Me ft. A bit of my PhD Journey

morning folks!

—Just a short story for ya—

I want to share a big moment with yall, my first solo author journal article. These are like currency in academia, and I can put the link below, please reach out if you’d like to read it and I can share the .pdf for ya:

In Between the Lines: Black and Brown Adolescents Creating a Homeplace Across School Settings

This paper has been 2+ years in the making, and just happy to be able to share some of the stories of the players I coach, the complexities they (and my fellow former student athletes) move with. As someone who is realizing I didn’t necessarily enjoy football but rather was good at it, and it provided a safe space for me within school, sports and similar spaces (extra curricular) provide a space of solace for many of us in times of struggle. I also recently had someone comment and tell me I seemed ‘more jock than brain’ which is a bit of the racial narratives I had while being at Penn, despite doing solid in school and going on to grad school. Those of us who do many different things, challenging problematic narratives and such, this is a bit of an ode to you, its okay to do well at activities, jobs and across spaces that aren’t usually associated with one another.

Movin’ to my PhD Journey (the start)

I suppose I start this dialogue a bit from when I was at Penn and nearing the end of my required major credits during my undergrad. I had taken enough classes to essentially graduate a semester early as I went into my senior year while still having no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. My senior fall semester I had some rough experiences with a professor who used the same trope of calling me lazy, ungrateful and aiming to do the least amount of work in class because I had to miss a couple times due to my ms. This turned me off to pursing some type of masters in behavioral sciences which was just starting at my school which was an addendum to my undergrad major (PPE: Philosophy, Politics and Economics). At that same time, I had a teammate that just started grad school at the education school to become a teacher, and I inquired with him into the ways he applied to grad school and eventually got in. Simultaneously, I was thinking of/getting recruited to to Teach for America, and I was super close to going and realized I didn’t want to go into schools unprepared (personal) and would prefer to work with youth and people in out of school education spaces, especially as I was working with the Penn Sustainability group on a lesson plan about the urban watershed in Philly and then got introduced to place-based education. Again, that same semester I took a Urban Studies course with the GOAT of a professor Rev. Chaz Howard called Heart of Social Change, and in that practice/project based class we were tasked with designing social change effort guided by love and care, so my group coincidentally designed a charter school that was nature and farm based, teaching kids skills in the natural world to be in bette relationships with various ecosystems. Little did I know, I would be in a Politics and Education class the next semester critiquing the charter movement using New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as a case (linked here is more info on that). With all these things festering at once I applied to the grad program and go in, decided to go into a learning technologies and museum education tract and realized I didn’t wanna be siloed like that so I switched to the Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development program.

Here, I took some of the classes that foundationally shaped who and what I’m doing now. That first semester in school I had a couple grad classes under my belt that I took in undergrad, and opted to apply for a PhD because I had a few people suggest it and  I enjoyed designing programs for youth to connect them to places, nature, and other identities while leveraging skillsets they acquired in particular settings to use wherever they went. I also had a dear friend (Sean Coffinger) who was already in a PhD program and guided me through the process. And still, I spent too much money, had no idea what I was doing, but dead ass was just dreaming up a situation where I got to do the shit I wanted, which was studying and prove that the design of learning environments influenced the wellbeing, development and learning itself of those in those environments.

At 22 years old I really bet on myself that this broad phrasing of wanting to study [taken from my application] actually mattered. So PhD apps are due in the fall before winter break, and then you hear back in like Feb-March or so. During that in between time I ended up signing up for an AA psych course which changed my life by the other goats [Howard Stevenson + Lloyd M. Talley]. I had never been in a class that was 99% Black and especially a class where I had the least amount of knowledge (at least that was the feeling I had). During that time I also had a class by another GOAT [Sharon Wolfe] on Risk, Resilience and Prevention Science and that’s where I learned the design of interventions and damn I ain’t never been pushed so hard in a class because I really was loose with how I designed things even if some of the ideas were there.

Between the collective of GOATS mentioned, they were the all Black Professors, and They were half of the Black professors/teachers I’ve ever had (y’all I been in school almost 10 years and really have taken 65+ classes, sit with this). Okay, back to the timeline I got a call from UW and really they said I didn’t submit my transcripts correctly and asked for me to send them over and I did, then realized I submitted them wrong to the 4 schools I applied to and they reject apps that aren’t fully filled out!!! So ya boi had one chance to get into school and shit it happened. The rest is history. Just kidding. I have a few more posts to share about how wild of a experience it’s been here at UW but that’s a short glimpse into some of the things that led to me going to get the PhD.

I guess moral of the story is bet on yourself, ride with the people who believe in you and give you critical feedback/constructive criticism. I decided to really shoot for the stars and happened to get into school, happened to be proving the shit I hypothesized in my apps and had so much ignorance that I could connect dots that I felt like only I was able to see at times. In honor of that, dream bigger, shoot for stars unseen and galaxies yet to be explored (metaphorically and literally if that’s your jam just don’t forget to take of the earth we got so we don’t end up in the wall-e movie). Appreciate those who had stayed up with this hosh posh of ideas and thoughts that come to me as I’m sitting here on a flight after traveling 24hrs from Nicaragua back to Seattle and really making the time to be grateful to and for myself for doing the damn thing.

p.s. if you thinking of grad school, doing anything in research, education, writing, etc etc etc hit me up.

p.s.s. i had people tell me i shouldn’t do a phd, i wouldn’t get in, ask questions like ‘what are you gonna do with that?’ as if money was the only thing that mattered, like yo my fam was paycheck to paycheck growing up I’m here to enjoy what I wanna do. i’m also hella stubborn and regularly challenge authority and those who abuse power and treat others poorly (have since I was literally 3 years old) and will happily continue with that energy. y’all been rockin with these for a bit so you deserve all the transparency 😂