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Come on and #GrowFierce!

11/18/2014

Hello My Loves,

I come from the trenches of grad school to give you good news! Remember Digging Deep, Facing Self? You know, that course I took in the Summer of 2013 and keep raving about? Well there are some exciting things happening in the #DDFS world!

DDFS is been rebranded! While the course is still called Digging Deep, Facing Self, the community is now known as #GrowFierce. #GrowFierce was often used in promotion of the course and the readings in New York. Eventually we just kept calling it #GrowFierce externally as well as internally. I know it stuck for me and it must of stuck for Caits, the course's fierce leader, because now you can go to www.growfierce.com and see what the course and community has to offer. This beautiful new website showcases the wonderful community we have on the Internet.

Aside from rebranding, important additions have been made to the team. The core team consists of Caits, a lead facilitator (Hey Sabina!), a media producer, a content advisor, a PR person, and a financial advisor. After that there is a team of advisors that consist of 11 women who are deeply rooted in the #GrowFierce community.

I am happy to say that I am one of those 11 women!

See? That's me! And other wonderful women.

The Advisory team, which is best described on the website is this: These brilliant women, all DDFS course alumni, help us guide and create best practices, weigh in on changes to the community and help cultivate a lively, supported post-course experience in our extended alumni network. They also brainstorm – and lead – ways we can consistently give back to the world’s sisterhood of women through various free and low-cost engagements.

#GrowFierce is one of the bright spots in my life. I am honored and humbled to be a part of the community in this extraordinary way. I hope to use my time in school to learn ways I can help #GrowFierce.

I take this role seriously with an open heart, so let me start by advising you to join the #GrowFierce Community and take the course in January! Think you can't afford it in one shot? There are payment plans and scholarships! Just go on #GrowFierce - www.growfierce.com.

Can't say it enough, go to www.growfierce.com!

Plus you know you want to be bad ass enough to hold a cactus. I dare you to be this fierce!

Til next time!

Christina

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Worn Out and Vulnerable

11/18/2014

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Hello World,

I know that it's been a while. A long, long while. I have been trying to adjust to a new life of education.

Let me tell you, graduate school is no joke. If you go to school for something that isn't for your craft, you find that many things slip away. I don't remember the last time I wrote a poem. A line or two, but not a poem. Not even a haiku. My manuscripts lay untouched. I struggled to send out poems to lit magazines a couple of weeks ago, while I was sick in bed and knew that I had no brain for school work. And I try to remain happy and positive towards all the writers in my life because I've recently have been given the honor of being an advisor in a team of 11 for a beautiful, emerging community called #GrowFierce (I will write another post on that later).

But I am so worn out. Some days feel really good. I get what's going on in my classes, I can apply it to everything I want to do and I even get great grades on papers and projects. Then the flaws come in. The program I am in is great in a lot of ways, but also greatly flawed. One of my classmates who is taking time off after this semester put it best, "I thought I was going to be able to be more hands on. To be able to present my ideas and get guidance in how to do things. Not work on something for someone else." While I get why we have to do all of these projects based off of not our projects, sometimes I feel exactly that.

I feel like I am wasting time and ideas. In one particular class, we are working on a project for a real client (a department in the school). While this is great practice, the way it is structured does not allow everyone to give input and be involved the way they would like to be. Nearing the end of the project, I feel like I haven't been able to do much. This weekend, one of my classmates had a great idea to form groups and get a head start on one of our final phases. He said this is the time to jump in an area that you are passionate about. I did just that. I started a document, put down all of my ideas, and shared it with people in my group so they can add theirs. Then my professor flips stuff around when we get into class. In the part I was looking forward to, he goes and assigns it to another group! Now I can't just leave my group to join another so I can present my ideas. We already got half way through class in these groups. I tried to be open and think of ideas for our assigned task, but I felt defeated after already working on stuff that I do not care for in this project. This is the kind of frustration I deal with and try hard to turn around.

People are also a factor in this equation. Not the people I am in class with (well, there are some I don't care to work with, but I will when I have to), but the people who are suppose to be a part of this journey. I know I sit with my accounting homework, with my marketing textbook, trying to do stuff like Bayes Law (you don't want to know what that is) and I sit here disappointed in and angry with my team, my reason for coming to this program. In particular, I am angry at the one who has said, "Do it" but does not reach to ask about the company, how they can help, how are my studies going, NOTHING. I am so so angry at this person. I know, I know. I could just get rid of them. But I want them to be there. And I don't want to chase them and talk about things that I am not sure they care about. I care about their future though. I am still trying to work on this one.

I want to go on, but I have to run. Another post soon my loves. Let's have hope together.

Thank you for indulging this moment.

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Come on and #GrowFierce!

Worn Out and Vulnerable

Christina D. Rodriguez

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