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A Chapter Closes
Hello, friends. It has been a while! I am weary, so this isn’t going to be as eloquent as I would like, but I figure it is time to share my latest chapter.
This morning, I completed the very last assignment of the fall semester, receiving a good grade from a Professor I have long admired. This means that I have finished every class of my MALD degree at the Fletcher School at Tufts, with only a capstone project to complete before graduation. I am still grappling with how I should feel, but I think I might have achieved something remarkable. I spent countless days this year suicidal in a psych hospital, and I spent many further days in a partial hospitalization program (Triangle). I somehow managed to convince Fletcher to reinstate me as a student mere weeks later, and thus I returned to class. I moved to Massachussets with my spouse for this degree — it was time.
I was a profoundly different person from my earlier academic endeavors at Fletcher. I wore my heart (and my trauma) on my sleeve, and I was not afraid to use my experiences this year to further and challenge debate. For the first time in my life, I was unapologetically trans, and I leaned into my identity both as a source of self-love and of resilience, even if I…
