Surviving and Thriving
Throughout 2022, The Graduate Student Success program hosted several pop-up exhibits in departments and units to explore anonymous stories from graduate students of color through interactive storyboards. Now the pop-up exhibit is available in a digital format.
We invite you to share your comments, ideas and feelings using the links to Padlet, an interactive and anonymous sharing platform. We hope to gather information and ideas in order to learn and strategize for student success and wellbeing.
Thriving #1
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Surviving #2
I felt like my ears were ringing as all my cohort members were casually talking around me. I felt so alone and like I had no one to talk to about the hurt I felt about yet another racial injustice.
In the past, I could turn to my community and grieve and contribute to some form of healing. But here I had no one. I went to a bathroom on another floor, and I just sobbed in the stall. And I questioned why I was even in graduate school so far from my community.
It felt like I wasn’t doing anyone any good by being in such a white space. I went home that winter break and seriously contemplated quitting.”
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Thriving #3
The resources were valuable, both as practical resources, and [as] ways to connect with others. I even took improv classes and embraced being vulnerable, something I had avoided in the past.”
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Surviving #4
Isolated, made to feel different and of less potential as an academic from the moment I entered the door, to eventually receiving the suggestion that maybe I should just go. This is my experience at UNC-Chapel Hill.”
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Thriving #5
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Surviving #6
Even with the support and wisdom from the resources and people I trusted, I soon realized that it would not be enough to bring a sense of community, certainty, or safety in the classroom.
I would sit for three hours in graduate seminars, feeling intense sensations in my body, holding my breath at times, fidgeting my hands and toes, feeling so isolated or not smart enough to engage in the discussions.”
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Thriving #7
IME is where I could talk about all the things that were happening with my advisor and had staff at IME not stepped into the situation, I probably would have been pushed out of this institution.”
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Thriving #8
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Surviving #9
I have spaces that make me feel positive and others that make me feel inferior. I have protected myself from being completely vulnerable in certain spaces or have avoided certain people in order to maintain my own sanity.”
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Surviving #10
My performance as a student took a significant hit, and my department’s response was to tell me that I am not self-motivated enough to handle the independent nature of the dissertation process.”
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Thriving #11
The Initiative for Minority Excellence has been a sanctuary, along with my carefully curated dissertation committee. Cross-disciplinary gatherings of fellow graduate students have also offered solidarity and reprieve.”
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Surviving #12
The aftermath is that I feel immobilized and that I should not take up space, since I am still trying to best examine where I am racially positioned and understanding when and where I am more or less helpful.”
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Thriving #13
I have felt supported by the Carolina Latinx Center; they’ve been a wonderful resource and important to my development as a scholar.”
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Surviving #14
Well, the first semester, I felt like I had no one. I was one of two Black women in my program at the time and the other Black woman was an advanced grad student who was not around much. I was struggling academically, but also socially.”
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Thriving #15
Once I started to go to IME events in year three, I started to feel much better—like I fit.”
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Surviving #16
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Surviving #17
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Thriving #18
The Graduate School (Diversity and Student Success program) always feels like a space I know I can lean back on when I need it. Their emails and programming let me know that work is being done and that people care, even when I cannot attend.”
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Surviving #19
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Thriving #20
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Surviving #21
Additionally, the presence of my many unique needs cause much distress for the faculty in my program, intensifying the already isolating nature of my Ph.D. studies.”
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Surviving #22
My imposter syndrome is through the roof especially as it feels like every other class topic gets to the point where we are again pointing out the deficits in support or lack of positive outcomes for children and families of color in various fields of development.”
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Thriving #23
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Surviving #24
The perpetual foreigner stereotype that is racialized for Asians is something I accept and has helped me see that I am a foreigner in this town in many different senses. I have come to embrace this. The battle of making this place home is not one I want to fight, and this mental shift is liberating.”
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Thriving #25
I saw a space for myself at UNC-Chapel Hill in ways I didn’t see during my first semester when I was isolated in my department. So, when I think of my experiences of Carolina, I think of IME, and that’s nothing but love.”
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Surviving #26
Even when I tried to bring it up at a town hall meeting, I felt the anxiety return as both grad students and faculty remained silent and did not respond to my own challenges of feeling part of their community.”
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Thriving #27
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Surviving #28
For a while I felt lost. But I recognize the effort of different departments in the University (such as Diversity and Student Success) that have worked to keep us going.”
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Thriving #29
Most of my friends are first generation students and we really connected through our experiences as a first-gen.”
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Thriving #30
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Surviving #31
Upon entry into my program, I was the only person required to do a second master’s [degree] because they “didn’t know who trained me.” I was also told to take only intro-level coursework since I had been out of school for a while to “get used to things.” However, I later discovered that the other first-year students were taking advanced courses.
I was the only Black person, the only person not taking the same courses as everyone else, and people in the cohort were directly asking me why I wasn’t in their classes. I stood out like a sore thumb. I began avoiding campus because I felt like I did not belong.”
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Thriving #32
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Surviving #33
I have had a white classmate ‘explain’ racism and oppression to me, as if my own definition was somehow lacking. My personal favorite microaggression has been the weaponization of white tears when I refused to give an in-depth analysis of a concept from class.”
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