Be Your Wildest Dreams: You're Never Too Old to Start Over

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Joecalih on Unsplash

Every year I witness magic. When is your turn?

First, the inspiration for this article, below, from

Jenn M. Jackson, PhD

Six years ago I became the first PhD in my family. Just a first generation college kid from East Oakland. A Black queer girl who barely survived the teenage years.

I am my wildest dreams 💜

I loved that last line so much I saved this for an article. This one.

Every year I speak at a conference of minority PhD students. The Southern Region Educational Board’s annual event is the largest gathering of PhD students, candidates and grads in the country. This year will make 23 years for me.

Every year I watch an increasing number of mostly Black but also Latina, Asian and American Indian students walk across a stage and take sixty seconds to do their “Oscar” speech.

We all cry. Why?

Because not only is this America’s future, but these people achieved their PhDs in a world set against them in every imaginable way.

Once they leave the relative safety of an SREB-supported program, they will face every kind of discrimination imaginable, including the breathtaking claim that they didn’t earn their PhD.

Some of them earned their PhD in cancer research which may save the lives of the assholes asking those rude questions. Many of them did their work in neighborhoods where bullets rip through the walls. Some of them lost family members during the years they studied.

At a time when White folx all too often have their parents pay for Kenyan kids to write their college papers, or AI to do the work, these students are doing the work. Why?

Because they are under the most intense scrutiny imaginable.

They HAVE to do it right. Their work has to be unimpeachable.

So many earn PhDs to even be considered on a par with the least educated White folx, a travesty that continues to irk me so much I will leave it there. If you want a better understanding of the world they are about to enter please see the book Qualified, by

Shari Dunn

.

But there’s a greater question. As all of us lick our wounds and try to deal in a world that is so full of hate right now, what are you going to do about living YOUR life?

When are you going to be your wildest dream?

Every year at the end of October I watch hundreds of young minorities march across the stage and celebrate their PhDs in physics, math, social work…that’s their wildest dream, in the face of too many people who told them “little brown girls/boys don’t get PhDs in math.”

Yeah, they do. And yeah, they earned it.

They are, in that moment, their wildest dreams. Then they get to craft another in face of unimaginable headwinds, often doing work in the service of the human source of those headwinds.

Many of us don’t face those headwinds. We face other kinds. These young adults are made stronger and more resilient. What will we do with the challenges tossed our way?

When will we be our wildest dream, no matter what’s in our way?

Let’s play.

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

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