I'd like to start this post by giving props to Dr. martin Luther King Jr, without whom I likely would never have been given the opportunities to continue my education or even start it on the path that I've taken thus far. He sacrificed his life to make America a better place and I am thankful for that contribution to society every time I wake up and am able to head out for class.
I am just getting back to Stanford after spending the weekend in Lake Tahoe for our Black Graduate Student Association's annual ski trip. I have only skied once before and all of my winter gear is back in my mother's garage in VA, so I didn't hit the slopes, but it was still and enjoyable trip. While we've got a tight group of Black folks at the GSB, our numbers aren't exactly large, so it was great to spend a weekend hanging out with other Black grad students and finding out more about what they are studying, what they want to do, and their life experiences. Some of the conversations that we had were really eye-opening and I found that I had a lot of shared experiences with the other folks. Two of the highlights were: the "Visible Men" breakout session that we had with the fellas to discuss our views about manhood and what we saw our roles as men to be; and a conversation that I had with my boys Detavio, Corey, and a group of the women from other grad schools (at the peak of the convo there were 10 of them) that went from around 2:00am until 7:00am and covered everything from what we were all looking for in a mate to the tradeoffs that women are forced to make when it comes to their careers...I learned a lot from both of those convos. It was an exhausting weekend, but I'm glad that I went because I now feel like a part of the campus-wide Black grad community, as opposed to just the Black GSB community.
Now that I'm back, i've got to jump on the homework that I didn't get a chance to do over the weekend. It's going to be a long night.
Posted by marquis930 at January 17, 2005 10:30 PM