Category Archives: Ravynn

Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2

Week 12, and Ravynn does BAW

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For the first time in quite awhile, it feels like I’m heading toward something that feels like solid ground. 

For those of you invested in my personal life, my mom was finally released from the hospital on Wednesday. (Praise, Jesus!) She’s still slow, still on the mend, but the most recent positive update is that she took a little walk outside (!) when I was at the house yesterday. I ended up packing up all my stuff and heading back to Williamsburg after one of the craziest few weeks of my life. 

Despite my mom getting out on Wednesday, I wasn’t done driving. This past weekend was the University of Virginia’s Black Alumni Weekend, which is essentially a Black family reunion that lasts three days. As an undergrad, BAW (which happens every two years) was the best part of the spring. All your graduated friends would come back, there were ample volunteer opportunities which usually came with free food and/or a t-shirt and there would be a probate (or two…or three) each week leading up to the grand event. Black bodies would flood Grounds, fill the air with the joyful sound of best friends reuniting, and you could follow the smell of delicious soul food all the way down to the amphitheater at mid afternoon on Saturday. You could count on an older graduate or two stopping you to ask we still used the BB (which we did) and if they didn’t, you could always count on them to smile encouragingly to you as you walked to class.

It confused the hell out of the white students.

We didn’t give a damn.

On Friday, I became a part of the Black mass that biannually converged upon Grounds. It felt surreal that I wasn’t a student eagerly awaiting the wave, but an alumni. It felt surreal to have an orange reunion t-shirt instead of an orange volunteer shirt. When I was handed my name tag, I felt a strange tinge in my stomach. After I matriculated into UVa it wasn’t unusual see myself indentified as “Ravynn Stringfield, class of 2016.” But this time when I saw my name, “Ravynn Stringfield, COLL 2016” stamped in bold across my badge, fastened to a blue lanyard, I understood how much it had cost.

In 1986, my dad left the University, his degree unfinished, not to return until I enrolled in 2012. I came to UVa with a vendetta. I saw my dad’s legacy was unfulfilled and I saw that it was my responsibility to enter the ring and finish the fight for him.

And, man, did I fight. I fought the disappointing B’s that filled my first grade report. I fought the racist Government TAs who presumed to not understand welfare. I fought a losing battle with my mental illness. I fought to stay in school and finished that semester with a 3.9. I fought for jobs and internships; competed for “prestigious” leadership opportunities and study abroad trips. I fought (and failed) to have my opinions heard and respected at meetings for organizations in which I held leadership. I was beaten down verbally and emotionally, disrespected and harassed. 

Then at some point, I found myself on the verge of graduating and I realized I had almost survived.

That’s what I thought about my UVa experience for most of the 10 months that it’s been since I’ve graduated– that I survived it. 

But as I rounded the corner and saw the Blue Ridge mountains spread out in front me as I sped up route 64, blasting my favorite 90s jams, I realized that this return was my victory lap. I had lost the battles and won the war.

My name badge and BAW t-shirt were the spoils of war.

And my friends and I celebrated. We celebrated that I had graduated, that I had returned, that they were prospering and finishing strong. We celebrated being reunited and friendships and life-long relationships. We celebrated life at UVA and the life beyond. We celebrated love and theater and scholarship and beauty.

The laughs and shouts of joy, the shine of Black bodies on the land that our ancestors had cultivated and built upon, the electric buzz of legacy created the atmosphere of love and happiness that’s like the most lit R&B, hip-hop, gospel mixtape you’ve ever heard. 

I was only there for a day, because life has been a destructive whirlwind. But the whirlwind set me down outside of Peabody Hall, where I spent most every week day afternoon for four consecutive years. 

With a smile, I headed inside– not as a student; but as a victor.

Mental Health, Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2

Week 11, or Prioritizing and Priorities

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When I was younger, I didn’t take sick days off from school. Every day I went, come hell or high water, and even if someone had to come get me part way through the day, I was dropped off at the threshold of my school each morning.

That obsession with attendance followed me as I got older. Even if I knew I wasn’t going to be productive because of a fever, a pounding headache, a disgusting sinus infection, a panic attack, you name it, I consistently pushed myself out of bed and either plopped down in front of my computer screen at work or at my desk in class, and tried. 

But in the last few years, I’ve realized how important it is to take time when I need it. There came a point when I absolutely needed to take time off but the “present by any means necessary” mantra by which I lived my life kicked in, and I tried to convince everyone around me that I was fine to go back to class the next day.

I hadn’t slept for days and I could barely see, my eyes were so swollen.

A few weeks later, I’ve rested up enough to try and integrate back into my normal life. And in my defense, I think I would’ve been fine if I didn’t have the added stress of worrying about my mom, who is still in the hospital. 

I tell myself I’m going to try to work at the beginning of every day, but the pattern’s the same. I get up, I try to clean the house (to varying degrees of success) before my dad comes home to shower and eat. I maybe stare at a few pages of reading before Dad walks in. I ask if anyone is with my mom. He says no. I get up and drive to the hospital. I talk to my mom for about twenty minutes. I help her to the restroom a few times, another twenty minutes each time, from the time she gets out of the bed until she gets back in. Food comes and I help her eat. She asks for water. I read to her a little. She falls asleep. I try to read. She wakes up and we do it all over again.

The fact is my priorities are still out of order. There is no universe in which reading for a class I won’t remember in ten years trumps caring for my mother, who gave birth to me and was an active and caring parent to me for my entire life.

What I should be balancing is caring for my mom, caring for my dad and caring for my own mental health. My school work comes much later. People are more important than things.

I wish my dad and I had more help, but one family’s tragedy is another’s minor inconvenience.

