhere.

That confidence allowed me to say that I would only apply to academic jobs that I felt would be perfect fits for me. As I’d lost my taste for academia, I informed my advisor I would not be applying for any and every job that could even loosely be a fit. I would only be applying for jobs that checked my boxes: I wanted jobs that would support and help me develop my deeply interdisciplinary and creative intellectual interests, where my fiction would be as welcome as my peer reviewed manuscripts, in places that I could see myself living and most importantly, that were near my family. Grad school taught me that I am built for mid-sized cities within a few hours of my primary support system, my parents. The only reason I got through grad school was because I was an hour from my home—a place where people cared more about me than what I could do. They remind me to be human, and that means I have to be more than my work. They remind me that I am not, and was never, a grad student first: I was a daughter and a friend and a niece and a granddaughter long before I even considered making this my life.

As a result, I only applied for a handful of jobs this semester, but I was very pleased with each position. It also meant that I could spend more time crafting materials that I felt were great representations of me and my work. I was fortunate to have an application due early on that required a lot of materials: a cover letter, CV, research statement, teaching statement and a writing sample, plus recommendations. Having all of that perfected before anything else was due made it easier to use those documents as templates for other jobs. I was able to reverse engineer a kind of formula that worked best for me and use that as a guideline for the next set. I absolutely did not do this alone. I had a lot of help from my advisor, who offered lots of careful feedback and did a mock interview with me before my first one, and the director of our Arts & Sciences Graduate Center, who helped me punch up my materials and made sure they were spotless before I clicked, “submit.” I am grateful to both of them, as well as the many friends and family members who hyped me up and reminded me who tf I was.

For the first time, I’m starting to feel confident about what my life will be like come May. It has less to do with job opportunities, and more to do with me finally ceasing to force the different pieces of my life and interests to fit together. I’ve stopped trying to make myself choose one path. I’ve worked so hard over my time in grad school, and I think now is the time to step back and watch God work.

So where am I now? After putting the finishing touches on a few academic pieces, giving a couple of talks, submitting those applications, while revising my dissertation, I’m focusing on rewriting the introduction to the diss and finishing up an articular manuscript that’s forthcoming. The introduction I’d originally written didn’t quite work for all of the revisions and restructurings I had done to the project since May. I’ll admit, it’s difficult to get myself to focus at this point. I open the document and my eyes glaze over the screen. I feel burnt out and like I’ve given all that I can to this. My solution has been to take breaks; if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. At this late stage, it’s better to have it done than perfect. And I know it can get done if I give it a few good days of work, but those good days haven’t made themselves known to me yet.

As far as the manuscript is concerned, I’m really excited for this one to go up. It’ll be my first peer-reviewed article in a pretty reputable journal. I don’t want to share details just yet, but perhaps when it’s done and available, I’ll write a post about what that process was like from start to finish. I also want to do a couple posts on job materials, if I feel up to it.

I know this is the long good-bye, but there are still a few more secrets and resources to share. There are still some exciting things yet to come that I will want to reflect on.

And I’m glad to be back and to have this space to use for when it feels right.

Intermission 4, Mental Health, Projects, publishing, Ravynn, The Journey, Uncategorized, Working, writing

Learning Limitations

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June was a personal trial for me. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the resulting protests and national uprising alone were enough to resurrect my panic attacks. The feelings were at least twofold– rage at these lives cut short and relentless fear for the lives of protestors, given the unbelievable reality that we are still living through an unprecedented global pandemic.

I spent the first few weeks of June trying to unravel the knot of difficult feelings that had taken up residence in my stomach, trying to breathe through waves of panic, trying to do anything other than spend most of the day crying.

Because while the world burns, Academia and publishing continues to ask of me, asking for my time and labor and thoughts. In June alone, I edited a book chapter, wrote a book review, wrote most of a journal article, edited my graphic novel manuscript and drafted a freelance reported piece. Many of these pieces popped up near the end of May/beginning of June– I only had a reasonable window of time to complete two of them…if we weren’t living through a pandemic and an uprising.

And while I got everything done in a reasonable time frame, as the month comes to a close, I’ve had some time to reflect on my own limitations.

I have to deal with the fact that though I am someone who likes to keep unreasonably busy– a result of both anxious energy and occasionally hypomania– there still has to be a limit to even my madness. I often come across a quote that says, “You can do everything; just not all at once.” Reflecting on that quote has meant really sitting with my ideas and asking questions of them and of myself: Do you need my immediate attention? Should I let you marinate a while longer? What’s the worst that would happen if I didn’t do this thing right now? How can I slow down? What can I let go of to help me balance this new thing?

 

The last question, What can I let go of to help me balance this new thing?, is very important. If you don’t make a conscious decision, then your work will make it for you. In order to get these side projects done, I had to put aside my dissertation for the month, a decision both my advisor and I thought practical. Practical or not, I was still frustrated that I couldn’t do all the things. I became increasingly agitated when my body wouldn’t cooperate when I asked it to keep pushing and working and going, producing in spite of the all consuming rage I was working against.

 

Finally, I had to stop.

I had to ask myself: Why is it so important that I do everything, right now?

 

And though I frequently talk about this impulse to push and go that is driven by a need for control, I’m always still surprised when that’s the answer that comes to mind.

I need to feel like something is in my control. The thing I’ve always been able to control is my productivity. When circumstances made it so that I was unable to even control my own output, I spiraled out of control.

After some emergency sessions with my psychiatrist, a consultation with a new therapist, an appointment with a somatic practitioner, new medication, more mindfulness apps and a frequently broken social media break, I started to feel more like myself. I was sleeping again. Food didn’t taste like sawdust in my mouth. The pressure that was threatening to burst out of my body had subsided.

