Why Grad School?

The Grad school program I am in now (NC Central University-School of Education) has me in a very unique setting. The first time I went to grad school was back in 97. I actually went to Univ. of Baltimore to study Publishing. Aside from the financial burden, I didn't feel like that program was for me. So I quit after one semester. Plus I was like 26, alot younger than my peers. I had just started doing Rhapsody, so I figured, let me try that, if it doesn't work, I'll have that experience and I'll be in (age) line with my classmates. But it did work. So I did the publishing thing for several years (like 7) and recently reconsidered Grad school, at age 33.

But this time I have different reasons. Those being...
1) As a consultant (publishing, technical support and marketing) I appear more qualified just because I can stick MA on my biz cards, thus asking higher prices
2) I am planning to go into the education field - supporting public and private schools, and academia appreciates having vendors that have degrees as opposed to self training or non-accredited certifications (apples to apples)
3) I will eventually become a teacher, likely in college level, which requires that you have a "terminal" (highest level attainable) degree in the field in which you teach. That is if you want to attain tenure (a job for the rest of your life), and I do. For me, publishing, instructional technology and visual communications (the fields in which I would want to teach) all have PhD programs, be they ever so new and hard to find. Gotta get yer MA, before the PhD (Doctorate of Philosophy-qualified to speak on that subject)

To be honest I chose the program I am in (Instructional Technology) because I thought it would be easy. Its about 60% technology...cameras, projectors, DVDs, editing, writing and presentation stuff which I already know inside out. The other 40% deals with school procedures, administration, copyright, assisted learning (disabled learners) which isn't really difficult at all.

One of the coolest things is...NO TESTS OR QUIZZES! Alot of reading though, and if I didn't know it, alot of time in the labs taking pictures, and learning web design software, and video editing software. I am really trying to graduate with a 4.0 - something far different than my 2.6 in undergrad, and my 2.7 in high school, but my attitude about school has also changed radically. I realize its not us/them (students/teachers) and I am establishing relationships, contacts, referrals, etc. so it's working out really nice. My department is fairly small, most classes 9-12 students. If it was a large program I don't think I could have such accessibility to my professors or resources.

Something I didn't know before I researched what program I wanted was that you don't necessarily have to get a Master's degree in the same field you get your Bachelor's in. Call me silly, but i didn't know that. Something else...no pell grants for graduate studies, only loans and scholarships.

Being Christian and black

When I was growing up, my parents weren’t real strict about going to church When my parents were together, we lived in Maryland and went a big church, not a super mega church, but around 200 or so people…big enough where you could go and not be noticed. When my parents separated and we moved to NC, the church was smaller and we could go speak to the pastor and shake his hand after service (not that I ever really wanted to ;-) ) I knew there was a God and He was good and all that, I just wasn’t into reading the bible, nor was I aware of other religions, or if I did I didn’t know anything about them and just assumed the popular misconception “all paths lead to the same destination.”
When I got to college and took my first “African-American” history course I was on fire for pro-black! Let my hair grow out to a mini-fro, got an Ankh necklace and was reading about black firsts and cointelpro and all that. I would participate in the libation thing when we would have speakers, acknowledging “our ancestors.” That was before the poetry thing got real big, but everybody seemed to down with “going back to our roots”, referring to African origins of Afro-American social behavior. That was in the early and mid-90’s.
Skip ahead to 2000, when I became a born again Christian. I was going to poetry events and panel discussions, etc. but I hadn’t seen a libation ceremony for a long time. It had never dawned on me until earlier this year when I went with some friends to an event that had dancers and other performers that performed the ceremony. That African tradition ceremonial stuff is not Christian! It really hit me when the guy was speaking (or chanting) “…and we honor the GODS…” BING my spidey sense started tingling…he said Gods with an S, that ain’t Jesus. Some other stuff he said that was Kiswahili that I didn’t understand and honored a CREATOR and the ANCESTORS. I seriously was not feeling this guy. I felt really weird because we were all holding hands in a circle and everything, repeating after him. So then I thought about all the times in the past I had done that, clueless…and all the people doing it now, clueless. Praising “The Gods” in your poetry, calling upon the “Spirit of the Creator” then thanking “the Lord” for your talent? Which Lord are you talking about hun? So for a minute I was like “so does being a Christian mean I can’t be ‘black’?” Then I realized those are both really broad terms, and YES, I can be both. I’m not African, meaning although that may have been how they did/do it, it’s not how I do it. I also realized how so many people are clueless, thinking that stuff doesn’t matter, or even worse that it’s all the same. But that’s not just with African traditions, look how many rappers misogynise women, then thank God for letting them win an award. So many things I see differently now. I know I am nowhere near perfect, and I don’t try to be, so I am just observant and offer my opinion or insight when asked. Boy that’s hard sometimes.

