On the Altar

So, after three weeks of working on it, I just completed my first fellowship application. With the inconsistent economy, and the uncertain availability of financial aid for next year, I figured I better play an active role in securing funding for my academic future.

I just submitted a cover letter and resume for a summer research position and tomorrow I'll be sending off my Minority Fellowship Application to the Council on Social Work education. I definitely belabored the process and was anxious about getting my words to accurately represent me and my goals, but once that envelope is stamped and every page shipped off, I shall truly surrender it to God.

Lord, I pray that you place your annointing on both of these applications and I pray for those who will be reading and evaluating them. I know, ultimately, your will shall be done. Thanks for showing me every step of the way that you have not brought me this far and left me, but have already charted the path that I am destined to go, and equipped it with everything I will need to meet the other side of this road.

I thank you in advance.

Love,
Leka

Extended Family

Most people say that it takes a really good cohort to make it through this program. In August, I was introduced to five strangers who've become like family. All hailing from different parts of the country, we each bring a unique personality and experience to this group process. Above all, we bond like no other.

Lately, I feel like there have been experiences that have really demonstrated the strength of our connection. We consistently come together to get through tough assignments, and figure out how we can work as a team to deal with some of the personalities and challenges that we face from week to week. Last week we had an exceptionally fun time as we came together to support one of our members at a performance; this week we've had to really rally to make it through.

In the matter of a few days we've dealt with a bit of a dark hovering cloud; one of our professors just returned after having a father pass away, one of our colleague's mom fell and broke her hip, and today, one of our members was robbed in broad daylight. When we heard today's news, there was a sharp pain that numbed each of us. An eerie energy lurked as we struggled to make it through our four-hour stats session knowing that one member of our team was home, devastated.

After class, we went to her home and I struggled to even listen to the details as she recaptured the crime. I was sickened and horrified by the acts of ignorance that had shaken up my friend's sense of safety; It hurt like I was there. I could feel her pain swell up in my own body. I was angry, felt helpless, and even afraid.

...and then we prayed. We prayed together for God's covering; we affirmed Whose we are, and called on the ancestors to just dispatch around us. We figured we could be paralyzed by fear, or comforted by faith.

Each one of us has been called to this journey for a reason. We each have unique ways that we intend to transform the world. We know that God has not brought us this far in vain. With God's strength and love, we keep pushing forward. I'm grateful I'm not going this alone.

Please keep us in prayer

Kicking and Screaming!

...and then there are those days when the work has mounted and the motivation has declined. I feel like my insides are throwing a tantrum and seriously dreading the inevitable.

After a weekend of surprise visits and non-traditional fun (shout out to Warren for the invite to the drag show!) I just don't wana! ...but I know I must. UGHHH!

So, I'm praying for a burst of energy and the will power to bust out this fellowship application and get this homework done.

Oh, PhD school...a test of sheer determination!

Going the (Long) Distance

A few weeks ago I attended a monthly meeting with fellow doctoral students where we listened to a Professor share advice about how to prepare for the dissertation and make it through the program in general. This particular Professor completed her doctoral program in three years, all while being a wife, a mother, and full-time supervisory employee. One of the specific things that she said helped her make it through was really helping those around her understand as much as possible that the intensity of academic life really made it so that she could not be as social as most wanted her to be. In her lecture she shared specific ways that she had to carve herself out of her family life, and often disappoint those she cared about in order to "get it done". Similarly, from a classmate who already has a PhD in another field, I heard stories of how she had to move out of her home entirely in order to minimize the distractions that didn't allow her to focus. I must be honest, while my first semester experience makes me totally understand the demands of this aspect of higher learning, I'm a little anxious about the level of sacrifice/investment that it takes to achieve this goal.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of celebrating Valentine's Day with my boyfriend. We enjoyed great food, childlike fun (ice skating), great music (courtesy of TREY SONGZZZ and LLOYD), and each other's company. As I sadly watched his chariot disappear back to New York, I was encouraged to think about how my life path is going to embrace this academic journey. At 29, I hold some of the very girly dreams of marriage and family, fun and adventure. I also have some very real homework to get done, and some big plans to fulfill what I believe is my life purpose.

