Category Archives: Ravynn

Ravynn: Act 2, Ravynn: Act 2, Scene 1, Uncategorized, writing

Week 2, or Quitting

Leave a comment

Every so often, I have to convince myself to keep writing. Most of the time, I plod along with my writing, knowing that (a) my writing is terrible and/or (b) no one is reading my work. Occasionally, I have to spend an enormous amount of time convincing myself that my writing is not terrible, and even if no one is reading, at the very least, I can say I’m writing.

Rationally, I know I’m probably doing just fine, but the part of my brain run by my uncontrollable anxiety tells me that I need to just quit while I’m ahead. It tells me that my Masters thesis will be terrible, and that if I can’t get through a Masters, how am I supposed to write a dissertation. It tells me that I’m not good enough to be published, even though I’ve built up a solid digital portfolio over the last few years on a few different websites. It tells me that I need to stop blogging because it’s useless, a time suck and it’s crap anyway.  I become convinced that I don’t deserve to work with undergraduate writers on their publication because I don’t know anything about editing, even though I spent a year of my life as an editorial apprentice. I just know I will never write anything worth while and continuing to try is simply me fooling myself.

I want to quit so often that it’s a miracle I’m even still doing this.

Today, I wanted so badly to throw all of it away. I wanted to delete all of the drafts, destroy my manuscripts, dump every single one of the many journals I’d carefully filled with my thoughts over the course of years. I wanted to quit blogging, resign as grad assistant from the undergraduate black run publication I’m advising, and give up on my dreams of helping jump start a journal for the Lemon Project, of being a contributing writer for The Atlantic, of becoming Editor-In-Chief of my own publication some day. I became so convinced that I had nothing to say, nothing of substance to add to the world that I even contemplated simply never speaking in class ever again.

The irony of it all is that I wanted to write how I felt.

I wanted to write a blog post about my fears of never publishing a novel, a journal article or an op-ed.

Every time I write anything, I open myself up to critique. In addition to the constant stream of negativity I deal with in my own head, other people get to spew their vitriol at me and my thoughts, if they want. (This hasn’t happened yet, but eventually, I will probably write something that will piss off a solid amount of people.) If I can’t even convince myself to keep writing as a nobody grad student with a blog that only reaches a couple dozen people weekly, what do I expect to do if some day I do write something important and everyone around me is telling me to quit writing?

The wonderful thing about this blog is my ability to put a positive spin on everything: I add a touch of hope, a line about resiliency, or at the very least trying again tomorrow. Unfortunately, this week I’m coming to this with an unprecedented amount of cynicism. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be in this funk, but I suppose as long as I’m still writing, even if it’s about how bad my writing is, it’s better than no writing at all.

 

 

 

Ravynn: Act 2, Scene 1, Uncategorized

Week 1, or Ravynn Begins Again

Leave a comment

Sometimes it’s still hard to believe that I have an entire year of graduate school experience under my belt. I was an editorial apprentice for a year, I presented a paper at a conference, I took six classes and wrote substantial papers for all of them. I did archival research, wrote a Masters thesis, and even took a summer job as a Course Instructor for the Keio program.

One entire year later, I stand once again at the precipice of another academic year, filled with surprises, challenges and joys, knowing that if it gets harder, at the very least, I can say I got through one year already– what’s another?

This year, this semester, looks a lot different for me already. Instead of the highly structured work of being an Omohundro apprentice, I’m now working with the nebulous Lemon Project, where my physical presence is only required for one hour a week, which I am to spend in my office in Blair Hall. Thus far, this year’s assistantship has been a lot of e-mails and meetings, going to events and planning for them. It’s a good year to be doing the work I’m doing, as it’s the 50th anniversary of residential African-American students at the College. I’m sure a lot of interesting opportunities will arise because of this over the next year.

My current task is simply to organize the first Porch Talk of the semester. I suggested making it self-care themed, as this is a particularly difficult time for a lot of people, given the political climate of America, and also recent events in Charlottesville. Now’s as good a time as any to work on keeping ourselves sane while preparing to fight the good fight.

In addition to this, I’m also going to help my boss move forward with her idea for a Lemon Project journal, hopefully to come out during the Lemon Symposium in the spring. I’m certain that this is going to be my pet project for the duration of my time with Lemon.

In terms of classes, I’ve got a dope line up: New Media, Old Media (it is what is sounds like, a media studies class); Anthropological Reflections of the African Diaspora (taught by a former Black Panther); and Feminist Theory (a class that I have astonishingly managed to miss despite my interest in feminism). It’s going to be tough: it’s the first class line up I’ve had in grad school that doesn’t have at least one literature course, which usually helps me break up the monotony of the academic-ese and theory I have to read. Plus, I’ve never taken a media class (I just sort of got drawn to it on my own and was self-taught until now), I did anthropology once my first semester at UVA, and theory isn’t my favorite. But, given that I do comics and often talk about their television and film counterparts, New Media, Old Media will be useful; I love doing Black Studies in basically any form; and who doesn’t need a good feminist theory class? (Rhetorical; I can think of a few people who think they wouldn’t need it.)

