a black girl

Catalclysm

Thursday, October 12, 2006

This semester is, so far, a combination of fustrating, amazing, violent, painful, invigorating, and frightening. It is all of these things and not just one that characterize my day to day feelings about my life here in the ivory tower. I am learning how to take care of myself--which is really the stuff that matters in this learning expereince. It is quite easy to forget myself when so much is demanded of me.

This weekend I was slated to attend the Cave Canem Reunion. I've decided not to go in order to catch up on some work, get ahead in some other areas, and try to settle down in my new environment. It is unfortunate that I cannot do this. The workshops I would be attending would surely be a help to perfecting my craft. But I have other opportunities and other carfts to perfect. This weekend, instead of sitting in auditorums with Nikky Finney and other amazing poets, I can be working on my project--learning lithography. I will have other opportunities (maybe next summer!) and other venues to do such things.

I am also in an amazing and fustrating class on Queer Theory which is busting open my assumptions about interdisciplinary and location within my own field(s). I have never been so wrong, so often than in this class and I am thankful for it. Learning was becoming repetitive and unchallenging. I enjoy the challenge and the hard work that must be set forth in order to succeed in this course and in the process of gaining and creating knowledge.

Passing on, or sharing knowledge is another one of my duties these days. I am currently teaching Introduction to Women's Studies. It is an interesting site where my position of power (as educated) is complicated by issues of age (most of my students are exactly my age or older), location, race, class, gender, sexuality... all of these things. For example, I never quite thought about the implications behind explicitly positioning myself as a Black, lesbian, feminist in class because I feared that my authority would be questioned well enough by virtue of me being black and woman. I realized that in actuality, that doesn't really matter. That if my position as educator would be questioned because of those factors, then equally, I am legitimated in my position. I am allied with students who are taught to feel as though they have no place in institutions of learning. I am learning that situating myself with these students at all levels does as much good for those students as it does bad.

I've also learned that I am a pretty darn good teacher.

All of these things (and others that I wish not to devulge here) are really shaping the nature of how I will choose to walk through this earth. In so many ways my undergraduate expereince was not the self questioning expereince that it promised to be. It is here where I am asking myself questions I had never before asked, and it is here that I am shaping and differently molded everyday.

Labels: school, teaching, work

uttered by a black girl at 10:04 AM. | 5 comments

. . . . . . The Creative...

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Now is the most critical moment of the year. It is the moment where I begin school once again--begin the consistant attacks on my creativity--that thing that makes me happy and whole. It is an exciting time, however full of trepidation. I feel very ill prepared, as though my creative juices have run through the course of the summer and have haulted for the violence of academic life. I am ill prepared because I have not completed all of last semesters' work. I am also ill prepared because I have not completed the art projects I hoped to complete. I feel relatively content about it but nervous about the months to come. Months where my time will be monopolized by this thing that I am doing and the obligations I have put on myself to be here or there. Like tomorrow morning I will be going to Baltimore for Church. I promised my grandparents this because it is homecoming. I would rather be cleaning and packing away my apartment. Preparing for the next few months of my life. Examining my financial situation--getting excited about the prospect of a new place... all of those sorts of things.

It is a strange middle space to be in. But I am up for it.

Remind me that i said this tomorrow...

Labels: life, school