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Guest Posts, Intermission 2, Mental Health, Uncategorized

The Art of Self Care as a Black PhD Student

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If pursuing my PhD has taught me anything, it is the reality of my mortality and how important it is to take care of myself. I have never been very sickly; if anything, I have exceptional health. However, over the last five years I have dealt with health scares, acid reflux, more colds than usual, and being confronted with high anxiety and depression. No one ever tells you how deep getting a PhD is. I have seen my friends and colleagues go through similar things, as well as manage various kinds of substance dependency. Watching them use daily self-medication such as alcohol and smoking has only made me more determined to gain control of my mental and emotional health, so that I come of my program whole. This, dear reader, is no small feat. It has become almost a daily obsession to ensure that I will recognize myself once I finally earn my freedom papers.

PhD work is a beast of immeasurable size. I remember my advisor in seminary telling me more than once that if I was going to pursue a PhD, the first thing I needed to do was find a therapist. She said, “Whatever issues you have not reconciled, you will confront during the run of your PhD program.” Black woman to black woman, I believed her. As she told me this, I began to think about the things that I had buried in my mental closet and knew she was right. Six years later, I can tell you with certainty this is true. This was not the only lesson I have learned over this period of my life, especially as a black PhD student studying black folks in a predominantly white research institution. Here are my four commandments for self care in the midst of the PhD program:

Self Care Commandment #1: Thou shalt pick your battles wisely

When I first began my program, a few colleagues that were ahead of me would tell me horror stories about how the white folks (students and professors alike) would come for the African American religion students about the validity of our work, despite the reality that African American scholars always have to know “classical” theory, as well as the African American landscape of the field. I have been in situations that induced the best of side eyes. For instance, the time my professor asked me what African Americans were writing about a subject in the 19th century, after presenting a syllabus that had no people of color in the readings. These situations are the pressure cookers that are normalized for black PhD students in white spaces, but every battle is not for you to go in and fight. You are always at your leisure to deny people the dignity of responding to ignorance. You are no one’s personal Google. That’s not why you are there. However, if someone comes for you personally and you have the time, by all means, get ‘em.

Self Care Commandment #2: Thou shalt have a devotional practice

This was another bit of wisdom my seminary advisor gave me. Whether you consider yourself to be religious, spiritual, or neither, you absolutely need to carve out the first part of your day as sacred uninterrupted time to ease into the day. You’ve got to gird your loins. Every. Day. Because life comes at you fast, it is important to go out there with a full personal bucket so that when the stressors of life and the program hit you, you are not totally run over.

Too often, we wake up and reach for the phone and start our day with checking emails and social media. We start working as soon as our eyes open and bombard ourselves with endless stimulation until we close our eyes for the night. That, in and of itself, is quite stressful and unhealthy. It turns our days into a sort of vacuum and, if you are at all like me, can cause you to feel lost at sea at times.

The first 30 (or more) minutes of my day are mine to get myself together. For me this includes sitting at my desk and writing in my gratitude journal, reading a book for pleasure for 15 minutes, and meditating on both the Bible and my breath. After all of that, I pull out a physical planner and plan my day. I make goals for the week and then a to do list for the day. This helps me to not try to do it all every day, which lowers my stress because I then have a set of responsibilities for the day that I do not add to once I set them.

By setting aside dedicated time to ease into the day, you start on the right foot with your personal tank on full. I have been doing this consistently for a year and I can definitely feel the difference. I am able to be more present, more focused, and generally a little less stressed from day to day.

Self Care Commandment #3: Thou shalt lean on your tribe

I will always say, “It takes a village to raise a PhD.” I am an introvert and, admittedly, the emotional and spiritual rock for quite a few people. However, because of that I have never felt comfortable letting my friends really be present for me. Through therapy, I began opening myself up to allowing those I trusted the most to really show up when I needed them. This was a radical turning point in my self-care practice. When I allowed myself to let my friends and family really be aware of my struggles, they showed up. EVERY. TIME. I have come out of meetings with my advisor or my committee absolutely distraught and ready to quit my program (I actually ask myself why I am in the program weekly). My support system, however, is what has kept me in the program. I go to my therapist for the tools to tend to my mental wellness. I go to a small number of colleagues to commiserate and they assure me that I am not faking it, but that I belong. I go to my sister friends for wine and they promise to show up to my dissertation defense like the Dora Milaje, complete with black girl scowls for my committee so they do not say anything off the wall.