When I returned home from the bus station this evening, I took a look at my Valentine's Day present from Lawrence. In a beautiful wooden frame he made a replica of the diploma I shall receive when I complete my program. He thoughtfully presented me with this gift to post up as encouragement for the times when I get discouraged, and motivation to go forward with achieving my dreams. In addition to his intended messages, it was a subtle way to see that my girlish dreams are in line with my life vision; Lawrence's support of my journey, and willingness to manage the distance of this relationship with me, helps me feel like I have the type of person in my corner that my Professor and classmate said are important along this journey.

Choosing Howard at this time in my life has not only meant creating physical distance in a new relationship, but moving away from my immediate family, friends, and most things comfortable and familiar. While I know that this investment carries with it a lot of demands, I know that everything that I do is a part of the bigger picture of my life; I can't technically separate out these four or five years of school from my existence, because that's just not how it works.

While I heed the advice of others who have chartered this territory before me, I am committed to grinding it out and figuring out how to balance while achieving this aspect of my dreams.

Many thanks to Law and my family and friends who are supporting, encouraging, and managing the long distance with me. I'm certain that love will carry us through.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Love & Exercise!

So I used to use the excuse of not wanting to travel to a gym as reason for not being consistent with exercising. Even I believed it until I couldn't explain why I had only been to the fitness center downstairs in my building ONE whole time since I moved here in August. I know, shame on me. Well, the last few months my body has been begging for me to do something. There's no reason I should be getting winded from walking up stairs or up the hill to campus. Ridiculous! I know.

So, I discovered that I needed to transform my relationship with working out, and in turn revitalize my relationship with consistency and integrity. This week I committed to my classmate that I would do some form of exercise at least three days a week. I started today, and, you know, it wasn't half bad. I put on an age-old jogging suit, laced up some bright orange sneakers I found in the closet (hey, I don't have much of an exercise wardrobe. I had to use what I got. Don't judge me!) and I commenced my first workout.

With a little ipod diversion, I got through a 45 minute cardio session, and I actually liked it. It was't the torture that I anticipated. So, here's to the beginning of our courtship. I think I'll actually ask the elliptical to have me on a second date this Friday. I'll let you know how our romance progresses.

Delimitation; The Need to Create; The Power to Choose

A few thoughts from the week.

In Cognitive Development class yesterday we examined a concept called "delimitation". This idea suggests that at birth/conception, the developmental possibilities of a human being are infinite, but as one steps through time these possibilities become narrower. Essentially, we all choose life paths and experiences that take our lives along particular trajectories, so as we make choices from day to day and moment to moment we restructure the parameters of how much of the myriad of opportunities afforded by life we actually get to experience. That part seems pretty straightforward, but I thought further. As we choose to "be" certain ways and carry certain perspectives about people, life events, and general phenomenon, we also limit our world of possibility; in taking stoic stances about things we set up a trend of continuing to show up to these particular types of experiences with a predetermined way of being that will limit the richness that we can potentially yield from being more open and releasing the barriers that make our life possibilities narrower. Now, while I am pretty certain that I don't want to open myself to the possibility of living in a way that will call consequences into my life that will take away my freedom, and/or someone else's, I do know that there are ways that I can position myself to stretch a little bit. Imagine, just by shifting a little, and being less motivated by my fears, judgments, and biases, I can actually begin to feel as if I do have access to more of this world that became available to me at my conception.

In an article I read for Groups class, authors Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers talked about how the power to create life is an essential part of living. What they explained is that we really need the freedom to choose from moment to moment in order to feel alive. I considered that when we begin to project our visions and needs onto others, and hold them accountable for living out their lives according to our scripts, we are asphyxiating their sense of freedom and possibility (most of the times they have no idea that we've engaged them in this sudden death as we just react to them out of our frustration and judgment of them not playing the roles we've decided for them). I want to give everyone I know their lives back! Not in the sense that I really believe that I have any true power over another, but I relinquish my expectations and judgments, and really honor everyone's power to choose and create on their own terms. When I release this need to control the players in my life, I actually re-create the opportunity to build loving relationships with others and choose the people in my life for who they choose to be.

