Tag Archives: Graduate School

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.

Coursework, Dissertation, Intermission 4, Mental Health, Personal Essays, prospectus, Ravynn, Readings, Research, Teaching, The Journey, Uncategorized, writing

Four Years, Four Lessons

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Today, August 8, 2020, marks the four year anniversary of Black Girl Does Grad School!

 

On this day in 2016, I published my first post, hopefully entitled, “Ravynn Stringfield, (Someday) Ph.D.” I wrote it the morning before I was due to start my first day of training to become an Omohundro editorial apprentice, my first graduate assistantship. From there, I would go on to become the assistant for the Lemon Project, a position I held, and loved, for two years. I left Lemon to serve as a teaching assistant for a film and modernization class and this coming year I will finally get to teach my own 290 course on Black girls and fantasy.

Two weeks after I wrote that initial post and a couple about Omohundro training, I would attend my first grad class. Over the course of two and a half years, I would take fourteen classes: six courses which counted towards my master’s degree (which I graduated with in 2018) and eight that went towards my Ph.D. There were some really fun ones: I loved my Digital Humanities class and Critical Race Theory; I lived for Interracialism and the comics class that I, and a couple of my classmates, begged my advisor to teach. And some were…let’s say, challenging– and not because of the academic rigor.

I’ve come a long way since the first time I used the term “digital humanities” to describe my work in a blog post: from denying what I did counted as DH to taking my first DH class to being wrapped up in a cocoon of love by Black digital humanists at “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black.” Then from my first DHSI to consistently proclaiming my identity as a digital human(ist) by showcasing it in my bio and wearing a hashtag on a chain around my neck (Left).

I’ve also come a long way since coursework. Since I finished my last semester in December 2018, I spent a semester reading for comps, I took the exams, defended my prospectus and began writing my dissertation in earnest.

I’m now in my last stretch of grad school, a stretch that could admittedly take a while to get through, but I have faith that everything will work out okay. Four years ago, writing a dissertation was the last thing on my mind as I struggled to figure out how to read at the graduate level, manage my time, and find ways to infuse my work with my own signature flair. But, as I said so long ago:

“But never mind how I got here; the point is, now I’m here.”

So in honor of my four years in graduate school and my four years of this blog, I decided I wanted to share with you four lessons I’ve learned since August 2016:

 

  1. You can chase clout if you want to, but I’d much rather work with someone who cares about me and has my best interests at heart. Picking an advisor is one of the most difficult parts about graduate school. In my early days, I switched about three times, only to land with exactly who they suggested for me to start with. As it turns out, I wasn’t ready to work with her in the early days; but as I matured and figured out who I wanted to be as a scholar, writer and person, I realized I wanted someone who would respect my work as both scholarship and art. Someone who would help me protect my work and find the right homes for it. I found an advocate, and I’m extraordinarily lucky, because some people don’t.
  2. Find your people. And accept that sometimes your people may not be in your program or even at your institution. I have a few folks that I can turn to from my university, but for the most part, when I have graduate school related concerns or need support, I trot to my digital network of peers I have developed over time on Twitter. (Shout out to the Digital Dreamgirls, Allante, Joy and Autumn + so many more.)
  3. Know your audience. Ultimately this advice has saved me so much heartache and grief. The moment I disavowed myself from the notion that my writing had to be all things to all people, I became free. Knowing who you’re writing for, the folks you’d like to serve, can help you focus your work and questions, and also helps you tune out voices who don’t understand what you’re trying to do.
  4. Grad school may be a big part of your life, but it’s not your whole life. You have a whole identity, full of parts who aren’t served or fulfilled by what you do in the classroom or in your research. Make sure you’re tending to those parts of yourself by doing whatever you need to do to feel full. For me, it was yoga, making art, spending time with my family and dog and continuing to write across genres.

*

To all those who have been on this journey with me thus far, thank you.

To all those about to begin their journey, good luck.

