I’m A Black Woman in Graduate School, and This Is What I’ve Learned
I began my graduate school journey in 2016, a fresh-eyed undergraduate who had been dreaming of entering graduate school for four years. After completing my undergraduate degree, I took a gap year at the advice of my academic advisor in order to boost my resume and make myself a more competitive applicant. I spent about four months working on application letters, researching specific programs, and compiling application packets to be submitted. Then, I received rejection after rejection, until I finally received an invitation to interview. After the nerve-racking process of interviewing and meeting current students of the prospective programs, I chose the program that I felt most aligned with at the time. Now, I am here, living the life I had dreamed of for so long, and sometimes I hate it.
No-one really tells you how much of an emotional roller-coaster graduate school is. I knew it would be a difficult journey, but I had honestly thought it would be difficult classes and research. Unfortunately, that is probably the easiest part of graduate school. The hardest part has been how much graduate school mimics the larger society. I entered my program hoping that it would be a sanctuary, and it has been far from that. I am entering my fourth year and am finally accepting the truth that graduate school is literally a reflection of our broken, bigoted, racist society.
The first time I should have realized that graduate school is no different from the larger world was in second year, when a professor told me that I was not authentic in my therapeutic presentation because I appeared calm, quiet and composed. She expected me to be the loud person that I was in the department hallways! For her, it was impossible for me to have both professional and jovial sides, with neither one of them being a façade. It hurt me that she could not believe I could authentically be quiet, calm and reflective. Never mind that she was on the panel that interviewed me for acceptance into the program, or that she had hosted me in her house for the applicants’ dinner. It shocked me when she made that comment, but now, upon further reflection it shouldn’t have. It was not the first time that others have tried to narrow me down to only one thing, and I don’t know why I thought academia would be different.
Just like in the real world, I have been judged as incompetent and incapable even when my work has proven otherwise. When I was applying to graduate school, I remember one of the professors that I had requested a recommendation letter from telling me “I don’t know if you’re going to get in. Counseling psychology is an incredibly competitive field, and I just don’t think you’ll be cut out for that kind of competition”. This was even before she had seen my resume. I had taken two psychology courses with her and had performed well in both classes, yet she still did not think I was good enough to get into a doctoral program. I thought graduate school would be a place where people really judge me on my actual competence, not my presumed incompetence. I am learning the painful truth that here too; people see a Black woman and assume that I am not competent enough to produce quality work. I constantly get caught in a space where I feel the pressure to work twice as hard to prove myself and at the same time just want to throw in the towel and dare my department to kick me out of the program (LOL!!). It gets exhausting, having to work extra hard to prove that I deserve a spot in a space that is supposed to be a reprieve from society.
I have also watched specific students of color be tokenized by White professors because they fit the description of what an educated person of color should be. Graduate school unfortunately continues to perpetuate the “one top person of color at a time” narrative, where only one person of a racial or ethnic minority group is allowed to succeed at a time. Those who make it to the top are then heavily tokenized and placed under a microscope. The other students of color are constantly compared to the top person, their flaws and errors scrutinized and picked apart. I would like to think there is plenty of space for all of us to flourish, but again, academia is simply a reflection of the world’s inability to accept multiple people of color succeeding at the same time.
Working twice as hard for half the recognition I deserve makes me exhausted. It makes me mad that I was scolded for producing a length of work that a White colleague got away with. It makes me angry that I have to proof-read my work and have several friends read it over before submission for fear that a simple grammatically error would “validate” my professors’ assumption that my writing would never be up to par. Academia should be a space where people are recognized for the work they do, not where certain groups of people have to give an arm and a leg just to receive a finger. Academia should be a place where minorities can speak their truth without being chastised or shamed for it. Academia should definitely not be a place where your White advisor can cry in response to your criticism of her culturally incompetent advising!
With the time I have, I am trying to make allies with students and faculty who are truly committed to changing the culture of graduate school and academia. I have met some wonderful people whose research and scholarship aim to call out the injustices, and offer solutions on how to make things better. I still dont appreciate the space that is graduate school, but at least I know that there are others who have refused to accept the status quo and are working every day to dismantle it.