"In our lives together...we must account for the fact that everyone requires, as a condition of their being, the freedom to author their own life. ...Life insists on its freedom to participate and can never be sold or bossed into accepting someone else's plans" - Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers

I choose vanilla, because I choose vanilla! (Inside Joke)

Professor's Challenge

This past week in my Cognitive Development class, we talked about knowledge being classified as nomothethic, idiographic, and ethnographic; essentially, in the differences between the three we explored what makes an idea valued as a general/universal principle or considered an individual or cultural variation of a norm. We examined the Western tradition of establishing Eurocentric frames of thinking and ways of being as the baseline against which everything else is assessed and judged; inherent in this practice is an assumed sense of privilege and entitlement to defining the value of individuals, ideas, and phenomenon.

In academia, there is this underlying buy-in to the idea that "truth" and "reality" can be defined by those who have an assumed power to do so; in school, we are taught "theories" and "foundation" courses, where we are expected to learn and master the contributions of particular "scholars" whose perspectives have been respected and heralded for decades, if not centuries. As articulated by my classmate, we are then expected to always use one or more of these frames of thought as the basis upon which we can then build our own ideas and establish relevance, or not.

While exploring these ideas in class, the Professor made an explicit appeal to us to consider that part of our responsibility is to develop our own ways to tell our story, and the stories of others around us; to use scholarship to push the envelope and transform the Western habit of banishing the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed to the peripheral category of anomaly. Ironically, in a class of roughly twenty students, all pursuing doctoral degrees, there was an awkward silent resistance to this proposal; the reticence shortly translated to an outburst of discussion about the level of difficulty that it takes to make an impact of this proposed magnitude in a world that predominantly moves according to habit and norms, and resists legitimizing things, experiences, and people, that don't simply fall in line with this neat organization of human life and interaction. One student explained that a desire to create and live the comfortable, wealthy life makes him very clear that he will not be the one to take on the Professor's challenge; alternately, he will choose a career in his field of Psychology that does less rocking than boat, and more staying the course. Others in the class engaged in conversations about the importance of having standards and the immense difficulty of getting people to respect and buy in to approaching the human experience from a different, more inclusive perspective.

At this conversation, and its context, I again thought about who I am choosing to be in this process.

Earlier that day I attended a Social Work student's defense of the proposal to defend her dissertation. The doctoral candidate, interested in exploring the lives of "child soldiers" in Sierra Leone, shared her ideas in hope of receiving approval to commence her research. What stood out to me about her proposal was this desire to really present a vehicle for these youth protagonists to articulate and explain their own story of resilience; the student described creating a platform for human beings to construct the stories of their own survival as one of the goals of her research. In her approach, she reflected the importance of not simply dissecting these youth's experiences based on established theories of child development, and presuppositions about human response to "trauma", but she was intending to let the value of this experience, for the children who experienced and created meaning from it, breathe on its own merit. While the dissertation aspect of this work "requires" that she develop theoretical frameworks from existing knowledge as the "foundation" or backdrop of her work, I still felt like her research was a great example of the work that my Professor encouraged us to take on.

I reflected on these two very different experiences that I had in one class day. While I was inspired by the vision for the dissertation, I was saddened by the thought that as students, at this level of "formal education", there appears to be an epidemic fly in the jar syndrome lurking in our midst; invisible lids are suffocating and stifling the dreams of many students who can't even envision being in positions to make contributions to the world of learning and critical thinking. The idea that the "power to define" will remain inaccessible to us energizes this myth of being limited in our ability to transform our "reality" and fosters a cycle of complacency while ushering in more of the same. I'm convinced that the legacy of our people indicates otherwise. Under conditions far worse than we could presently imagine, our ancestors created space for our voice to be inserted and for our existence and experiences to be honored and respected, and not simply as some tangential phenomenon or deviation of the norm.

While I can imagine the challenges that will surely come with carrying the torch of these ancestors whose contributions I describe, I know that I didn't choose this path because it promised to be some frilly adventure. To my Professor, and my people, I can commit to being in the fleet of ships, among peers and colleagues of my generation, that will ruffle the feathers of Western tradition and practices of exclusion.