Not only will these courses take me out of my academic comfort zone, they will also challenge my critical thinking skills and how I express my knowledge. New Media, Old Media is going to require me to write blog posts and do a scalar project (I don’t know what this means yet, my first class is tomorrow), so my final paper will be shorter because I’m doing so much other work. Feminist Thought is going to have me thinking outside of the box as well: my professor wants us to write a book review and an oped during the semester, and a research proposal or a lit review for our final papers. She thinks it’s worth being able to express yourself in a variety of ways; I couldn’t agree more. Reflections of the African Diaspora will be more traditional, but even that final won’t require me to do a research paper: my professor wants a lit review.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to have different creative projects this semester, but I will admit, I was already starting to think about the research paper I could write for Feminist Theory about the Dora Milaje in Black Panther. It would be a cool paper that could potentially turn into a dissertation chapter, or at the very least, something to submit for a conference. At least I can write the proposal for that paper and tuck it away for a later date.

And amid all the chaos of starting classes and a new assistantship, I have my biggest project yet looming over me: my Masters thesis. The Dean kindly reminded my advisor that I need to be defended in September. It’s not as though I won’t be ready, but the message definitely jolted me awake and reminded me that I can’t let edits drag on forever. The fact is, I had my first draft in to my advisor on August 1. She gave me my edits back. Now, I’m working on them and the goal is to have draft 2 in by September 15. That gives me time to organize my committee and prepare my notes for my defense for the last week in September.

I can absolutely do it. The edits my advisor gave me are substantial, but doable in the amount of time I have, if I focus. Fortunately, time management and self-discipline are some of the strongest tools in my arsenal.

My plan for this week is to keep editing as I’ve done the last few days, letting my reading for class sort of take the backseat for a few weeks until I’ve gotten through my Master’s Defense. (Though I have every intention of keeping up.) I want to see my advisor about a few finer points she brought up in her comments, suggestions for citing a few things, and maybe a pep talk, but after that, I want to kick into high gear.

If all goes to plan, I’ll be 23 with a Master’s Degree, and the newly freed up mental space to take on new projects in 2018. Then, I can think about the next set of obstacles: Comps.

Fortunately, I have a low key assistantship with flexible hours, so I can afford to spend more time on my thesis this first month of the semester. Most of the work comes in the spring, I hear, with the arrival of the Symposium and Branch Out. I’ve also got a dog that I love, who helps remind me that the most important things in my life are not on my computer, a mom and dad nearby to catch me if I fall, and a community of mentors, scholars, and friends who encourage me. Talking to a friend from UVA who is now ABD at Penn gave me the jolt I needed to jump start my year; Kels is my perpetual hypeman– she keeps me going when I want to give up, so I do my best to return the favor when law school plays too much; and seeing all that Professor Harold has accomplished reminds me that, if she can do it, so can I.

My academic community may not necessarily be here with me in Williamsburg, but I know there are some people out there who’ve got my back. They give me the strength to begin again.

Finals, Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2

Week 17.5, or the Aftermath

2 Comments

It’s been quiet today. I lounged around my apartment, reading comics, catching up with TV shows and friends, making art and banana bread, high on the absence of immediate responsibility. My last grade of the semester came in last night before I went to sleep and it seemed impossible that I had ended what proved to be a tragic semester on such a high note.

My major texts in African-American life professor sent back my final paper/project (I was to write a transcription of a conversation between W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Patrick Moynihan, Gunnar Myrdal and E. Franklin Frazier, which I promptly turned into play, with stage directions and all) with the following comments:


I will admit, I cried. Not hard or for very long, but I was moved for so many reasons. For once, I got the opportunity to let my work be as limitless as I am. Despite being in grad school, on track for a PhD, I still struggle to reign in my ideas and stuff them in a paper. Someone recognized my knee-jerk impulse to wonder what Booker T. Washington would have thought of hip-hop as insightful and my desire to turn everything into a story virtuous. I felt validated in my knowledge. For once, I eagerly anticipated getting my work back, knowing I’d knocked the assignment out of the park, because I was operating within my wheelhouse, rather than anxiously awaiting results, knowing I’d get pages of what I’d done wrong, what I could’ve done more of or what I could have added. 

It’s sort of the point of academia, really– you could’ve always done something better and someone is always going to point it out. At some point, you simply have to say, this is the best I can do with the time and resources I was given. You have to cut it off.

