Category Archives: Ravynn

Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Week 5, or The Busiest Bee

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I have been getting increasingly bad about updating this blog.

I’m sad about it because I was really looking forward to reading back through every week of my entire first year in grad school at the end of the semester. I could review my successes, my struggles; assess my game plans and strategize for the next year.

But things have been rough recently. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been feeling out of whack, which truthfully, is not entirely due to burn out, but also due to some mental health issues I’ve been battling recently. The resulting panic from this discovery led to me cutting off my relaxed hair, and embracing my very short, entirely natural new ‘do. (If you’re interested in reading further about my cut, I wrote about it over at Literally, Darling.) My parents hate it but I’m almost 23 years old, and there’s really no reason to lose any sleep over my parents not liking my new haircut.

Despite all that craziness, I’ve finally managed to get my feet back under my in my New Woman course. I stopped thinking about my weekly precis as busy work, but instead using it as an opportunity to articulate some comments I have about the Tuesday readings (which I miss because I’m taking African-American Texts, which meets at the same time.) Thinking about it this was has helped alleviate the stress significantly, but as one door closes another opens…

I’m also coming up on deadlines for an annotated bibliography for that class. As you might remember from my posts last semester, I am a huge fan of annotated bibliographies and have a great deal of respect for professors who are kind enough to assign them. They’re your best friend in grad school. The fact is, annotated bibliographies ensure your stress levels are set to moderate instead of severe during finals because you’ve already done all the heavy lifting of research and pulling together an outline months in advance. All you have to do then is write.

Unfortunately, annotated bibliographies are still a ton of work. You have to do the research at some point, and apparently that point is now. Granted, I will be so happy all my research will be done when I’m struggling to write in April, but I’m mildly freaking out right now, mostly because I also have to figure out how to write a conference paper…

Also, at some point last semester, I might have written about my Black Panther paper getting accepted to the Southeastern American Studies Association Conference. I’ll be presenting on a panel with a few other people and I was so excited about it when it was theoretical. Now, I’m nervous about presenting my, possibly very shitty, little comic paper in front of serious scholars with Ph.D.s, one of whom will most definitely be one of my favorite African-American studies professors from UVA. She’s been such an advocate for me since I got into grad school. She’s suggested books for me for this paper. She’s talked me up and also been super supportive of me throughout this journey, just in general. I really don’t want to get up on stage an embarrass myself in front of her.

Add these worries to my usual pressing homework deadlines, Omohundro stress, the art exhibit I’ve been planning with Ari, trying to keep a steady flow of articles to Literally, Darling, and my parents, who have been more present than usual over the last few weeks, I’ve basically been a puddle of anxiety. Which, let’s be honest, is not that unusual for me.

Still, things haven’t been all bad. My friends haven’t let me hole up in my apartment behind stacks of books. They’ve rallied around me and supported me, from visits from my high school best friend to late evening phone calls, from being my personal hair guru to being my coffeeshop partner. They’ve made me get outside and get moving, playing frisbee with neighbors; they’ve gotten me early birthday presents; and they’ve even taken me out for a morning adventure to see “I Am Not Your Negro” in Richmond.  (Side note to review the film: I really enjoyed it. It was informative but it wasn’t necessarily new information. Artistically it wasn’t stunning or particularly moving and the most innovative part was looking at these stories from a new perspective.)

And I some things to look forward to. Mindfulness Training has been really useful for me. It’s my pause during my hectic week and the strategies we learn help me navigate the waves of uncertainty during the week. Not to mention, my birthday is coming up next Monday. It’s the first year that I can remember that I haven’t actively counted down to my birthday, but I’m still fairly excited. I don’t have any special plans but maybe something will pop up during the week. One of my friends also has a birthday this week, so maybe a joint gathering will be in the works.

I won’t say I promise to go back to writing every week because I don’t like to make promises I can’t keep, but I will do my best to keep setting aside a little time for myself every day, and hopefully, blogging will continue to be one of the things I like to do for myself.

 

 

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

Week 3, or Burn Out and (Intellectual) Soul Food

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It was bound to happen: the burnout. I went straight from undergrad to a masters/Ph.D. Program with nothing but a (relatively) short summer in between, and was only just beginning to recover from four years of near tortuously rigorous education at UVa when I rolled up to William and Mary.

Considering how challenging mentally and emotionally UVa had been for me specifically, I really ought to have given myself more than a three month respite from academic heavy lifting. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I have an unquenchable burning desire to know, to learn, and to be in an environment of constant stimulation. Academia is the perfect place for a person like me, except for one thing: academia tends to push you too hard, and more often than not, you’re not really in a position to push back.