I try not to get frustrated with other people. I try not to get angry or sad. But everything feels like it’s happening too slowly. The nurses don’t move fast enough when my mom calls for help, the doctors aren’t figuring out what’s wrong fast enough, even I’m not moving fast enough to help. It feels so urgent that I find myself wanting to scream at everyone around me, “MY MOM IS SICK WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING HER?!” I feel like screaming at the doctors, her family, me. The only person that’s doing it right is my dad. He’s the only person that ever does anything right.

I feel guilty taking time to even write this, to steal hours to read and write when I know I should be sitting by her, reading to her, cheering her up, buying flowers and hanging pretty words around her room to make her smile. I want (read: need) to talk to friends who forget to call back or miss texts, and in between, they missed everything and I need to tell them what’s going on. I wouldn’t even know what to say, if I should talk about how I feel or if I should talk about my mom. And instead of working through the feelings, I let them overwhelm me and I shut down.

I don’t have time for anything but us right now, me, my mom, my dad. No one else had been there for us we needed help. No one else but us. I don’t have time to write précis, or read that 500 page monstrosity, or text back about anything that doesn’t include my mom.

My mom is my priority. I am my priority. My dad is my priority.

If that makes me a bad grad student, so be it, but it certainly makes me a good daughter and a good human.

Now, excuse me. I’ve got to go see my mom.

Mental Health, Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Week 10.5, or the Mental Health Project

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In the spirit of being honest, I won’t lie about my lapse in blogging over the last two weeks. My mental health took a very serious turn for the worse and I ended up having to go stay with my parents for a week until I got stable again.

Despite having missed an entire week of school and work, I’m surprisingly not stressed out by it. What I am stressed about is my mother also falling (physically) ill right as I was scheduled to go come back to Williamsburg. She went to the hospital yesterday for a ruptured appendix and so naturally I drove right back to Suffolk and parked my butt on the futon in her room.

For the last maybe three weeks, my life has been an undeniable mess.

And for some reason, that’s also why I’m not stressed about school.

Somewhere in between the tears and panic attacks, the stomach aches and urgent care visits, the doctors appointments and naps, I realized that I only have one body and I only get one life. Fact of the matter is, my body and my mind do not require school. They do, however, require attention and care. I realized that I can do literally nothing else if my body is not properly fed and watered and if my mind and my emotions have been neglected. I have to cater to myself first. I have to check in with myself, make sure I’m okay. I need to rest when I’m tired. I need to honor my feelings when I’m down. I have every right to ask for what I need to feel nourished spiritually and emotionally so that I can function.

Somehow, I let myself believe that the only way to operate was on productivity/excellence lever 12/10. That same perfectionism that is so motivating is also what pushed me all the way down.

I have to do better.

There is no way I can accomplish any of the things I want to do if I don’t learn to take care of myself, or how to say no something, or how to stop giving every little thing 3,000 %.

I take everything seriously. I work meticulously, my hobby is my strictly regimented blog, and I’m even very serious about all of my friendships. I take care to treat them all carefully and work on them where needed, because I think relationships deserve that kind of attention.

But I’m also serious because I truly believe in being an excellent Black scholar. As a Black professor, I will come into contact with students at a critical age– right when they are beginning to truly be able to think critically for themselves, develop their own opinions and ideas, and learn to move intelligently through the world. I want to be like the professors I had– I want to sharpen their minds, encourage and invest in their unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and show them the power of a well educated young Black person. I want them to be able to think. In order to invest in our youth, I have to invest in myself so that I can be there to teach them.

But I have got to invest in me.

So after I finally pulled myself together and woke up from a long sleep Tuesday morning, I went to work.

I started a bullet journal that I’m going to use to track my self-care. I’m doing everything from keeping appointments in it, tracking my food, my moods, my medication, my sleep, my attempts at meditation and mindfulness, and even my prayers.

I deserve to have 30 minutes a day where I self reflect. I deserve to have an outlet for my creativity. I deserve to spend time on myself.

It’s been keeping me surprisingly honest. Monitoring my physical well being helps me see if those things are effecting my mood. My gratitude log, mood log and prayer pages help me notice my thoughts and feelings, but then leave them on the page. I’ve noticed that as soon as I write down a worry or a feeling, my mood mellows out and I can continue with my day. Best of all, it’s an excuse to treat myself with new stationary and pens. Spending time on my page layouts bring me joy and get a thrill from sharing my creations with others. I even decided to start a “creative” instagram where I’ll post pictures of my bullet journal layouts and various other artistic/creative endeavors. (click here to check it out)

Even though it’s been rough, there is always a bright side, two of my own rays of sunshine have included:

  1. Seeing my suggestion for a comic to share with novice graphic novel readers used in a Buzzfeed article! (see #6 on this list; click here to check it out!)
  2. Being recognized by an all-female secret society here at the College for my work with the Lemon Project. (This is particularly fantastic because the Lemon Project is not even my job but I have spent a lot of time and effort on my personal, small contributions.) It’s good to know that Ari and have clearly touched someone/somebod(ies) and I am grateful to be a responsible for positively impacting this college. I am particularly grateful for someone taking the time out to say thank you. You have no idea how much such a small gesture, and some kind words can mean.

Hopefully next week I’ll be back to some regularly scheduled Black Girl Does Grad School posts. Being ill and dealing with illness has prevented me from writing what I can only imagine would have been spectacular blog posts about the art exhibit I curated, my last African-American texts class in which I connected Stokely Carmichael to comics and Eldridge Cleaver to J. Cole, and my meeting with renowned American Studies scholar, George Lipsitz, who encouraged me in my scholarship, art and activism.

Not to worry, though, maybe I will tell those stories. After all, they are certainly worth telling.