It's Time To Break Down Barriers To Graduate Education
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.
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.
But the thing is…
I DO flow like water;
I am water.
I embody the Sacred Feminine element of Flow: ruled by the Moon, made visible by Water, Ocean, Stream.
Likewise, I am earth.
I embody the Sacred Masculine element of Structure: ruled by the Sun, made visible by Riverbeds and Ocean floors, Landmass and Earthy grass.
One does not exist without the other: Feminine and Masculine, Flow and Structure. “Flow needs a container, otherwise she’s a flood,” says Danielle LaPorte.
And I agree. But here lies the problem…
The Masculine boundaries, the container (the ones we're repeatedly asked to flow about and around)... that’s what impedes + prevents natural, creative Feminine flow.
The “rules” around the timeline for graduate school (and nine-to-five work and even general schooling for our kids) runs counter to anything that looks like FLOW:
If research says graduate students are six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression… why not change the structure of graduate school?
If research says that people are more productive with 30-hour workweeks than 40-hour workweeks… why not change the structure of the workplace?
If research says teenagers are happier and more focused after sleeping late… why not change the structure of schools?
Why not build Sacred Masculine Structures to allow for Sacred Feminine Flow?
Which is to say, who benefits from structures that prevent flow?
It’s not you and me, I can tell ya that.
Which is why I have ZERO desire to flow “around” barriers:
The barriers are the problem, not me!
Rules that prohibit womxn and families from prioritizing themselves; that’s the problem.
Rules that prohibit “non-traditional” students from admission to university, and then from the possibility for part-time status; that’s the problem.
Rules that you have to “work around” over and over again; that’s the problem!
I understand that, if the rules remain unchangeable now, we might be forced to find tricky ways to manipulate the rules, to get what we want and need in different ways.
But that’s just it:
The rules will remain unchangeable so long as we move “around” them (so long as we expect people to move around them)… when will we change the rules instead?
When will we, collectively, create Sacred Masculine structures of support that truly allow for Creative Feminine flow?
I’m not sure it’s possible within my lifetime: to change the way our governments work, to change the way our society interacts.
But what is possible (in part due to my privilege as a white woman from a middle-class community in the United States) is changing the way I do business, the way I show up to my family, and whether or not I “accept” the boundaries put in place to keep me small… or fight against them.
In my case, by creating a completely different Sacred Structure for myself, my family, and the people I work with.
Thoughts on this? Tell me all about it in the comments below.
until next time, alycia buenger
How I'm Aligning My Work With My Values
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.
The last several years of my life (and perhaps, its entirety) have been about the adjustments required to genuinely embrace my individual and purposeful experience here.
Whether I’m the one making radical changes or the one presented with radical choices, there’s been a lot of “alignment” work (and re-alignment to follow).
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?
To Orient yourself toward what you value most (what you want and what you believe): Imagine pointing your bow and arrow toward those things.**
To Calibrate (and Re-Calibrate!) toward what you value most (what you want and what you believe) - even if / when those things change: Imagine making small adjustments to your posture, your hand placement, and your breath as you point your bow and arrow toward those things.
Sometimes you will make active choices to align (or not) with your Soul-Self and her Values. Other times you will be presented with Radical Challenges that require your active choices to align (or not) with your Soul-Self.
And whether we make a Radical Change or we’re faced with a Radical Challenge, we can actively make choices to align with ourselves (or not).
What I’m currently grappling with (and a life-lesson I’m still learning) is that ALIGNMENT DOESN’T ALWAYS FEEL GOOD.***
My exit from graduate school seems like a Sacred Re-Calibration toward my deepest Soul-Values… but it doesn’t feel good.
Losing a pregnancy last month seems like a Divine Initiation for taking my next, big, scary steps into my Voice as a writer… but it doesn’t feel good.
In fact, both of these things feel like shit.
And yet.
I have never felt so impassioned in my Work-Life; I have never allowed so much balance within my Partnership with my husband (inside both easy and hard moments); and I have never been so confident in myself as a Mother to my girls, as primary decision-maker for their early childhoods.
The active choices I’m making inside this Radical Shift in my life don’t feel “good” so much as “right.”
