The Proposal

So...while most girls are working on getting a marriage proposal, I am working on my dissertation proposal. I have been working for what seems to be forever on this proposal. You have to learn how it is done, what it should look like and how to make your work fit into the equation. A lot of self-doubt has come along in this process. But I am sitting with my sweaty pits, hashing this out. My advisor said one day "sometimes you just have to let someone else, who has done this take a look at it." So that is just what I did today. I wrote as much as I could write, then i pressed SEND. Will let you know how it goes.

Those That Come Before Us

I just had a great pep talk/dinner with my cousin, who recieved her doctorate last year. I cannot express how inspiring it is to see another brown girl who knows first hand what it is like to go through this process and to have finished. Just to know that someone not only understands, but cares enough to offer you sound advice and tips is amazing. I hate to keep saying it, but it is really a different experience when you are a young, brown girl in a vanilla, male dominated area. She went through the same issues that I am now going through and she came out good so I know that I will as well. It is so important that those who come before us take the time to say "hey, I get it and you will get it done." I feel so inspired and I am so pumped to get started working again. I shouldnt have let the situation stop me, but hey, when you have no money it is hard to keep going. But guess what, I am gonna be beast because for the first time I really feel it in my grasp and Im taking it!
Dec 2011

They Done Ran Me My Money

Well...what a difference a few days make! Words cannot express how happy I am right now. All those tears, emails and prayers finally paid off. Alas, i have funded placement; which translates to "They done ran me my money!" Stipends and full tuition are like the mitochondria to the graduate student's proverbial cell. That is, if we dont have money we are pretty much without energy or motivation. So since I didnt have any promise of money for the last 2.5 months I have been half dead. But in a matter of days, I've not only been informed of funding, I've also been given the placement I wanted along with the contract via webform. I am so happy and now I know that I dont have to sell my uterus on craigslist! Dec 2011 here I come.

Begging for Bucks

So...I find myself in an extremely messed up situation. I took the advice of my superiors and got outside funding. But once it was determined that the project needed to be done by professionals, I was dropped. So instead of working dilligently on my dissertation, I am on pins and needles trying to get funding for the upcoming school year. Instead of ordering databases, I'm going to job interview after interview trying to get an income. This is so disheartening and tiring. I am like an email bandit, emailing anyone and everyone asking "is there an update on my funding? why hasnt my tuition posted?" School starts in 19 days and I am still here wondering what is gonna happen. In these situations I hold on to my faith and believe that God will open doors for me. But in the meantime, I'm developing GI issues as my rainy day fund is almost depleted. I have expected income in Sept, but I wasnt trying to use that as a means of support!!! This is the part of being a grad student that I hate. We are always begging for bucks and it is annoying. There is no way to continue to work on your dissertation when you are running outside to make sure your car wasnt repossessed. I was told that I wouldnt be left "out there," but damn I need certainty! Another day in the like of a brown girl's struggle.

Weekend? Spring Break? What's That?

One of the things that I have learned this week is that my time doesn't exist. These people have the power to tell me what they want and when they want it. More times than often, it is on short notice and clashes with my plans. My school starts spring break today, I wanted to relax, I had weekend plans but now my weekend plans are creating a study design. If my topic hadnt been tweeked, this would be easy but it's not. So i must but on my bra with duel support, pick up and my girls and be a woman about it...June 2011

You're A Runt, A nobody, Bottom of the Academic Food Chain

Color: Brown
Sex: XX
Occupation: PhD student

What does that make me: Bottom of the academic food chain

As much as I want to act like it isn't, being a black woman trying to get a PhD is truly a struggle. There are people you work with that haze you because they were hazed. There are those who believe in you, and those who subtly, but constantly let you know that they don't think that you are capable. "What school did you go to again? How much research experience do you have? What classes have you taken." These are questions they ask you, it's there way of telling you that they don't believe in you. Yet, you have to find the courage to fluff up your tits and keep going. You have to constantly pick your face up, pull back your hear and dig in the work. There come's a day when you look around you and realize that you are the bottom of the food chain. You are the plankton and sea urchins; ripened for the palette of the villainous sharks. And they show no mercy. You just have to find your natural defense mechanism to fend them off. It's a struggle, but like a very wise mentor said to me, "F**k them! At the end of the process guess what they will say? DOCTOR."