I got a story to tell.
Yesterday, I was running errands when one of my former students stopped me at the local supermarket. She’s a manager there and she told me, “Mr. Vilson, did you do something recently that I should be congratulating you for?”
Me: “I think so? I just passed my doctoral dissertation defense.”
Her: “Oh yeah! My sister showed me something about it, so congratulations!”
Me: “Thank you! And really, I couldn’t have gotten it without you, your sister, or my other former students, so thank you! Also, I’m proud of you!”
She did a cutesy back-kick and hands-to-chin pose and said, “Thanks!”
Moments like the one are when I’m grateful that I never lost sight of my higher purpose for my work. Up to that point, I had spent weeks stressing whether I’d even have the chance to defend my doctoral work. These signs from the universe keep moving me forward as I build this work in the university.
My son got to witness all of this as we perused the local market. Fresh off a second round of edits, I needed reminders of why I embarked on the journey to begin with. Back in 2019, I applied because I felt called to study the teaching profession with race and policy in mind. In 2020, a global pandemic put these societal troubles front and center. In August, I endeavored on sociology, a field that pulls together a myriad of factors to theorize how the world works.
Teaching middle schoolers, by comparison, is more aligned to that task than folks imagine.
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.