And to all: be well.

Mental Health, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 4, Ravynn: Act 4, Scene 1, The Journey

Rediscovering Wellness

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In the past year, I’ve gained an astronomical amount of weight. I can attribute the unwanted gain mostly to comps. I sat, virtually immobile, for an entire semester, eating any and everything I could find as a way to manage the stress of having to read hundreds of books before the end of April. I pride myself on having finished comps with my mental health in tact but my overall wellness was severely lacking.

I found myself constantly looking at old photos of myself from my fourth year of UVA and crying over pants that no longer fit. Though I looked at UVA through rose-tinted glasses, the truth was that I was stressed, often depressed, barely eating and walking uphill to classes every day. I naturally lost weight without trying and it came off suddenly.

One day I was unexpectedly able to wear my mother’s clothes.

Then another day, I wasn’t.

My descent to this pit of bad eating practices and barely moving came on over the course of a year. I formerly despised fast food, eating it only when I visited my parents. Now, I don’t want to even think about how many times I ate Popeyes and Cookout in the last month. I found myself too emotionally distressed or mentally fatigued to move, let alone cook. I had somehow replaced my stove top popcorn, lightly salted, for salt and vinegar chips. The decision I made at age ten to stop drinking soda had become void.

I was, in short, a mess.

But I didn’t wake up to my serious lapse in health until a visit to the doctor a few days ago. If the number on the scale didn’t shock me, the realization that I would be unable to safely continue taking one of my medications because of my weight certainly did.

I was letting grad school not only steal my mental health but my physical wellness too.

After a brief check in with myself, I made some decisions to help me prioritize my wellness. These were a series of choices I could make every day that would eventually add up to a lifestyle change:

  • MOVEMENT: One thing that was abundantly clear was how sedentary I had become. So I decided the first thing I could do was make the decision to move more. My school offers a free gym membership that I signed up for, and with the encouragement of a classmate, I joined her for my first ever yoga session. Together, picked three days out out of the week where we would do a yoga class. I decided I would do this for a couple weeks, to start build strength and endurance, and when I felt stronger I might add a cardio class to my line up.
    FOOD: I sincerely believe that the most important thing you can do for yourself is be conscientious about what you put in your body. I decided to change the way I think about food. Food, going forward, will be a manner of fueling my body, after giving careful attention to what it needs. The right food can be medicinal even. Realistically, this means making a concerted effort to plan out my grocery lists and buy a variety of good “fuel” to keep in my apartment so I’m less inclined to eat out.
    DRINK: I’m going to stop drinking my calories. I’ve decided to move away from flavored bottled waters and powders, and making an effort to drink more plain water and tea.
    MENTAL HEALTH: I’m recommitting myself to taking my medicine daily; going to therapy at least every two weeks; and reintroducing journaling into my every day routine. In addition, I want to integrate a regular morning and evening routine to help me steel myself for the day and then unwind from the chaos, which will include: meditation, journaling, coffee/tea, outside time with Genghis, spiritual practice, gratitude logs and prayer.
    SPIRITUAL WELLNESS: I am recommitting myself to Sunday’s as a day of rest and worship, I will do no work on Sundays. (I usually write my BGDGS posts before Sunday, so not to worry, I will be breaking no rules by continuing to post on Sundays.)
    JOY: I will relentlessly prioritize my joy and continually choose to do things that I love. This means, more time with friends, visiting the farmers market, visiting the water for rejuvenation, and rekindling my love of making art.

A few things are clear to me: one, is that I have failed to truly practice what I preach, which is to hold onto your wholeness while in pursuit of the PhD. Another is that I will not finish if I am not taking care of myself with the same vigor with which I approach my work. The last is that I deserve better that what I have given myself recently. I deserve a clean space, nourishing food, regular wellness practices and the space to pursue my ow joy. Nobody can give me those things except for me, and I heartily accept the challenge of putting myself first.