Category: Blog

There is a reason why most people dread hearing “So we will be doing group projects”. Maybe it is from historical tendencies of groups falling apart. Of the potential false niceties when there is tension or disagreements. Or inability to divide and fulfill group work.  

Truth is, most of us have not been successfully taught how to be in groups. Oftentimes, it is the instructor calling out randomized groups and then sharing what the end goal should be. Maybe everyone gets a separate grade based off of individual work, or a lump sum grade no matter what. 

But there is a reason why we hate group work – no one has taught us how to officially do it! And although the creation of this website that you see has been a successful group project, it was not free of small disagreements, awkwardness, and unequal divisions of labor. And that won’t change across the board for whatever groups we work in – especially as we embark into our careers. Yet, we still need to be aware of the work it takes to effectively communicate in the beginning and advocate for such conversations to be included in the coursework. 

There are whole majors and fields dedicated to such conversations. They are even here at Georgetown via the Conflict Resolutions, Project Management, Linguistics Master’s programs. 

So naturally, we should not be surprised that we aren’t masters at group work if we have not actually done any training on it! And that is okay – being aware is the first step into being better. 

Half of any group project will be the technicalities of the legitimate project, and the other half will be navigating the group. The latter is rarely ever considered a part of the grade or the success, but without it, the entire project suffers. 

So my reflection this semester in our ability to navigate this space together is this: we did an amazing job getting this whole website off the ground and should applaud ourselves for this. Sincerely, our previous semester’s work in bonding as a cohort has helped us. But not every space will have this, so I wish for our due diligence in learning more about how we can be better public humanists by learning the technicalities of working together. 

And if anyone is reading this and residing in Washington, D.C. – go check out Solid State Books. They are an independent bookstore and cafe, and if you go all the way to the back of the store, you can find some amazing books about group cohesion, boundary setting, leadership models, and all of that jazz. All of this is worth the read.

Let’s be real: Grant writing is more than just being able to write. It’s being able to follow instructions and to creatively, within reason, demonstrate why certain projects deserve, require, or should obtain certain funding. 

Have I ever written a grant? Nope, my fellow reader, I have not. But I have overseen similar processes for funding allocations, specifically for 1.2 million dollars. 

So let’s digress a little bit, for good reason. 

During my last two years in undergrad, I was president and financial advisor for student government which oversaw a 1.2 million dollar budget. Every March would roll around, and we would start the infamous budget allocation process. This process would determine which organizations would receive funding and for what projects for the next fiscal year. Some of these organizations would ask for $200, others would ask for $450,000. Normally, we would have a total ask of 3.3 million. 

 For months before the commencement of this process, we would share with the general assembly composed of student senators and student organization representatives, what parameters and guidelines would be used for the budget process. For the time period of submissions, we would host office hours, open workshops with food, Q&As – anything to help these organizations fill out these forms. 

Maybe a total of 5 organizations would show up out of the 145 organizations. 

Then the day of the deadline would roll around. We would hold our last office hours, generously until 11:59 p.m., and the influx of panicked emails and visits would happen. We would do our best to help them, but there’s not much you can do to rewrite a whole proposal ten minutes before the deadline. 

Budget committee would then assemble and for the duration of two weeks, go through Every. Single. Proposal. Three times. And how did we find ways to cut money? When proposals cut into our time. A cut for going over the page limit. Another for incorrect file type. Another for not following the proper order. Another for putting incorrect requests in the wrong areas. 

And some of these events would have been amazing. But how do you ignore the multiple errors of a proposal that could have easily been fixed just to help out that project when another group followed everything to the T? What could this also say about how they would handle the funding in the end? 

And I doubt these questions differ vastly from what our grant committees think of when they read through our future grant applications. 

So if we want to make this easier for ourselves: ask for help. 

There is no secret to successful grant writing. There is no secret spell, promo code, hidden words, or concealed process. And honestly, that is the beauty of it. 

