Black Christian Men in Leadership & Wellness
As a doctoral student, at any given moment there are several articles to read and a few papers or reflections to write. I consider myself a creative person. Whenever there is an opportunity to express my knowledge utilizing a different medium, I always choose that option. For my final project, I settled on a podcast on Black, Christian men in leadership and wellness. My dissertation topic focuses on Black female doctoral students and their emotional wellness. I wanted to do something similar for my final project, but not exactly the same.
I faced a few challenges during the completion of this project. I’m a Black Christian with access to Black Christian men in leadership. All that was needed was for men to show up and participate. This led me to my first challenge. I had to conquer and face my own anxiety. I was afraid to ask. As a result, I had my friend ask his friends. Luckily for me, they all agreed, attended the recording session, and participated. My second challenge was with the recording itself. All the participants were in the google meet and I could not figure out how to record the google meet. Now, I’ve recorded google meets before, but for some reason, there was no “record” button to be found. I googled solution after solution. Luckily, the participants spoke amongst themselves and didn’t realize I was stalling. Randomly, I realized that I have a recording software “otter” on my computer. I used that and began to record. The third and final problem was the recording itself. As I began to edit the recording for the podcast, I quickly realized that the “otter” software picked up all of my sounds even though I was muted. This made the editing process very difficult. Honestly, I felt discouraged. Despite this, I decided to move forward with the editing process. Some segments of the discussion needed to be cut. Additionally, there are many moments of silence that will be heard as a result.
Although I am insecure about my final project, I’m also proud. I did the best I could and faced every challenge with a positive attitude that led to a solution.
