A WISH LIST FOR THE EMOTIONALLY EXHAUSTED

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

It’s that time of the semester when students and faculty alike are exhausted. This time is always the point at which my students start to break down. Their absences are more frequent. Their requests to extend assignment deadlines increase. They start to panic about their final grades.
 
This is the time that exhaustion also creeps into professors’ bodies. We start to get sick. We hit snooze more often. We need extra shots of caffeine to get through the workday (and in my case sixth grade homework).
 
Sound all too familiar?
 
I am feeling more emotionally exhausted than usual, and when I considered the reasons, I realized that I could not point to one cause. What I realized instead is that I’m feeling the cumulative effects of a consistent stream of challenges, including macro and micro aggressions.
 
Because there are so many, I chose a list format to catalogue them in this post. As a restorative to my own emotional well-being, I decided that a wish list was an appropriate way to remind us all how we might be/do better for each other.

1. I wish my son’s sixth grade teachers would read what Alfie Kohn says about how useless and damaging most homework really is.
2. I wish I were disciplined enough to write outside the company of my adult baby-sitters. (Wink, wink, I meant to call them my accountability partners.)
3. I wish my Georgia peeps would stop wishing for warm weather to go away.
4. I wish for a public show of support for those who take great risks to speak up rather than the private thank you they often get when no one else is around.
5. I wish truth mattered to all people, especially presidents.
6. I wish I committed to exercise with the same intensity I have for eating.
7. I wish people did not pretend my voice matters when it really does not.
8. I wish people would start calling their friends more for no other reason than to just listen.
9. I wish women of color academics were not greeted with suspicion when we ask hard questions.
10. I wish my Generation Z students would not try to argue with me that any rapper since the early 2000s belongs on a Greatest-Rappers-of-All-Time list.
11. I wish my students evaluated my teaching effectiveness on my actual teaching rather than their racist assumptions about Black women professors.
12. I wish more brilliant Black women were not leaving academe because their institutions did not value their many significant contributions.
13. I wish I had more emotional energy right now because my son deserves more support from me as he navigates a constant barrage of unfamiliar middle school expectations.
14. I wish women of color faculty good luck as they navigate higher faculty ranks and take on administrative roles. I hope you remember that we are supporting you to make decisions based not only on your personal gain—which we celebrate—but also on our collective interests.
15. I wish for more bowling Tuesdays with my university friends. You know who you are.
16. I wish meeting time was spent engaging in vigorous intellectual debate about how best to support students.
17. I wish Black women in the academy were not mammy-fied into fixing other people’s messes, feeling forced to smile through our pain, and agree even when we disagree.
18. I wish fake social justice scholars would take a seat and get out of the way of legitimate social justice scholars doing the hard work of dismantling oppression. 
19. I wish I had more time and space to write about social justice education instead of constantly having to protect myself and my son from social injustice.

 
I have one final wish, and this one is big. It’s my wish for everyone reading this post because it’s why I continue to stay in academe.

1. I wish more people had a set of scholar-teacher-activist friends like I have, who love me unconditionally, who always tell me the truth even when I do not want it, who do not construct me as the angry Black woman, who value my work as significant, and who see me in my full humanity. You know who you are.

 
For those of you who have such friends, you know the deep gratitude I feel every day. For those who don’t (yet), keep looking because authentic, compassionate friendships are possible. And we need each other now more than ever. 

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Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.