Expect the Unexpected

Before I made the mini-trek from Maryland to North Carolina last summer, I wondered if graduate school would be one of those experiences my mother always warned me about. I still hear her voice as clear as the day when she told me, “There will come a time and place where others will test you, but there will also be a time where you will need to test others.” Sounds like a yoda-ism right?

It wasn’t clear then, but now as a graduate student I can easily connect her words of wisdom to the experiences I’ve shared with my cohort and how these experiences continue to call attention to my identity as a Black woman. The dynamics within any cohort are based on individual personalities, however the unifying factor is the common goal: to strengthen the undergraduate student experience. With that being said, I have to acknowledge that racial identity, age, sexual orientation, and gender of the members in the cohort commonly affect how others interact or perceive each other, more so than their personality alone.

So, let’s be honest here. Being a first-year graduate student isn’t easy as it is, but when you tack on the intersectionality of being a Black woman in a group of predominantly White women, well… there will be many teachable moments.

A New Normal

I found my niche with five other women who also identified as Black/African-American within the cohort. Throughout the year, I’ve noticed that I don’t feel the same societal pressures with those women that I instinctively feel with the other women in my cohort. At times, it even feels like a competition between us vs. us creating a unified support system for each other.

It didn’t have to feel like a rat race, but I wondered what role we all played in fostering that environment as women in the cohort? I also wondered what made me feel this instinctive divide amongst the other women, besides the fact that they didn’t look like me. We did have a choice to all get along, right?

After many nights thinking about this, this is what I came up with as a response, not necessarily an answer.

Women working in higher education typically face many more obstacles than their male counterparts when looking to assimilate, influence, and ultimately progress in the field. This may in fact affect the way they interact or see other working women, starting with their experiences in graduate school. Naturally, women are always seeking to do and be their best self; but when it comes to higher education, women will go above and beyond to prove their competency and potential for growth.

We have to.

We’re trying to make a point, but we’re not working hard enough to create a new normal for women. We tell women that they’ll have to work harder than a man. We tell them that they’ll often be judged by their looks and approach. But, we fail to mention how important it is for them to just be. We’re so caught up with how we look, what other’s think, or our flaws, that we fail to be authentic.  

With the women of color in my cohort, there are no barriers, cattiness, and surely no saving face. We simply just accept each other for who we, in turn, learning to love our authentic self. As women, we are all our sisters’ keeper so we need to test each other to bring question to current norms and behaviors. I’ve definitely been tested and I’m still not entirely sure what it means to be a Black, female first-year graduate student studying higher education, but now I’m developing an idea of who I want that woman to be.

Now, I’m certain of who I need to be. 

Brandy Hall
Graduate Student
The North Carolina University at Greensboro