Everyone gets (as much as we can figure out at the time) an equal shot. And yes, it can be annoying, time consuming, agitating even. 

But if that’s what it takes, so be it. 

Throughout my various jobs and graduate schooling, I have produced a lot of writing. Topics ranged from a grant proposal for collecting oral histories from voters with disabilities to a paper on why an incumbent congressman lost his reelection campaign in 2022. When trying to complete our recent creative nonfiction project, a hole in my writing resume became apparent: I never write about myself. 

I initially struggled with the project. I started and restarted the paper to no avail. I knew what I wanted to talk about; my struggle for a hobby and the hobbies other people picked up during the pandemic, but I couldn’t figure out where to begin. Eventually, after chatting with a classmate, the way I viewed the project shifted. I asked myself, if I was having a conversation with someone about the topic, instead of writing an academic paper, how would I go about it? The words started flowing then, and I decided to do a podcast instead of a paper. This way, I could tell my story of finally finding crochet during the pandemic with personality and zest and include an interview with my mom about crochet, as she is the one who taught me. 

Reading my story out loud has offered a host of other challenges. Such as the mouth noises I make when I speak, or trying to figure out how to provide quality recordings; however, overall making and recording a podcast has made writing and talking about myself more enjoyable. It feels like I’m sharing a neat story with a friend and not like I am divulging personal details about myself that I normally keep close to my heart. It may sound cheesy, as podcasts have exploded in popularity in recent years, but I highly recommend everyone try making a podcast episode at some point in their lives. It’ll not only capture a moment in time but also might change the way you tell stories.

Our second big writing project this semester was a personal essay. Luckily, I’ve been practicing this genre a bit in another class, otherwise the assignment likely would’ve felt overwhelmingly broad and un-academic. What am I arguing? And is my evidence just…me? I’ve journaled a fair amount throughout my life (mostly about supremely embarrassing things) so I have some practice putting internal thoughts and personal experiences onto paper, but what does it look like to use the personal in an essay—the purpose of which is to make some sort of point rather than to just help me process or remember? 

My chosen theme for this semester is crafting—how it’s used by different people, what’s it good for, why did so many of us turn to it during waves of lockdown? Ok, so my piece will need to be something personal of/from/to me and it will have to be craft related. I’m a moderately crafty person, but I wasn’t finding anything I’d be excited to write about until I thought about sewing in particular, the many projects I’ve watched my mom do over the years, and the stories she’s told me about her big sister teaching her. In a flurry of associations, I thought of all the craft-related things I know about my aunt—and significantly, how that’s most of what I know about her. Susie died before I was born, but through the skills she taught my mom and the physical objects she made and we’ve kept, I’ve been able to get a sense of the kind of person she was. 

We had a series of brainstorming exercises to do in class to help us come up with ideas for this project, and in that moment I had such a clear list of stories and an emotional resonance that I knew I was ready to go. I called my mom later to get a refresher on a few timeline points and to get some quotes about Susie, which doubled as a sweet moment of connecting with her about her sister. Writing this piece, I felt the duty of telling the story well as an expression of care and love. And focusing on other members of my family helped it be personal but not solely built on what’s going on in my head. I hope I was able to meet the brief and give a different sort of argument for the importance of crafts—but even more so I hope I was able to capture a piece of my family history beautifully and truthfully.

It’s just allergies, I think to myself on my walk to work, making my way to the campus of a law school in the downtown core of the city. The mighty blooming gingko trees outside our small rowhouse had covered our entire street in a thick, olive-green dust, which certainly was the reason behind my running nose and watering eyes. Oh, how I envy people who can simply exist during the spring without the assistance of Zyrtec and Flonase. 

Droplets begin to pour from my eyes as I reach the halfway point of my morning commute. Surely these tears weren’t for the six innocent lives lost at an elementary school yesterday in Tennessee, right? That feels so far from my reality as I trudge onward in the rising morning humidity. I justify my thoughts, thinking of how I live far away from rural Tennessee, and how I don’t even have kids. It’s just allergies, I reiterate as the last of my mascara is rubbed onto the back of my hand.

