I have always found my solace in the words of wisened others. Pouring over pages has saved me from peril again and again. Reading extensively has informed, inspired, and instructed me. I take words pretty seriously — sometimes they have been all I had.
I have an honours human science degree which means I wrote 3.7 essays my whole undergraduate career. When I first started grad school I nearly had a nervous breakdown over the citation software. For the past 64 weeks I have written one or more essays a week.
I care a whole awful lot that I communicate knowledge in a way that others understand and can relate to. Excellence is important to me — so is empathy.
I have consumed every resource like my life depended on it, because in a sense, it does. What I didn’t know damn near killed me and destroyed everything I conceived, birthed, and nurtured. We survived — but other peoples lives will be at risk for where I lack competence.
I have not thrown books at the wall — but I have felt like it. I have not publicly cursed academics but privately I have sworn like a sailor. I have passionately loved some folks I interacted with and observed others I am certain sold something solid in their soul.
Knowledge is power and the fundamental frame of empowerment. We must know to speak and we must speak to know. To thieve knowing and speaking is to sterilize into servitude and obscure into oppression.
One thing that three years of therapy and grad school has endowed to me — never again will someone persuade me to think their thoughts and act on behalf of their bidding.
Never again will I allow another to control my speech, thought, or action.
No.
These are mine now.