Following my withdrawal from graduate school, I received an email from a professor that said:

“[I hope that you can] ‘be like water’ and find ways around the barriers to graduate education.”

It’s taken me a bit to understand why these words feel frustrating. Because his intention, I think, was encouragement and optimism.

So why do I feel conflicted?

It’s this implication that I can, and should regularly, move over/under/between/around barriers that serve no purpose but to keep me out (and maybe, to prioritize profit).

It’s so often accepted, that I nearly accepted it myself.

When I say “alignment” I’m talking about the process of ensuring that what we do and what we value is a cohesive experience. ALIGNMENT is the ‘lining up’ of your life, your work, and your day-to-day experience with what your Soul holds most valuable.

You can (often) determine what you value by noticing what you’re doing now… and what you’d like to do next:

• Does your life right now line up with what you value?

• Do the dreams you hold line up with what you value?

• Do you know what you value?

THE PROCESS of aligning your actions with what you value requires your Orientation toward what you want and what you believe - and then your (regular!) Calibration toward those things.

I made this "choice" from a slew of non-options, in honor of myself and in defiance of unfair, unjust practices within academia.

It was a hard, painful decision - because I’ve planned to return to school since I graduated in 2014; but it’s also the decision that feels most in alignment with who I am and what I want now.

I feel grounded in this choice. But also I’m grieving, I’m raging, I’m releasing.