It started with discovering an entire class had been cancelled on me. My tinge of annoyance turned into frustration and then to panic as I tried to find a solution. Panic turned into a constant and heightened state of anxiety as I’ve struggled to make up missed reading for the class I’ve since substituted for my original, keep up with the weekly assignments, write my lengthy (w e e k l y) précis as I can’t attend Tuesday classes, and find my footing generally in the class. This course was an imperfect solution to a decidedly perfect and well planned semester. 

Let me be clear: Academia is my stability. I can control very little, but there is something calming and steadying about sitting down each week, copying down all my assignments and readings, organizing it into manageable chunks that stabilizes my ever changing life and my incessantly active mind.

It was nothing but a misstep. It was like missing a step walking down the stairs and your heart flies into your throat. 

I still haven’t quite recovered.

Add all this to the fact that I’ve switched from working on the William and Mary Quarterly to OI books this semester, where the chapters are long and the turn around are short; that I’ve had 800 page texts for the last two weeks; and I’m attempting to orchestrate an art exhibit for the end of the month? And of course, now is when family issues intensify and time is slipping between my fingers, like my days are two hours shorter than everyone else’s. 

In the midst of all of the insanity, I managed to fall ill (which I’m starting to think is just as much a reaction to stress as it is actual sickness), Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States of America and I’ve been to a protest almost every week since. 

The emotional energy it takes to simply exist these days in a political moment that is less political than it is a circus of baffoonery takes away from my ability to do even the most basic things, like properly feed myself. I get caught in a maelstrom of cynical tweets and lengthy facebook posts and articles and photos and videos, a never ending stream of panicked negativity, and when I finally get my head above water, it seems impossible that I have to work and study when the world seems to be ending.

I am absolutely not the only person feeling like this. But it’s particularly isolating these days. 

I console myself by playing the Harry Potter movies on repeat, eating a small mountain of dark chocolate chips every day and ignoring responsibility by teaching myself to hand letter via instragram videos and Pinterest. I spend more time decorating my (bullet)journal, which I use for class notes, than I do actually taking notes. I can get through about a half hour of work at a time before everything gets overwhelming and I have to watch the first three minutes of Finding Dory to cheer myself up.

And a surprising amount of my comfort has come from reading (parts) of my 800 pages monstrosities of African-American history. In two of my classes, we’re wading through texts from the Nadir, the period of after Reconstruction and into the early 20th century that has been classified as one of the worst periods of racism in U.S. History. I’ve read The Philadelphia Negro and Black Reconstruction for one class, and have been encountering more and more Ida B. Wells in my supplementary reading. My teachers often talk about the W.E.B. DuBois’ hardness of personality and I think to myself, was there any other way to be? Was there any other way to endure the hardness of life during the Nadir? Was it not the grit of surviving the Nadir that gave Ida B. Wells the steel to not run when her printing press was burned down? Not only did she stay, but she got twice as loud and twice as fierce. 

I like to think that it was their belief in the ability of humanity to improve and in their own personal ability to do what they felt was just that sustained them. I like to believe that it was a combination of faith and passion and a strong sense of morality that kept them going. Trying times reveal the worst and the best of us, and I’m just hoping that my current weakness will give way to strength. All I can do is move one day at a time, having faith each day, feeding my passion, and doing at least a little good each day, for myself and for others. I have to have faith that each small, positive thing will add up to a happy life in a larger picture. 

So I read a little Black history every day. I thank God for their strength and pray for my own. I admire the intelligence and tenacity of those who came before me, and pray that I can do my forebearers justice. I praise the good they did this world and it inspires me to do good in my own way.

Thus far, that’s been the best medicine for Burn Out– taking it day by day, and letting my work inspire me to do just a little good each day.

Projects, Ravynn: Act 1, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Week 1: Ravynn “Branches Out”

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This Black girl doing grad school is back in action after a blissful month of zero obligation and yet, I find that I’m still not ready to face the harsh reality of another semester at school.

School was supposed to start this past week for me, but life didn’t want to cooperate. My friend and I showed up on the wrong day for our class we have together; the next day, I woke up to a message from one of my professors informing me that her entire course was cancelled; and to further mess with my schedule, the class which I had wrongly assumed was the day before, had been cancelled because the professor was battling a nasty bout of the flu.