I broke down my work into manageable chunks, giving myself plenty of reasonable daily and weekly goals, worked only a few hours a day, and spent a lot of time tending to myself. These days I have found a lot of joy in making art and accompanying my mom outside as she waters her plants in the morning while I enjoy my coffee. I watch Jeopardy! every evening and read for pleasure for about twenty minutes every morning and night.

I’ll be turning in the last of my June projects this afternoon and the marathon writing month will be over. But I have learned a valuable lesson: Know. Your. Limits.

 

The difficult part is that you don’t always know what your own limits are until they’re tested. And I went into June believing that juggling three too many projects was my personal brand. While that may be true, it’s true under very different circumstances.

Moving forward, I think my rule of thumb will be:

  • Only work on a MAX of 3 different writing projects at a time
    • One of them must be the dissertation
  • Stagger deadlines if possible and if you cannot say no to a new project
  • Work according to what your body is telling you it can handle, not what your mind believes your body can handle.

Valuable though the lessons learnt this month may be, I sure am glad it’s over now.

publishing, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 4, Ravynn: Act 4, Scene 2, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

The Hunger Games: Publishing in Academia

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On Thursday night (2/6), I made a knee-jerk decision to tweet about the rejection I’d just gotten. I was feeling a lot of things, including, as the tweet left mentions, sadness, embarrassment and disappointment– yet, I forgot the most important reaction of all: confusion.

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I’ve written more times than I can actively recall about rejection. It happens, with abounding frequency. When writing and publishing is involved, it is inevitable that you are denied, and it’s no surprise that rejections can be brutal.

And yet, when my latest rejection landed in my inbox, I was taken aback. I had submitted an abstract to a special issue, which was accepted. The wording in the initial abstract acceptance led me to believe that, yes, there were a lot of accepted papers, however, logistically, they, the editors, would find space for everyone.

So one could imagine my surprise when I received a brief rejection with no feedback, instead of revisions.

The initial tweet sparked conversation. Over 50 people replied with their own reactions to the situation. Some academics, including a journal editor, expressed shock that this was a possibility:

Others mentioned that this is an unusual, though not unheard of, possibility, that relies on very clear communication:

Still others offered suggestions, from reaching out to the editors and asking for feedback to shopping the piece around to other journals. Many offered words of encouragement, but several showed their solidarity by sharing equally jarring rejection stories:

The division amongst those commenting were striking. There were actually several divides and sides to what folks recognized as the issue. Many newer scholars, that tended to be from marginalized communities, had never heard of this practice. However, senior scholars tended to begrudgingly admit that rejecting a manuscript after the abstract has been accepted is not an unheard of practice. There were divisions between whether this was an issue of lack of clarity and transparency, that no feedback was offered, or that it had happened at all.

And while there was at least one comment that suggested that the fault of this was my own for not asking adequate questions and also a reflection of lack of mentorship, most people, regardless of what they saw to be the issue, were in solidarity.

Clearly, there are some things we need to discuss about academic publishing.

While I am a new scholar, I am not completely new to the academic publishing process. I spent my first year in grad school as an apprentice with a scholarly press that published had both a quarterly journal and a books division. I spent two solid weeks in apprentice training learning the ins and outs of academic publishing. Of course, much of what I absorbed during my training and the subsequent year of work did not sink in until I started to hear peers speak about the process and I began to undergo it myself. I began to have a clearer idea in my mind about what terms like peer review and revise and resubmit meant.

This experience has also clarified ideas about transparency in the processes we must undergo in the Academy. This is the number one reason why I started, and maintain, this blog. I recognize that much of this journey is opaque. Another twitter user, Jameelah Jones, reminded me on Instagram that the structure of many academic journals is not meant to ensure the success of new scholars. There are invisible, gatekeeping rules and constraints that, like spiderwebs, of which you are unaware until you run headlong into them. And unlike those who learn their lessons and fall into complacency, I will continue to fall and record my errors (and triumphs) so those who come after me won’t have to make my mistake. The success of future generations of scholars matter as much to me as my own success.

To ensure the success of future generations of scholars in publishing, it is advisable that we drop the unspoken rules of the Academy that uphold a status quo and begin to operate with transparency. This means: we must be clear about expectations and processes, rather than depend on assumed knowledge. We must actively encourage the growth of emerging scholars, which in this case can mean ensuring constructive critique on pieces of writing. We must lift as we climb.

Publishing does not have to be a gatekeeping practice. It should be an institution that stands for new ideas and the dissemination of new knowledge, rather than a shield that protects the old guard. Given that academic publishing can tend toward being more harmful than helpful, it’s no wonder why newer scholars have invested their time and energy in projects that seek to cultivate their voices, often of their own making.

In some ways, I should be grateful. If not for the state of academic publishing and the tendency of academic structures to both reject and overuse contingent faculty, I wouldn’t have Contingent Magazine. The feeling of shouting into a void with publishing that often reaches a very small audience propelled me to begin writing for online magazines. Lack of transparency has birthed a network of graduate students creating their own infrastructures for each other and those who will come after, just look at #CiteASista, #FirstGenDocs, Blk + In Grad School, and Blackademia. Just look at this site.

I now believe that a large part of my scholarly intervention has been through the creation and curation of this blog, the conversations I can start and cultivate, the people I connect with that have become integral parts of my journey.

And I firmly believe in the possibility and potential the conversations changemakers have, in person and in the digital, to foster new forms of knowledge production and dissemination.

So maybe, the question isn’t even: how do we fix what’s broken?

Perhaps it is: what’s next?