Something else we need to talk about in academia is information hoarding and how it often harms women of color the most.

When I got to grad school, I had no idea what tenure was or how it worked, what the NSF was, how to write research grants, I had never been groomed for grad school, etc.

I missed so many opportunities in my first two years while others in my cohort applied and won.

Grad school breeds competition and greed. It creates and sustains scarcity models that many academics take with them into the tenure track.

This is how many women of color are simply stalled and forced out of grad programs: they aren't nurtured, looked out for, or protected in the same ways.

Or, the expectation is that one advisor should know and be everything for every student of color. It's violent.

I was excluded from study groups, research projects, co-authorships, and tons of other opportunities because other academics were thinking about how to position themselves in the discipline and on the market.

It wasn't about solidarity or community.

When you are simply left out, folx can pretend like it was an accident or an oversight. Then, you get gaslit if you draw attention to it.

And, it doesn't end with grad school.

Even the programs that are created to groom students of color for grad school often overlook those of us who are first-gen, non-traditional students, parents, less monied, and not already connected to institutions and faculty with influence.

I will never forget having a whole degree in Industrial Engineering and having taught statistics before but having my classmates form a study group for our stats class without me.

Then they surveilled me and copied my answers and took credit for my work.

Many grad students who are functioning on capitalistic modes of production and patriarchal ideas about who produces knowledge then become professors who rarely co-author with women of color, frequently fail to cite our work, and perform pseudo-solidarity for platform building.

What's wild is: the discipline then expects women of color, especially Black women, to just silently nod our heads in rooms, on panels, at talks, etc. while these same people appropriate our work and commitments.

"Professionalism" is essentially a silencing tool.

And please don't be mistaken, Black and Brown academics gatekeep and information hoard, too. In my experience, those have been the most common and most painful examples of this issue.

Honestly, the worst thing I came into grad school with was the expectation that I would be treated with dignity and respect.

That was my error. And, I figured that out over five years in so many terrible ways.

One thing I will say is that my experiences have deeply informed how I mentor and support students, especially Black women students.

It just came at a great cost to me. Selah.

This is very true. There is a culture of secrecy in academia where knowledge of the "hidden curriculum" is used as capital. White men are often the first and most likely to be bequeathed that knowledge. https://twitter.com/BrownPhDGirl/status/1293169942372790272?s=19