Shhh…I like it here! My First Class in PhD in English Program (Part 1)

Part 1: Backstory

I kinda wanted to keep this a secret but I must write a blog for my first class in a (now) second doctoral program.

Whelp, this fall, I, after much fanfare, decided to continue a journey I began in 2017: to complete a PhD.

I changed my major! I did not want to duplicate subject areas after adjunct teaching reading and public speaking/introduction to communication in higher education since 2004—what more can I learn?

Previously, I was enrolled in a private Catholic university doctoral program and completed five classes (quite proudly) with a 4.0 grade point average. The specialist degree in reading I earned at the same university provided an exceptional experience —to be frank, 95% of my success as an award-winning bonus winning reading primary and secondary teacher are due to the specialist degree. The instructors were phenomenal, the academic learning environment challenging, rigorous, exceptionally professional, and the format was heavily application. Every professor was an expert and passionate about literacy and reading. I met lifelong friends; many are in leadership positions in school districts.

I was very excited to return and enroll in the doctoral program in curriculum and instruction. Unfortunately, instructors changed and so did ideologies. The class instruction was incredibly liberalized and tediously exhausting with ongoing questions about the “urban Black child problem.” The expensive courses dragged for hours with student PowerPoint presentations littered with misspelled words and grammatical errors. Additionally, several instructors could barely contain their derision. One particularly snarky instructor was a spirited hilarious bigot except the jokes were not funny. The quantitative professors were exceptional, yet unsurprisingly, one of the gifted mathematicians left the university. It is sad when the talent leaves the building. Once I spent days working on a presentation only to observe another student arrive late, complete the assignment during another student’s presentation, present and be awarded an “A”.

Yes, I should have focused on my business and not concerned myself with what other students were doing. And yes, of course, there were exceptionally high level academic serious students in the program but there were distracting lackadaisical attitudes students with flippant care about due dates. Most of the professors nice? Yes. They meant well in the relaxed expectations. Or did they? The dissertations being approved were silly. The business model requires colleges and universities maintain student enrollment. I coin this the Warm Body Rule. Academic slop is being accepted to keep enrollment high. Dissertation titles were outrageously ignorant and if written by anyone other than a Black student—would not be approved. I found little comfort in reading the autoethnographic article by Henry (2015) detailing varying disappointing stages of academic ebbs and flows as a Black academic.

Hovering in the dark cloud of low expectations is a thoughtless refrain of “These are Black students…so…” Article titles with informal language (slang), lukewarm methodology, minimal scholarship value research submissions were acceptable.” Titles about Blacks (achievement, racism, pedagogical practices in predominantly Black schools, experiences being Black in all White learning spaces) are over researched yet: Approved! Black scholars are to write about what else? Being Black! Meh.