The Second Paper from my Dissertation is Here!

Friends. This paper was a labor of love. When I was re-reading the data to craft this paper, all of the conversations and emotions came flooding back in...some days I cried like a baby after of the interviews.

This paper 'Black Doctoral Women "Walkin' on Eggshells": Gendered Racial Microaggressions in Agricultural and Life Science Departments' explores participants' experiences with gendered racial microaggressions in their academic departments. I learned that these women experienced three types of gendered racial microaggressions, how it affected them, and how they coped with them.

I know I don't have a lot of publications (yet), but this is my favorite one so far. Here's why:

1. The paper partially presents data in a counterstory in the form of a poem which is comprised mostly of participants' data. The use of the counterstory allowed me to present data with fewer concerns for confidentiality.

2. I got to cite not only scholars I look up to, but also friends and colleagues who do similar work.

3. The recommendations for practice and research - one of my reviewers pushed me to stretch my thinking. I really love how they turned out.

4. The final assertion that Black women have the right to be joyful and angry and to feel the full range of emotions that everyone should have the right to feel and express....the right to be human. After continuously being treat like trash, anyone would be angry, and rightfully so.

Because of the political climate, I don't know that many departments will be able to act on some of my recommendations. But I hope that faculty and administrators who have the power and influence to make change take my recommendations to heart and make moves toward cultivating more equitable learning environments for their students.

Given the state of *gestures widely* everything, this research is especially important. Stories like these should not be silenced or ignored.

Giving flowers...

I have to thank:

• Errica, Karla, Ebony, and Jayei for their openness and willingness to participate in my study. When recruiting participants for the study, some women reached out to say that they were interested but couldn't participate and wished me well. Others signed up for the study and withdrew because they were scared of repercussions from their department/institution.

• Alexandra Pirkle for their help in formatting the poem. Friends, I am not a poetry person...as far as I do not write good poetry. Roses are red, violets are blue, I leave poetry to the professionals, to spare you. That's it. That's all I got lol. When I sent Alexandra the poem, it was in rough shape. The words were there, but they made it art. ✨

• Reviewers C and D. These reviewers pushed me to develop sharper recommendations and a stronger call to action. They supported my use of poetic counterstory and stressed to the editor the need for it to stay in the paper in its original form. Their suggestions also helped with flow, readability, and clarity.

• My postdoc supervisor, Dr. Yvette Pearson, for helping me work through my response to Reviewer A* and for always supporting my work.

*A note on Reviewer A...

Reviewer A had some...interesting feedback. One was that my results did not directly connect to agriculture despite being very clear that these women were enrolled in agricultural doctoral programs. they also felt like the poem was an ineffective use of space and that work presented in this way was "not appropriate" for the Journal of Agricultural Education audience. Who decides what is "appropriate"? This kind of narrow-minded thinking contributes to epistemic exclusion of folks who do this kind of work, but that is a blog post for another day. And if you're asking 'what about Reviewer B?' There was no Reviewer B lol.

[Screenshot of first page of paper]

I am annoyed this work is necessary, but I am honored to do this work for, with, and about Black women.

Let me know if you have any issues trying to access my paper; I will gladly send it to you!

✌🏾