The Three Books: The Rise
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
-Somebody
During my master’s program, we studied organizational leadership. Our main text was Reframing Organizations by Lee G. Bolman and Terrance Deal. I promise, this is the first time I heard of or seen a White dude named Terrance. Wild. Anyhow, Bolman and Deal’s organizational leadership theory revolved around four frames: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. The latter is a struggle because I am not very symbolic nor sentimental by nature.
At work, we have our typical staff meetings, and we are asked to provide a high and low we experienced since our last meeting. For my high in one of our latest meeting, I grabbed one of my dissertation books and flaunted it to the team. As I am not one for symbolic gestures, I surprised myself with my fervent display. But upon further reflection, something deeper was happening, likely from a subconscious level.
When I began my doctoral journey, my intentions were to prepare myself for my career goal. A doctorate would make me competitive for positions I want to attain in the near and distant future. Otherwise, I could not care less about a doctorate. Before we get to my doctorate, we must go back in time. A time of stability. A time of freedom. A time of hedonism. A time of peace. A time of simplicity.
2009 - 2016: The Rise
After I graduated high school in 2002, my journey was somewhat tumultuous, but those experiences were sources of learning and development. We’ll save 2002 through 2009 for another day. Seven years after high school, I finally attained my bachelor’s degree. I was so relieved. During that time, I worked about 5 different jobs, was laid off (my department relocated to Dallas, Texas. More on Dallas later…), lost my best friend to death, lost my grandmother, ran into financial trouble, and lost my apartment. While finishing my bachelor’s, I worked full-time in the evenings, typically from 10pm to 6:45am, took a nap, went to class during the day, and went home to study before taking a nap to prepare for my 10pm shift. As a morning person, working graveyard was a nightmare. I also tutored P[re-kindergarten] through 12 students in the Los Angeles USD on the side. I am not trying to gain points nor sympathy because my college story is not unique. There were countless students who had substantially more to overcome than me.
I was now finished with college, and I had a day job now. I eventually got a quick promotion. I recovered from my financial problems, and was back in my bachelor pad, never to look back again after lessons learned. I had stability. I had good health after recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon. I was playing basketball. On average, I partied every other weekend and some Thursdays. I even had a nice streak as a bachelor for a few years. Life was great.
But life was going to be greater. Mid-streak I met someone, online no less. The first time I dated someone I met online. After a couple times spending time with her, I decided to put the others on pause to give her my undivided attention. If you ever had that feeling, you just know when you are around that person. You feel natural. You feel peaceful. You feel relaxed. And above all you feel completely like you and that other person wants exactly that: you. Life was easy. Life was comfortable. However, easy and comfort should not be conflated with optimal. I knew my life could be optimal with her in it, and I could hopefully do the same for her.
I decided that recess was over, and it was time to take my life to the next level. I entered my master’s program. I found the master’s program incredibly easy, but very demanding and somewhat annoying, if that makes sense. My professors were incredulous how I did not use much of a cheat sheet for my comprehensive exam (the cheat sheet could only be a 1-page double-spaced list of references). Easy work.
The Educational Leadership faculty decided to put on a full-court press to get me to enrolled in the doctoral program. Maybe it was because of my potential. Maybe because they needed a token Black guy. Maybe a little from column A, little from column B. I was ambivalent because I wanted to take a year off to explore my options, especially because my then girlfriend discussed wanting to leave California. However, she joined the full-court press and encouraged me to enroll in the program just to get it over with. I soon as I began the program, however, she decided to take a job in, you guessed it, Dallas (though it was technically Plano, Texas).
I was a little hurt by her decision, but I figured we can keep trying to test the strength of our relationship. So we had a long-distance relationship while I was finishing the class portion of my doctoral program with one of us flying to Texas or California about every other month.
Meanwhile, the doctoral program was not difficult for me, though it required more academic rigor. I made strides and glided through the program being one of the first people to present their research proposal in preparation for the formal writing of the dissertation. I was one of the first to get through their mock proposal defense, and was ready to be assigned a dissertation chair.
And with that, the end of The Rise.
To be continued…
