with Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu This week, Dr. Reka C. Barton (@thescholarlysewist) discusses the topic of grief and loss during a doctoral program. Dr. Reka is a graduate of the Joint Doctoral Program with San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University. She received her BA in Psychology and Master of Teaching in Elementary Education from the University of Virginia and served as an elementary school teacher for ten years. Dr. Reka recently began her role as Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow at the University of San Diego as she continues her work as a Black Girlhood Multimodal ResearcHER who examines educational experiences through linguistic and equity perspectives.Dr. Reka shares her experience with grief after losing her brother, Greg, during her doctoral program....
with Dr. Melissa Abeyta
In this episode, Dr. Reka Barton discusses her positionality on being a Black educator, how she’s merged her talents by being the Scholarly Sewist, and dropping academic visuals as mixtapes to make the research accessible for the community.
Back in college, I had a professor who hated me. Okay, maybe I am being a bit dramatic, but she definitely made my educational journey more difficult, or at least she tried. Let’s call her Professor P. Professor P, is a well-known educator and researcher, and even became the department chair of the education program while I was a student. She taught the only year-long course in the elementary education program, Literacy Methods. While she had all of these accolades, she seemed to not vibe with me or who I was becoming. Professor P passed back our first assignment of the semester, it was a book review. I thought it was relatively easy, probably should have spent a little more...
I am PhinisheD! And I am Tired! On May 13, 2022, with friends and family all around me, I graduated with my PhD in Education from San Diego State University! I partied all weekend, and celebrated this extraordinary occasion with many of my favorite people! And then I was EXTREMELY exhausted. For days. Then I would think that my energy was reset, and I was back to myself, then I was exhausted again. I wasn’t working out, or staying up super late, and was wondering what in the world was making me so exhausted! I had to remind myself, Reka, you just finished the most grueling, arduous, FOUR YEAR LONG project. Your body got you to the finish line, and...
I played with this title, a year in grief, of grief, with grief? To me, each of those words mean something different, and their inclusion would resonate as different things to me. I finally landed on A Year IN Grief. I am in it. It is all around me, it never takes a day off, and chile…. It’s exhausting. On one hand, I cannot believe it’s been an entire year since Greg died. On the other, this has been the LONGEST year of my life. Three things I wish people knew: IT DOESN’T GET EASIER: The hardest part of losing Greg so early in life is that I think constantly about how much more life I have to live without...
