“Black girls cannot genuinely think of their futures until they feel safe in the present.”

These are the words of Dr. R Nicole Smith, now an assistant professor at the University of Memphis, in the English Department. I heard these words spill from her lips when I attended her job talk the spring that I received my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry). A tear stood in my eye from being seen in the research of another Black woman. Before her visit, I had no clue Black Girlhood was even an actual area of study. Her words made me even more excited about sticking to my decision to go straight into pursuing a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies right after the masters.

Fast forward to the week after dancing across the stage to shake President Hardgrave’s hand and firmly grasping my diploma, I find myself shaky about that decision. I went to lunch with one of my instructors to celebrate my recent accomplishment and brought up the fact that I would have to find funding outside of the department. I was baffled at this, considering the fact that I spent the past two years teaching for the department and was under the impression that I’d instantaneously be considered for funding in this place I’ve come to call home. She gently emphasizes the complication of budget cuts, low enrollment university wide, and a host of other factors as an answer for my devastation.

“Well, that’s academia for ya.”

This statement she offers a-town stomps around my ear and I’m left to reconcile whether it should land as warning, encouragement, or a challenge in my mind. I did not fully understand the heart and beast of this statement until the eighth week into my program. For a Black woman pursuing a PhD that has no family members or close family friends who have obtained a doctorate, let alone a bachelor’s degree, this is a terrain that continually terrifies yet emboldens me.

One week, I’m asked to meet with an instructor due to the ‘tension’ felt from an in-class discussion around the topic of slavery and the next, my proposed topic for a conference paper that challenges a traditional poetic form is dismissed by another instructor in front of my peers in a different course. Oh, and that’s just the giants I’ve had to slingshot on campus. I’ve had to navigate and knuckle up against the personal feats of grief, assault, mental turmoil, and growing in faith and creativity. For the past few months, I have pushed so much of myself down in order to have capacity for the academy and I. AM. EXHAUSTED.

Being a PhD student is being expected to consume material and produce manuscripts as if you are a machine. Being a Black doctoral student is to constantly be aware of how hyper visible and invisible you are in every room you step in. It is living in a realm where you must choose between butter or battle ax as your response to being in spaces where others thrive on intentionally and unintentionally misunderstanding, undermining, and erasing you. It is being told and expected to separate your personhood from your professionalism to continue fueling this cult-like enthusiasm that blatantly mislabels what really is abuse and discrimination as tradition. It is having to hopscotch in your head which thoughts and theories you choose to offer in discussions for fear that they will be misconstrued and/or appropriated.

Being a Black PhD student is roaming, seeking fertile land and floor plans only to feel the weight of knowing that you are the blueprint and must build for a future sometimes only you have the vision to see.

To be Black woman, doctoral student, poet, goofball, and everything else that I choose to be under the Sun and over the moon, is absolutely necessary and will not go hushed or overlooked. I am both butter and battle ax and refuse to be split in half for the sake of others comfort. I belong exactly where I am, as I am.

Dear Black woman pursuing that degree, whether it’s your first one or your hundredth, heed James Baldwin’s words:

“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it”

Keep showing up. Bloodied. Bold. Brilliant. You are a trailblazer who does not have to be another trope of strength or independence to be taken seriously. You take yourself seriously and you take yourself out for ice cream. You are just as beautiful as you are complex. You live wildly and wisely, in the dualities, between the contradictions, and trust that your choice to keep going belongs to you. Be as fire as you feel, be as feather as you float. It won’t be easy and sometimes you’ll lose hope. And when hope goes to let herself out, show her this note when you’re at war with your doubts.

Bio: Madison ‘Mocha’ Hunter, a Detroit, MI, native, is a spoken word artist/poet, tutor, consultant, copyeditor, traveler, and professional vinyl record hunter. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies and a certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Memphis.