But seriously, a strong support system is the difference in feeling like you are out on a limb by yourself and actually being out on a limb by yourself. No one can be an island. We thrive when we are part of communities of care.

Self Care Commandment #4: Thou shalt put yourself first.

This might be my most important piece of advice. It is really easy to lose yourself in the waters of the PhD program. You may forget why you started. You may look up and not recognize yourself after a while. It was at the moment that I started to not know the person I was becoming that I pumped the brakes fast. My desire to achieve and astronomical (and nebulous) expectations put on me from self and advisor made me crazy. I was literally going crazy, breaking down in tears every other day. Do not do that to yourself. If this is already where you are, you have to back up a few steps.

The reality is, if you are not taking care of yourself you will end up sick, broken, or not finishing the program. One of my sister friends who was in the PhD program in another department was my partner in stress. We would sit up writing our end of term papers at two in the morning, both burping with acid reflux, stressed the hell out. After our second year she left the program for a myriad of reasons, one being the effects of the stress on her body. Her quality of life became more valuable than staying. She left and has been flourishing. I pumped the brakes and really went on a journey to figure out how to finish this program and still be whole. Part of that has been honoring my own needs. Every morning during my devotional time I ask myself, “Sharde’, what do you need to be ok today?” There are few days where I can honestly answer that. But, the fact that I ask puts my well being above checking the work off. The work will always be there, but if you are not the work won’t get done.

Taking care of yourself is just as hard, if not harder, than going through the program and it is so important. Being black and pursuing an advanced degree is absolutely no joke. At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves to come out of this thing whole. We experience too many hoops and challenges that can totally harden our hearts and intensify cynicism. Part of my self-care strategy is meant to help me not do some of the things that I have experienced through other PhD students because I believe there is a better way. Your wellness benefits you first and foremost, to be sure, but, it also benefits your work and sphere of influence as well. It helps you to be the best person and scholar that you can be, which is what the world deserves.

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Rev. Sharde’ Chapman was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in Religion with emphasis in African American Religion. Prior to pursuing her PhD she earned a Master of Divinity from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, she was also a student at Lincoln College, Oxford University in Oxford, UK. Sharde’s research interests focus on the forms and function black non-traditional religious spaces. Sharde’ is also an ordained minister in the Baptist church.

As she pursued higher education she has been a child literacy advocate and educational trainer through the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools Program. Sharde’ also shares 31 countries worth of travel insight and her self care journey on her YouTube channel at ShardeNoDyzOff.

Coursework, Guest Posts, Mental Health, Uncategorized

Digging in My Tool Kit: Navigating Identity in Academia

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My first year as a PhD student has come to a close, and now after two months of much needed distance I can say that I somehow survived. I made it out with my skin still attached, I scraped past the beast and kept my teeth. I refer not to the “nightwalker” that is the looming deadline, or the paralyzing gorgon of self-doubt. I am not bemoaning the money that grad school has sucked out of my pockets like Charybdis did the sea. The hazard that I escaped is one that I had forgotten between my stints as a student: I had forgotten how it feels to be a problem.

Before I lose anyone on that point let me be clear. I am grown. I am not sitting at the cramped table of the intimate basement classroom tossing spit balls and forgetting to raise my hand. Oh no, this is PhD life honey! I am a problem in the same way all Black folks are in academia. I am an issue because I placed my body and its otherness into a space that fought so long and hard to maintain its monogamy. I hear people tell me, “You’re in the door girl! Now all you need to do is work!” To that I say, sure; if the proper symbol for the Black student’s entrance into academia were a door, then that would be an appropriate stance. But that expression isn’t fitting here. In entering the university, the Black student has not “gotten in the door,” the Black student has instead made her way through the first in a series of gates. These gates are meant to compartmentalize, to discourage, to limit and to control our experiences in the university.

The second of these gates to come crashing down in front of my feet was the gate of assumptions. The otherness of my body came with a great many numbers of expectations. My body belongs to a Black person, and with this package comes ideas about my personality, my speech, my history, my motivations, my interests and of course my abilities. My body also belongs to a Black woman. The otherness of my womanhood only tacks onto these expectations and with them comes a danger. In this body, in this skin I have to be careful. This gate, and its expectations, reappear over and over during the academic odyssey. It comes back y’all. It is battled using the greatest and most important tools in the Black student’s arsenal: The Black Performative.