So when I received my first grade back (which was not at all disappointing considering I’d only been able to go to one class a week all semester, had to rewrite my entire prospectus with an entirely different bibliography and rewrite my paper to include about three more books), I gave in. I made myself be satisfied with my grade. The fact was, given my mental health issues, my medical leave from school, and my mother’s hospitalization and resulting struggles, it was remarkable that I even came back to school. It was extraordinary that I not only went to class but actively participated, and even did my readings. (I was reading painfully slowly and was almost always catching up, but I finished it all, nevertheless.) It was beyond reason that I managed to even finish a final paper, but even rewrite, expand my argument and source base within a few weeks, considering I was still sleeping too much and spending every free evening I had in Suffolk. I did the absolute best that I could have done with that paper. I worked damn hard on it. And it may not have been perfect, but I worked as hard as I could to turn into something good, that I liked. What I wrote would’ve been good anyway, but it was amazing to me, given what it had taken to write it.

It was proof to me that grades don’t reflect struggle. They don’t reflect life. No one’s going to know what I had to go through to get that A-, nobody but me. I prayed more than I wrote during my finals weeks. I cried more than I care to admit. I was so determined to finish because I had made it that far, that I just prayed to make it. I prayed for no success other than surviving, and yet I get to sit here and write about what it had taken to get my A-, and about how my A performance in another class was validating and a testament.

I don’t normally like to put my grades “out there.” When I was in the ninth grade, my best friend took my test and told the class I’d gotten a 98 on it, so naturally I threw a book at his head. Hard. Thankfully, he ducked. But for some reason I want to put my 3.9 on a certificate, frame it, and hang it above my bed. My earlier blogposts from the beginning of the semester somehow seemed to foreshadow the downward spiral that my spring was going to take. I missed that first step in January, and never recovered. But in spite of the fact that I kept missing steps, and was hurtling downward, I never stopped moved. Moving forward is still forward motion, even if you’re falling. So I stumbled through the semester, just praying to keep moving forward– to not stop, because if I stopped I didn’t know if I’d be able to move again. I constantly tripped over myself, tumbled and rolled, and yet I still managed to win. 

Now, let me be crystal– I was lucky. I recognize that the “normal” course of action would have been for me to withdraw from the semester. There was simply too much to be getting on with in my life and in my family’s life this semester. There is nothing healthy about the fact that during two nearly fatal circumstances in which my mother and I were physically and mentally drowning, I put my papers on the life raft instead of trying to save her or myself.

Nevertheless, I won’t deny that I have been tremendously blessed to have gotten the results that I received. In fact, I have literally running around scream-singing “Somebody say BLESSED! (Blessed!)” since the first grade came in. Amid the insanity, I also found out that I will be serving as the Lemon Project graduate assistant next year, a post that I am truly excited to occupy. Grateful though I am for the skill set I have acquired as a Omohundro apprentice, I have never been more glad to have a job that doesn’t require me to sit in a basement 10 hours a week, staring at a computer screen, only to interact with a human to see if there are leftover snacks in the break room.

Just as my performance on my Af-Am texts paper proved, I thrive in environments when I’m given intellectual freedom, a sense of creative liberation and respected as an academic. I prosper when I can break down high brow ideas into digestible meaning.  I create. I orchestrate. I lead. I negotiate. I am so much more than a researcher. My intellect is not limited to papers and often is more readily visible when I’m given such outlets as Lemon or a script to really spread my wings. When I let my ideas spread over acres, the result is a diverse, expansive and prosperous garden. 

Fortunately though, there are still several months between now and when I take up my mantle, and more fortunately still, there is plenty to do until then. I might’ve mentioned, I have a job as a course instructor for the cross cultural program with Keio University for two weeks in August, which will be a 24/7 on call sort of gig. Until then, I’ll work part time at Michaels craft store and write/edit my Masters thesis. I’m extremely interested in doing an editing internship with the peer review blog Black Perspectives, but I’m still trying to decide what is reasonable, what is too much, and figuring out if I am going to have the time to take care of myself the way I need to and do all of the things I want to do. The truth is that even though I know I can do it, I need to be more attentive to whether I should do things based on me and what I need as a person.

Even without Black Perspectives, my summer will still be extremely fulfilling and busy. I even have a writing schedule worked up (per request of the Dean) to keep me honest.


Either way, I’m celebrating the monumental success of having survived a hellish semester with much sleeping, lots of food and many comics. Given that I’ve got so much coming down the pipe, I might update the blog more than I thought I would, providing some “intermission” entertainment, giving updates on my thesis progress  and so on. 

So to those who have struggled with me from the beginning, thank you. Just knowing that every now and then somebody reads this, helps me feel a little less alone in this great big lonely world we call Academia. 

And to those of you just joining me, the good new is there’s still plenty of adventure left.