I wipe my nose as I continue on, catching glimpses of the beautiful spring tulips and daffodils popping up between buildings, their brightly colored petals mocking my discomfort. Surely these cheerful flowers, exuding pollen with every slight gust of wind, were the true culprits. They were the cause of my tears last May too, right? It couldn’t have been the eighteen-year-old who decided to ravage the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Curse you, ragweed.

I reach my workplace with a sigh of relief. As I enter the office building and begin climbing the stairs to the fifth floor, my floral enemies vanish instantly. Yet, my tears remain, steady as a flowing river. 

Perhaps, these tears are trickling out because of something more than just allergies. Perhaps, it is for the countless lives lost to gun violence, and the fear of that one day becoming my own reality. Much like my invisible allergens, I think I have had enough. Perhaps my tears are for a little more than just allergies.

As my sister once aptly observed, everyone in my family has a grasp on the art of the personal essay. I don’t think she meant that we can all whip out a perfectly written piece of creative nonfiction at the drop of a hat—although maybe my dad could; he used to be an English teacher. My mom probably could too. She’s a tormented genius. I think my sister just meant that we like to reflect on our own personal experiences, a lot. We’re probably all obsessed with ourselves. And, we all have a flare for writing. Put those together, and you have an environment ripe for personal essay creation. So, I guess you could say that writing about myself comes naturally. It’s genetic. I also genuinely enjoy doing it. Especially in school. It’s fun to insert my personal life into my academic life. I justify my enjoyment by reminding myself that many scholars do the same by researching topics that speak to their personal interests, even if they never use ‘me’ or ‘I’ in their work. They dedicate years of their lives to these me-search projects. That’s what I did for my undergrad history thesis, at least. I found a gap in the scholarship about gender, society, and England’s most famous opera. I explored this very niche area because I wanted to write about women’s issues, opera, and England. I’m obsessed with all three. Plus, I have personal connections to all three: I’m a woman, I sang opera, and 23andMe told me I’m 43% English. Maybe, I’m just so obsessed with myself that I couldn’t imagine spending such a long time on something that had nothing to do with me. Which leads me to another reason why I love writing about myself—it lets me explore my murky, possibly negative personality traits and really face them. For example, I chose to focus on my own vanity and its relation to my social media use for this week’s personal essay assignment. How fun!

I discovered the podcasts Code Switch and GirlTrek’s Black History Bootcamp during the solitary pandemic. GirlTrek was introduced to me by a fellow Black Woman as a meditative and community-building exercise for Black HerStory month. The podcast focuses on black leaders, their impact, and their influence as we navigated the tumultuous times of the COVID-19 pandemic and engaged in physical exercise. In the first season, there was a focus on female leaders and empowering black women, my favorite episodes in the initial launch are based on Audre Lorde, Esther Jones, and Angela X. 

Code Switch is an informative podcast started by National Public Radio (NPR). The creators and hosts utilize the popular phrasing to document the ways POCs adapt their modes of speech and ways of being in order to placate the predominant white culture. This podcast serves to correct historical misconceptions by including the voices of the most vulnerable and those least likely to hold power in history-making. Some of my favorite thought-provoking episodes are The Rise of the BBL, which analyzes the fetishization of black bodies, and The Folk Devil Made Me Do It which explores the historical linkages of moral panic to modern-day debates on Critical Race Theory (CRT). 

Though they have very different purposes, both of these podcasts grew in popularity amidst general podcast growth. They prompt us to think differently and tell stories that seek to reinstate power within these communities of color and validate their experiences with a journalistic perspective. There is certainly an issue of maintaining engagement and increased consideration for changes in social situations “post-pandemic;” however, this audio and video-paired podcast method could serve as an informative resource for community activists in the future.