Growing up, my Nana would tell me, “Shoot for the moon…and you’ll always land among the stars.” But what happens…when even the stars aren’t attainable?
Throughout my journey in higher education, I have been trained to do several things. To be in my head more than my body. To use bench science techniques. And to translate data into real stories in the same way that my Nana translated her wisdom into divine prophecy over me. Currently, as a Ph.D. Candidate, my dissertation examines the relationship between childhood perceptions of safety and later experiences of community violence. As I am now questioning what it really means for Black folx to feel safe in this country, I have no choice but to reckon with my own answers. Upon starting my Ph.D. as a Black, first-generation student, I had no doubt that obtaining later employment in academia would equate to safety. Lately, it feels like that definition has been breached. And I have no choice but to scaffold it with uncertainty.
The latest policy changes in the United States are not uncomplicated for those of us who dare to be Black, under-resourced, and under-protected as we finish our doctorate degrees in public health. Be it the withdrawal from the World Health Organization or the major shakeups to federal and government agencies, the swift moves now limit future options for those in graduate school who face present challenges with limited financial aid, cultivating a sense of belonging, and obtaining opportunities. Our most ambitious goals as students must now be confined to answering the following questions: Will money be available? Is a career in academia sustainable? And will debt be our forever story?
The immediate factor that’s remapping our new pathways and possibilities is money. The new mechanics of student aid, loans, and grants are transforming whether we choose roads out of passion and purpose or pivot onto highways where the salary is higher, but the satisfaction is diminishing. For many doctoral students where family contributions are little to none, the calculus attempts are grand and stockpiling. We add up how much we will survive if we accept a postdoc and find the square root of our thriving with the steadier paycheck that government, consulting, or industry work brings. The many adjustments to the Department of Education by way of the One Big Beautiful Bill have changed not just our potential amount in our checking and savings accounts…but the dreams we once had to finance them.
What does this mean for me and other soon-to-be PhDs?
For starters, it means we must grieve. We must unmoor from what we thought the world would be after graduating. We must weep at night, and yearn…that joy will indeed come in the morning. Because we are no longer just defending our dissertations to graduate to the next best thing. We are now defending our work and forced into precarity. In its recent job report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, the highest it has been since the most devastating peak in April 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic), and the economy has only added 22,000 jobs. This report not only reflects a betrayal of working families, but it also speaks to economic uncertainty and what that means for graduate students currently.
As Black graduate students, to forge ahead, we must do what those who have come before us have always done to survive. We must continue to hope. We must continue to be in solidarity. And we must continue to dream. Across the diaspora, Black folx and students alike are looking for new ways to stay safe, build, and be free during and after a retrenching and regressing government and job market. This is the time to align our efforts with the lessons from the many Black feminists, Black abolitionists, Black women, Black queer folx, and others in the Black community, who have offered community-based, collective solutions to oppression. As students, this includes: utilizing community, intimacy, and love as acts of resistance in times of unrest (e.g., mutual aid among classmates, sending job postings, co-working to write and apply for jobs, safe relationships to unmask ourselves) and making an active effort to dream and reimagine ourselves (e.g., journaling, collective storytelling, creative retreats) despite the oppressive white supremacy, and patriarchal and capitalistic violence around us.
If this piece is a war cry, it is not just to prepare us for a battle ahead- be it graduation or seeking employment- but it is also for recognition. I see you. I hear you. And I am right here with you in hopes that what my Nana told me can ring true.
That we can reach for the moon and maybe, just maybe, the stars are attainable after all.