School Daze: Missing in Action

I have momentarily come up for air. Two and a half months of non-stop studying, writing, reading and doubting myself on a daily basis. Whatever competence or confidence I possessed before entering this PhD program has dissipated, leaving me wondering what brought me here in the first place. Everyone seems younger and smarter while I plod along at a snail's pace aspiring for a B average. This is not for the faint at heart, and requires surrendering a piece of oneself; however, I am in this for the long haul, goal driven,prepared to put in whatever hours (and hours and hours) are demanded of me. My tenacity to get the job done is not to be confused with a greater determination to hold onto a corner of myself that is unyielding under this or any other kind of pressure. I remind myself I have stood down bigger obstacles over the course of my life.

In those thick wavy glass moments of despair I feel as alone as I have ever felt. Spending what feels like an eternity in my office grappling with statistics and data, writing theory papers, and memorizing research terms and concepts, has warped my perspective and humanity. I am too tired to talk on the phone, and even if I had more energy, I would bore myself with my own tales of woe. I made a choice to purse a PhD at 52. Despite the challenges I remain grateful for the opportunity to study and extend myself. I have a wonderful home in a friendly neighborhood within biking distance of school and large yard for my doggies romp. Still, I feel hermetically sealed in an isolation chamber, unable to communicate with normal people or talk about anything other than school. I am a big picture person, and the big picture is obscured by a task by task existence. Finish one assignment and start the next. Is there a sky covering me or a tiny canopy? Where are my colors? Have I faded into a murky white paste? Are my parts moving or frozen?

I have flashes of my past life. The childcare center is located in the social work building. I watch parents drop off their young children filled with mutual angst and hesitation as they negotiate farewells. That was me once, a graduate student pregnant with Jonathan, dropping Rena off at the child development center at Sacramento State. Life was a flurry of activity with classes, internship, thesis and commuting from the Bay Area to Sacramento. It was wonderful though, I was learning again and proving myself academically as I wrestled with fear and insecurity. I was not alone though, I came home to outstretched arms and assurance. In my Austin life there is no cushion between me and an endless stream of work. Pepsi and Pearl are my emotional touchstones. I cannot imagine my life here without them and their love.

Some days I feel as if I am circling the drain. Other day I feel victorious. An 84 on a research mid term might be a disappointment for some in my cohort; however, for me it is cause for celebration. Not falling on my face is a modest but candid expectation. Before my statistics midterm, I cried myself to sleep at night, in the shower the next morning, in the car on my way to school, and perhaps most humiliating, in my professor's office. What happened to my thick skin? Peeled away, layer by layer, page by page of statistics concepts too difficult for me to wrap my arms around, differentiating independent and dependent variables, grasping every kind of validity and threats to validity, decreasing the volume of my voice for the sake of proving defensibility with more technical and scholarly writing. It's all about "publishing" in journals and book chapters, large studies and data sets.

Being diagnosed at 52 with ADHD, knowing full well all these years that my struggles were in large part attributed to a learning disability, was a shock nonetheless. I managed to get by on grit and finesse; however, returning to school presented challenges that could not be disguised and required additional help. I advocated for my children and countless others, and now I am the one in need of support. Hours of testing resulted in a diagnosis that confirmed my suspicions. How had I managed all these years, struggling with a disorganized file cabinet for a brain? A freaky superior short term memory and a failing long term memory confounded by disorganization. I compensated amazingly well, developing an extensive repertoire of tricks and strategies. Still, after the results I sat in the car and sobbed. I replayed my life and felt the tense cord that has always been pulling inside me as I worked to focus against a momentum dragging me in a million directions. Details eluding me while navigating the forest, oblivious to the trees. Nose to the grindstone, work harder, remain vigilant or risk being exposed for the fraud I felt like most of the time. Was it really being smart or just luck? How would I manage to cover all the ground a PhD program demanded when my deficits could swallow me up quicker than my strengths would be able to rescue me? I left a life behind and placed all bets on my ability to get my doctorate. There is no room for failure, ADHD notwithstanding.

I am still the wild child artist. Art and social work, Afrocentric theory and practice, teaming with oral historians. This is not unheard of, yet it is not the typical trajectory in social work doctoral education. My aspirations are not to publish in the Journal of the American Medical Association (referred to with reverence as JAMA). Multi-disciplinary teams extend beyond a collaboration between social work, public health, psychology and medicine. I hang with the artists, historians, architects, educators, community activists and early childhood folks who are game for innovative out of the box approaches. Art and oral history projects are a step towards repairing roads in Mart, Texas. My passion to create, to provoke, capture and document the magic of transformation inspired by a convergence of mediums and approaches led me to this program. Community gardens, art workshops, performance pieces, restoring the black cemetery and collecting oral histories propel social and personal change.

I am learning though, a mind exploding learning, a synchronization of ecstasy and agony. Writing a 19 page critical analysis on Afrocentric theory felt like coming home. Terms and concepts remain hollow if there is no mechanism for application to people's lives. Theory serves purpose when it advances meaningful change and shakes up the marbles. Learning about Afrocentric theory united my historical knowledge and experience parenting black children. It offers a new paradigm for practice in social work and other disciplines. I loved the reading, delving deep into historical, philosophical, and political discourse that challenges the status quo with a compelling case for rejecting accepted thought and practice. If Freud, Maslow and Erickson, by their own admission, did not factor black people into the equation of their work, can their theories be trusted to explain an experience that has no congruence with those who were the basis of their research?

One of my professors has cautioned me about getting submerged in the dissertation. "The idea is to get in and get out, do not confuse the dissertation with your life's work." I take this advice seriously, particularly at age 52. My dissertation will have an expediency factor that does not preclude a contribution. I suppose it is magical to feel there is still a body of work ahead of me in art and scholarship, in relationships that facilitate transformation and redemption from my own tangled past. Most days I struggle just to keep my head above water, feeling submerged and swallowed by a dark force that runs contrary to everything familiar and comfortable. This process reckons full exposure. I am holding up, tenacious as ever, with every intention of crossing the threshold. If I seem missing in action to you, know that I am right here in Austin, plugging away and thinking how nice it would be to get a life line tossed every now and then from my friends and supporters scattered across the globe. As the kids say,"Holla!"