Now, I’ve never had something like that happen to me– have an entire course get cancelled on me last minute. It was scary and stressful and quite frankly ruined my bullet journal. I spent most of Thursday sending e-mails and texts, and arranging meetings with professors to see if there was something I could take last minute. Finally, I managed to scrounge something together and my courses for this semester will be:

  1. Texts in African-American life since Reconstruction- a history course which promises to be interesting. At the very least, a solid quarter of the books have been on my reading list for a while and it never hurts to dig deeper into my Africana Studies side.
  2. Independent Study, Harlem in Vogue- reading some Harlem Renaissance lit, some criticism and hopefully putting together a bomb project for this class.
  3. Independent Study, New Women- reading some New Women lit. It’s not exactly me but fortunately it’s close enough to what I am interested in, plus writing a literary criticism paper will be useful practice for me considering I’d like my degree specialty to be in English.

You might have noted a bit of sarcasm and a hint of bitterness– it’s because being disciplinarily English and Africana Studies in an interdisciplinary program which emphasizes History is a struggle.

It’s no fault of the program’s or the school’s. We have a world renowned history department. Anyone who’s serious about American History for higher ed probably looked at William and Mary, particularly colonial history. Who wouldn’t want to take courses in a world renowned history department?

Well, me, I guess.

Honestly, history is far too white, far too male and far too rigid for the kind of work I want to do. Practically, taking more history courses does nothing for me when I hope to eventually be hired as an English professor (or at least in a position that lets me teach literature). Realistically, history matters most to me when it’s used to exact justice or when we learn our history to inform the path we take forward.

History matters to me when it’s active. For example, the Lemon Project Branch Out Trip.

Last Friday, I was minding my own business while my friend took a call as we walked through campus together. She was getting ready for this three day intensive retreat that was supposed to kick off Saturday morning, and she’d been fielding e-mails, texts, and calls most of that afternoon. All of a sudden, I hear, “Oh…no, it’s okay…I can ask Ravynn or Adam if they’d like to fill in.”

After she got off the phone, she explained that her boss had gotten sick and she needed someone to help her lead the workshop. We did a little back and forth, but eventually, I agreed to do it, since I’d been planning to lead a mini workshop on Black Protest Art as a part of the retreat anyway.

The first day passed in a relative haze, as I did my best to remember names and act like I knew what was going on, but the second day brought almost all of the students out of their comfort zones. In the morning, after I gave my lecture on Black Protest Art, I gave them the opportunity to create something. Considering most education is a merit system which rewards regurgitation over an investment in the knowledge itself, it was no surprise the students were stunned that I had asked them to make something. It took a little pushing, a few quiet one on one conversations, and a little encouragement, but they slowly warmed to the idea. In the end, they spent more time than we’d anticipated sharing and explaining what they’d made, one student in particular was amazingly brave and vulnerable as she shared how her piece reflected her multi-faceted identity.

The afternoon continued to get tougher. The students watched 13th, Ava DuVernay’s documentary on the 13th Amendment, and it was…difficult. I noticed one of my girls disappeared well before the end of the film and wasn’t back when it ended, so I went on a mini quest to find her. When I did, the moment that we shared reaffirmed the reason I wanted to get my Ph.D. I wanted my degree for her. I want my degree so that I can be the professor that understands how hard it is to talk to a room full of white people about slavery and mass incarceration. In that moment, she needed me, a Black woman who had been in her shoes and who could cry with her because I, too, understand how heavy the burden is.

I honestly believe in lifting as we climb with all of my heart.

That moment was so powerful that I immediately cancelled my plans for the following day (I originally only signed up to help run 2 of the 3 day and had been planning to spend day 3 doing community service with the Black Law Students). I instinctively knew I needed to be there all three days.

Over the course of that three day retreat Ari walked them through history and taught them how to make it their own, I explained the legacy of Black expression and helped them create their own, and they learned that the best weapon they have in the fight to be better citizens is each other.

In just three days, they not only made strong bonds, but they completed bystander intervention training, they protested together at a weekly local event called Moral Mondays and created a digital exhibit which explores the College newspaper’s stances on race throughout the last hundred years.

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Lemon Project Branch Out students and facilitators at Moral Mondays; Photo credit: Zack Meredith
This kind of teaching also matters. The kind that engenders a kind, compassionate, empathetic, and creative type of student, whose thirst for knowledge comes from a desire other than an A on the next assignment. This is the kind of history lesson I’d be glad to teach for the rest of my life.