20 Minutes of Sanity: Musings of a Dad in Doctoral Disguise

For the next 20 months, yes, that’s a random, but accurate number, I will be spending 20 minutes a day writing my reflections of being a full-time fundraiser and going through the inaugural cohort for the professional doctorate in philanthropic leadership.

Each draft will be a little different in regard to the style and prose that I’ll present. The main point is to:

1.????? Exercise the writing muscle by using complete focus through a time-bound challenge

2.????? Reflect on this crucial timeframe in my life and collect the thoughts, feelings, and experiences I’m undergoing.

3.????? Lastly, the final applied research project requires a synthesis chapter, and I want to be able to use this as material that documents my growth in leadership and philanthropy.

My applied research project asks the question of how the Tennessee Department of Education can redress the generations of discriminatory funding practices that have left Tennessee State University as the public, land-grant historically Black college with the highest amount of owed funds ($2.1 billion dollars). I am curious about how the state of Maryland has been able to address this by granting the four HBCUs in their state $577 million over the next ten years (since 2021). I’ll be using the Maryland HBCUs case as a proof of concept to scale this systemic issue to all 19 land-grant HBCUs throughout 16 states in America.

A second point I am…

(pausing to address my 3-year-old, David) – 2 minutes

Okay, I’m back… (never mind—pausing to get the salmon out of the oven).

Okay, I’m actually back. And yes, I am adding all of the life pauses and moments that call me to be husband, dad, and everything else that’s going on in my life.

Why? Because it’s amazing to realize the amount and type of things that can pull you away from a quick 20-minute task.

Back to the second point of my project. I am approaching this from an equity lens but not only for the HBCUs I am looking to service, but also I am adding a framework that ensures the state education budget continues to service the predominately white state institutions that are also dealing with scarce funding from the TN budget.

The project is going well thus far. At residency this last week, we were able to dive further into the 5-chapter structure that will serve as the final product for our doctoral program. When I look at where I am to date, I’d give it the following percentages:

-????????? Chapter 1 – Statement of the Problem: 70%

-????????? Chapter 2 – Literature Review: 50%

-????????? Chapter 3 – Project Scope: 25%

-????????? Chapter 4 – Implementation Plan: 75%

-????????? Chapter 5 – Leadership Synthesis: 10%

These are first guesses and I’m good with where I am (knowing that these numbers will go up and down especially as I continue coursework and have time to conduct research and write through 2026).

It’s been 20 minutes. Let the journey begin. Please hold me accountable as I will try my best to do the same.

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Dex

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