For the sake of keeping things simple, I’ll speak on the most essential tools in the kit that is The Black Performative; these being the successful voice, the successful body, and mindful usage. Girl, Sis, lovey and my brother too; y’all know what the successful voice is. It is the change in our tonality, in our speech pattern, in the use of our dialect. Some of us call it “the school voice,” but it follows us. We pull it from our pockets on the phone, at the checkout, even when someone strange bumps into us. It is a defense mechanism that is literally needed to succeed in academia and so to call this tool the successful voice is very easy and very appropriate. I am immensely guilty of indulging in my successful voice. As a Black woman with southern roots I speak a very different English at home, one of which I am proud to say I could break down the grammar rules of on a dime. My home speech is unique, it is the remnants of an old code spoken in Dothan, Alabama. It is complete with its own rules and unique vocabulary that, outside of the comfort of my home loses all of its meaning, but y’all kin come takes muh words from muh cold dead hands. Ain’t not nare ‘nough yenom on earth to pay me to divorce muhself from muh language.* And the act of requesting me to do so is pure barbarism! I feel strongly for my words and advocate for inclusion of multiple Englishes in higher learning, but I am still guilty of falling into my performance. Should I blame years of knowing that it was necessary, do I not want to make things harder on myself as I near the end?

Digging back into that tool box, we come to the successful body. In the year that flew by between completing my MA and beginning my PhD I had forgotten the stress that comes with my physical presentation. See that pesky gate of assumptions coming down again? You may say, “Now Justine calm down we all need to look professional.” Sure darling, that’s true, but what is acceptable and professional in my culture doesn’t always fly in an academic setting, nor is it always worth the aggravation. I’ve taken care to make sure my shape, you know the body I physically live in, doesn’t show too much. God forbid, I am too obviously a possessor of two “X” chromosomes. I’ve waited an extra week before changing my hair for the eighth time in a semester just to push back that “your hair is always different conversation” and I have bitten back venomous words when classmates with whom I have never had conversations with reach out to grab, stroke, and pull my hair while they shower me with foreign compliments. God, I had forgotten what it felt like to be a problem. I have to smile through all of this, attitude in check, resting bitch face buried beneath a smile that reminds me of Barbie’s friend, Christie. I grew up in the 90’s and back then Christie (the Black Barbie) didn’t have any African features aside from her brown skin.

That 90’s Christie doll is a perfect embodiment of the last tool I’ll speak on today. She looks trapped in another body, carefully presented, forced to smile 24/7: This is mindful usage. Mindful usage isn’t about the presentation of the Black student’s body, it is about how the Black student moves in a public space. Those pesky assumptions that we have to fight against just don’t stop popping up. If I don’t mind how I move my body I typically get one of two responses: I am perceived as hypersexual or more annoyingly I am slapped with the violent Black woman sticker. I have to divorce myself from my non-verbal grammars, the languages I can speak with my hands and my neck, the nonverbal cues that are common place in my house, in my hood, in my space; they get left behind, unless of course I want to wear that “Black women have such attitudes” badge. I have slipped before and cocked my neck, given a sarcastic fluttering of the eye. This has led to some uncomfortable moments, but nothing of consequence, right? Oh, certainly not so horrible in the classroom? Well that depends on which side of the classroom I’m sitting. Yeah, I’m a PhD student, but I’ve been teaching at the college level since before I began this adventure. Being a Black woman at the front of the college classroom is altogether a different experience. I could write a book on that one. Girl, Sis, lovey and my brother too, the academic odyssey is a lot like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, navigate as best you can. And I urge you, try to keep as many bits and pieces of yuhself in dat boat as yuh kin.

*Nare means “not any” but is more firm!  Yenom is an old code for “money”

nullJustine Nicole Wilson is a second-year Ph.D. student at St John’s University where she majors in English and received her MA in English from Stony Brook University (Class of 2015). Justine’s research interests span trauma literature, the graphic novel, mythology, folklore and children’s media. Justine’s recent work aims to dissect trauma as “the common language of heroism,” and explores our societal consumption of trauma as a product. She is in the beginning stages of drafting her dissertation prospectus which will focus on the portrayals of mental illness and trauma in the Superhero genre.

“A nerd is someone who is as social as possible and that’s everyone.”

