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This is part 6 of the "Things No One Told Me About" series (see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5) developed and co-authored with Jessica P. Montoro. Jessica is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan.
Just as a reminder: Several of the topics discussed are specific to pursuing a Ph.D. at a research-intensive institution and in a full-time, fully funded program. With that in mind, a “dialogue” is shared between an advisee (Jess) and her advisor (Debbie) to provide two perspectives on a range of different topics. We don’t claim to have these figured out, but we think these posts could be used as springboards for conversations between mentors and mentees.
#6: You may feel constantly reminded that academia was not designed with you in mind.
Advisee: The emotional labor of admissions statements, fellowships, and grant applications for first-gen students is one aspect of the Ph.D. journey I wish was discussed more openly. I’ve had countless conversations with friends about how challenging it is to capture our complex narratives. Our lives are rarely linear, yet these types of statements require us to paint a linear, cohesive picture, all while accurately portraying both our oppression and privileges.
“As a first-generation Latina…” is the start of so many of my fellowship and grant applications. I also inserted this clause in my admission statements to graduate school. Other statements include:
- all of my and my family’s financial hardship, from the time I was born until present-day;
- any personal or family trauma;
- my family’s pursuit of the “American dream;”
- examples of how I identify and relate to any oppressed and/or marginalized group; and
- how I will attempt to address/resolve the marginalization of these groups through my research.
Sharing the obstacles you have overcome with anyone requires an incredible amount of vulnerability. Now imagine doing this repeatedly for admissions or awards committees. Divulging your life hardships in the hope of securing funding or prestige among future peers does not necessarily come naturally and is often incredibly uncomfortable. Not only can it induce more trauma, but it can lead to a certain desensitization of your experiences and the emotions that accompany them.
Moreover, for first-gen students, these stories are not only your own. They might be your parents', grandparents' or great grandparents'. Sharing someone else’s story often comes with a certain level of responsibility and amidst the stress of applying to said fellowship or grant, this task can feel quite burdensome and emotionally taxing.
First-gen students are often expected and encouraged to master putting your oppression on display as the center of many academic personal statements. From my experience, this request is often disguised as: “Is there anything interesting in your life that could make this statement stand out? Anything that would make the admissions or awards committee remember you?”
I often asked myself whether my white, non-marginalized, male counterparts were asked or encouraged to do the same. Is the idea that the more marginalized groups a student identifies with, the more “interesting” they might be to the committee?
I also want to acknowledge that for a lot of students of color, it is not a matter of whether they have these experiences of oppression — those experiences make up their daily realities and their life stories. Due to institutional and structural racism, experiences of racism and oppression are inevitable for Black and Indigenous scholars, both inside and outside academia. I acknowledge my privilege in that those are not my realities and I have a choice in whether I divulge these narratives or not.
Most of my earlier drafts for these statements do not start off this way and do not include these statements. Nonetheless, the statements always end up in my final draft of applications. I think there is this norm that first-gen students who identify with marginalized groups need to divulge these narratives for committees. Some doctoral programs or fellowships are designed to open up access for students with marginalized identities, with the ultimate goal of providing access to students who are rarely represented or included in academic spaces.
In writing this blog post, I really had to ask myself, what if I didn’t lean into this norm? What if my statements were not centered around these narratives? I continue to grapple with how to navigate this norm, as well as what it might look like to disrupt it.
When it comes to personal statements, I do think it’s important that we engage in more open dialogue about the emotional labor expected or explicitly asked of students. Academia should reflect on why first-gen marginalized students are often asked to share their narratives of oppression and put their trauma on display to gain access to these spaces. Most importantly, I think students should keep in mind that the parts of your story you share is always a choice.
Advisor: I really struggled with what to say in response to this issue, because I can see a few different ways to think about it. Ultimately, I think there are two levels to this question.
The first concerns putting your life history on display to people (such as selection committees) who haven’t necessarily earned the right to know about it. That feels problematic, to be sure, because it can feel like this form of emotional labor is part of the price of entry into academia for groups historically (and presently) marginalized by it.
The second level is that explicitly recognizing these oppressions is a reminder that this place and path was not designed for us. We have had to make a place for ourselves in academia. Sometimes an attendant narrative that is expected is one in which we have “beat the odds” or risen from the ashes in some way. And we need people with all kinds of stories, especially the ones that are least encountered in academia, to be here, to be teachers and producers of knowledge in every discipline.
As I was considering this, this poignant speech/performance by Dr. Rogério Pinto here at UM (Professor and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Social Work) came across my email. I watched it and thought, what else is there to say? In just six and half minutes, he distills the essence of the issues by asking us to consider, among other things:
“Who else should be here? How much diversity does one need to display in order to be included? How much of that diversity gets lost on the way to tenure? What structures are in place to keep certain groups in the majority? What ideas are taken seriously? Is it safe for me, now that I have succeeded, to be here? When will imposter syndrome stop, cease to threaten my well-being?”
As advisors, I will say we hear about and help students deal with a lot of these questions. Often, this occurs in what Dr. Ayesha Boyce (Assistant Professor of Education at UNCG) calls “closed-door conversations” in this outstanding webinar on mentorship of graduate students of color. When I heard that, I thought, "Yes! How many times haven't students asked, 'can I close the door?'" Over time, we have learned to ask, “should I close the door?” when a student is on the verge of sharing a painful or problematic experience.
This is yet another form of emotional labor, often invisible to others (for more on this, see here). And the better you are at this, the greater the requests for it. The reason we do this is often simply to pay it forward, as it is likely someone has helped you at some point to survive and possibly thrive in spaces that were not meant for you.
I encourage readers at all levels to watch both (note, publicly available) videos — they have helped me get outside of the box of my own thinking to imagine new ways to serve as a mentor-advocate. Rather than offer my personal takeaways, I invite you to use them as entry points for your own mentoring conversations and by considering the answers to their questions at the program and unit levels. That is, we all need to identify the strategies and practices necessary to make this work not only visible but equitably valued, rewarded, and recognized within our institutions.