When Bebe's kids go to college…

For those of you that don’t know, I started grad school this semester. Because I need some $$$ help, I applied for financial aid like most folks do. Well, in grad school there are no GRANTS (read free money) only LOANS. There is also something called a Graduate Assistantship, which is alot like “work study” – monies you get to work a job on campus and the money you make pays your tuition. Even though you probably already know this, my point is that COLLEGE IS NOT FREE.
So in my assistantship gig, I help the adjunct (read part-time) professors with their classes; setting up laptop computers and video projectors, handing out papers, etc. and usually I will answer student technical questions like login passwords and where to find the applications being used, etc. so it doesn’t take time away from the whole class’ discussion/lesson. Well, this week, I had a chance to help a professor throughout a whole class. Usually I have a class during the same time I set them up and leave. Now given this was an undergrad class, and the mentality is much different than graduate level courses, I was amazed at the cavalier attitude of most of those students. The lesson was on HTML web design in Mozilla/Netscape Composer. Now I don’t teach the class, but I do use the same book in a graduate level class I am taking, so you know the week before what you will be studying. These guys were clueless.
I mean we are 2/3 into the semester and some of these guys didn’t even know the group login for the workstations. And mind you this isn’t some huge auditorium type lecture hall, this is a small 12 station computer lab with 10 students in the class. Of those 10, 4 were paying attention doing what the teacher was instructing as she was demonstrating, 1 clearly didn’t know how to do it, but kept talking to other students around her, 1 seemed to already know how to do HTML and were halfway looking paying attention, 2 were all up in facebook.com looking at profiles and answering emails and one girl was totally doing her own thing completely, not even looking at what the professor was doing or on Composer, but steady typing away. I thought wow how times have changed. I never really though discipline was an issue in college classes. I mean high school type discipline “You’re talking too loud…pay attention…classtime is for learning, not eating.” I consider myself pretty lax when it comes to rules and “the establishment” but I also use discretion; if I have to eat in class, it’s a snickers bar or some other quiet snack – not a big ol’ value meal from Burger King, I would take that outside of class after the professor finished explaining the lesson, gossip/chit chat can wait until after class – everybody has cell phones and email, it ain’t THAT important. But what really got me was that most of them didn’t know how to do it. These were CURRENT and FUTURE TEACHERS seeking licensure to teach other folks kids in public schools!!
After class I talked to the professor and she was well aware of who was paying attention and who wasn’t. She explained that it really wasn’t her problem. Students (via tuition) pay her to teach, if they don’t pay attention to get it, or ask questions, that’s on them. Which I totally agreed with. She said some students are failing and don’t even realize it. She said they don’t even try to explain why. Its understandable sometimes you fall behind, so if you get your story right, you can get some extra time to complete an assignment. But some of these kids, well 20 somethings, don’t show up for class, late work, no work, its really saddening. But then again maybe they were the ones that end up with mediocre lives and dead end jobs, in comparison to those that grasp opportunity and excel in life.

The N Word is not Kryptonite

I read an article today about a older guy talking to a teen about “the N word”. The teen’s view was “I like the way we have ‘flipped it’ so that it didn’t mean anything.” The older guy says he was “horrified and dismayed nearly to the point of depression to hear him say what (he) know(s) way too many people actually believe.” He continues to say that the teen (and others that share that view) must not venture to the south or “travels in safe circles.” Then he says “what do you think the cops in New Orleans were shouting at the guy while they were beating him?” That’s when I went into something I’ll call my “semantic mode” evaluating the issue itself, the disposition of those involved to predicate their opinions (and/or their biases) and any underlying issues.
Based on that article (and several other articles and discussions I’ve seen, read and participated in) I have realized 4 things about racism and culture:

1) People are only oppressed when they choose to be – fighting to the death – although very extreme and unpretty - is an option
2) The “millennials”, kids born in the 80’s and later, live in a whole different world than we did and our parents did – i.e. they have no concept of what a “colored” water fountain was or being chased and sprayed with water hoses while trying to vote except through the same medium as music videos and cartoons (television), the internet and books so they are very desensitized and/or detached.
3) If someone is doing bad things to me (hitting, beating, berating), it doesn’t matter what they call me (nigger, darkie, homey, brother man, lover) that doesn’t make any less comforting.
4) After this changing of the guard (leadership roles transitioning from one generation to the next) a lot of our new leaders will probably not have first hand knowledge of the racial disparity of the 60’s, and although I wouldn’t go as far as to say they won’t care, I will say that the greater concern will be a global society. There are more multiracial children than ever before and the world is getting smaller, not larger.

True the N word does have racist origins, but then again if you dig deep enough or follow enough lore a whole bunch of stuff does. Now I will admit I’m only 34 so I never experienced any of the stuff that happened in the 60’s, but I do realize that it paved the way of equality for people of color in the US, notice I said in the US because the N word is only used here (aside from being repeated by rap music fans wordwide who “learned” it’s a “cool” word from rap culture.) However, I think that we as a people should not allow ourselves to be oppressed, or rather give so much power to a word. Racial bias exists everywhere, not just here. It would be interesting to know if there is a slur that Japanese call Chinese or vice versa and so on and if there is so much angst against it. My points are that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Long gone are the days when there was one guy that could represent “all the black folks.” Even if Martin Luther King was alive today he would not, neither would Malcolm X…not Farrakhan, Colin Powell, Bill Cosby or Oprah. So with all these varied upbringings, life experiences and points of view I think it is clearly time to move on. I liken it to…say a close relative that died, and every time somebody mentions their name, you burst out crying “Aw lawwwd, she’s gone! Why she have to leave me. WHYYYYYYYYYY?!?!!” 40 years later, you still have the same reaction, grandkids asking “Whats wrong with him. Who is he talking about?” At some point, its time to realize the change and move on.

Now I will say I don’t think this gives “non—blacks” an opportunity to go a verbal spree, but then again they do that anyway with sex and violence now.

I guess social awareness is the term I’m looking for. I've never been real big on racial epithets anyway. It’s not a nice word so don’t use it, but its not kryptonite people, come on. But like I said, if that’s coming at the raising of a stick, drawing of a gun or raising of a fist, that’s something different.