Coursework, Ravynn, Ravynn: Act 2, Ravynn: Act 2, Scene 2, Uncategorized

Week 10, or “Fake News” and Real Mentorship

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My professor, Liz Losh, gave the William & Mary Tack Lecture this past Thursday night.

The Tack Lecture series is a pretty big deal. It’s a part of a new W&M tradition in which each semester, a professor is asked to give a public lecture on something that both academics and community members will find engaging, allowing everyone to be a part of the University’s intellectual discourses. This semester, Professor Losh gave a talk entitled “Fake News for Real People.” As the rhetorician that she is, Losh began by discussing what creates a persuasive news story: ethos (an appeal to ethics), pathos (an appeal to emotion) and logos (an appeal to logic). Fake news stories, she argued, include too much pathos and not enough ethos or logos– we need all three in credible news. Losh argued that fake news is not a purely partisan issue, that fake news may have purposes other than deception and the problem isn’t just fake news– it’s a crisis about truth telling in an era of simulation.

Fake news is not a new concern, it dates back to Orson Welles creating mass panic with his radio broadcasts, however our fake news tends to be a simulation, copies for which there is no original– or in this case, news stories for which there is no source. She argues that there are three genres of fake news: Fake News 1.0 (satires of political theatre), Fake News 2.0 (asymmetrical disinformation warfare) and Fake News 3.0 (disparagement that undermines traditional news organizations.) Fake News 1.0 was actually helpful in some sense– it improved media literacy. Viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report tended to do well on news quizzes and were more equipped to identify satire. The problem is that people care less about the source and focus more and more on the content, which is to say that they care less about the context and more about the content.

In our current moment of Fake News 3.0, Losh argues that there is confusion about what fake news is. There is cause to doubt traditional news sources and, therefore, people become confused about basic facts. She proposes three trends which may explain our issue with fake news: authority is replaced by authorization, authenticity is replaced by authentication and veracity is replaced by verification. Finally, she offered a few solutions to fake news: technology companies created the problem, therefore they should be in charge of creating solutions; teach media literacy and news literacy early and often; and fund the humanities, because knowing history, rhetoric, philosophy and foreign languages helps in identifying fake news stories.

Professor Losh ended her lecture by shouting out the Equality Lab fellows (I am one) and the Race, Memory and the Digital Humanities Symposium, which I wrote about last semester. Hilariously, the picture that she chose to represent RMDH with was one of me flashing my conference badge and smiling like a goofball. The picture (which several of my colleagues made sure to take snapshots of) stayed on the screen throughout the entire Q&A section. It was mildly mortifying but also hilarious and had been done with good will.

Professor Losh ending with a picture of me made me start think about her commitment to mentorship. Yes, she is a prolific scholar; yes, she is basically an academic rockstar; but she doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the work she does with her students. When Adrienne, Ashley and I came to her with a partially formed syllabus for an independent study on comics, Professor Losh did us one better and turned our independent study into a real class that would show up on our transcripts. She makes sure her students and Equality Lab fellows have access to scholars in our fields so we can ask them questions and share our own work with them. (She’s also willing to give you a little nudge when you might otherwise be too shy to share on your own. [Me. All the time.]) She makes sure that we have a physical space to work and create together. She gives you lengthy, but kind, feedback on your writing with the sole purpose helping you get better. Stick around long enough, she’ll present you with all kinds of opportunities you would have never thought imaginable and, best of all, she gives really great pep talks.

For the last few weeks (or much of the semester, take your pick), I had been feeling completely burnt out and utterly uninspired. I talked incessantly of quitting grad school– taking my MA degree and hightailing it out of her to pursue a glamorous (though admittedly not lucrative) career in publishing or editing in a city like D.C. or Richmond. I hated going to class, I hated reading for class, I hated talking to people, I hated being here. I had talked to everyone I knew about quitting, including my advisor– everyone, that is, except Liz. I had avoided talking to her because I knew if I did, she’d make me stay. Professor Losh was the one person I knew who would be able to talk some sense into me and I wanted to leave so badly I didn’t want to hear sense.

Sure enough, it took a quick chat with her and a week off to help me clear my head.

Ever since, I’ve been trudging along with a little more determination in my heart. I still don’t know if I can finish this whole PhD game, but I do at least know I can finish this semester. This graduate school game is wild, but good mentorship, like what I get from Professor Losh, and a strong support system can pull you through.