And that’s ALIGNMENT: the kind of ‘hard work’ that feels important, purposeful, necessary. The kind of ‘lining up’ that cracks open possibilities that are my birthright (and yours, too).
with so much love,
alycia buenger
A FEW FOOTNOTES -
*Alignment isn’t always and completely possible inside an interconnected world plagued by patriarchal and racist systems that create an un-level framework for “choice.” My belief is that aligning our actions with our values is a divine birthright that’s been re-structured as “privilege” within our culture. But this is an untruth that requires our collection rebellion: Alignment with Soul is our birthright.
**This “bow and arrow” metaphor stems from a beautiful passage about parents and children from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran.
***Thank you to my dear friend, Kati Overmier, for helping me remember this Truth again and again.
Why I Quit Graduate School
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.
I was supposed to start grad school at the beginning of this month. But less than a week before the start of classes, I withdrew from term.
I found out, belatedly, that taking only one class per semester meant losing access to financial support; that scheduling the courseload that works for me and my family would require me to pay out-of-pocket, right now.
Something I hadn't planned for.
At first I felt defeated: one more barrier to my education.
And then I felt angry: the absurdity of it all! The exclusivity of academic institutions that highlight "diversity and inclusion" when they are doing everything possible to NOT diversify or include.
So I withdrew from fall semester, my program, and the university.
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.
I'm grieving what I thought I would be doing this year, yes. But I'm also feeling this intensity of grief that's not entirely mine: I'm grieving this loss for so many people, so many womxn, so many mothers who are locked out of university for reasons like this, and more.
I'm raging at the unfairness of rules that prevent so many voices (not just mine!) from entering spaces of academic research and study.
I'm releasing the three-year path to a graduate degree. Because I refuse to “choose” between paying out-of-pocket for the fewer classes I need or accepting the constraints of a scholarship or loan that asks me to do more than I can right now.
It's an honoring of myself, but it's also in recognition that these rules are limiting and unfair.
Even if I wiggle around barriers that limit who gets "educated," when, where, and how… what happens if they remain in place? who would I be helping if I focus only on getting myself into school?
In my statement of purpose for admission to graduate school, I said, “If I walk away from spaces (including university) that do not support me now, what does that say to future generations of womxn like me? What does that do for the next generation of mothers? And what does that say to my daughters?”
Because I thought that walking away from graduate school was the same as doing NOTHING to fight against these incredible challenges.
It's not.
Here's what I want my exiting grad school to say to other womxn, other mothers, and my daughters:
“First, we don’t need spaces of injustice to receive an education, to learn, and to become. We can do this, and better, without institutions that promote inequality and ‘oneness’ of path and choice. We do NOT have to accept unfair and manipulative rules as a form of power-over, for ourselves or for anyone else.
A degree is not everything; and sometimes, it’s nothing.
And second, there’s more than one way to fight these barriers to our education. Some people will fight from the inside, but some of us will fight from the outside - until access to education is actually a birthright (and not a compulsory one) for all of us.”
I know it sounds bleak, to have prepared this whole year for something that's now inaccessible. And YES, it’s hard.
But it also feels right; it feels in alignment with my Soul. It feels like I’m ready for something new, something different, something next.
Something that aligns with my life as a mother, too.
So, instead of graduate school, I’m creating An Artist Residency in Motherhood, "a self-directed, open-source artist residency to empower and inspire artists [writers] who are also mothers," created by Lenka Clayton (who I discovered through my friend, Sarah Shotts).
The residency is an opening to creating work not in spite of the challenges posed by motherhood by in alignment with my life as a mother, a writer, a thinker. (Which is exactly what university didn’t allow.)
The same time I had scheduled to attend class, read content, and write papers will be spent doing this work outside the classroom:
exploring my personal relationship (and our public relationship) with schooling, education, learning, and teaching
redefining the way I think about creating (it's not ONLY something I do alone; it's not ONLY something I do for fun) + the way I think about money-making (it's not ONLY something "other than" what I create)
creating alongside my life, as a mother of young kids and someone who "unschools" at home
You can read more about the specifics right here.
looking forward to sharing more soon, xx, alycia buenger