On October 19, 2019, I was officially accepted to the Joint Degree Program in Educational Leadership at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM). Needless to say, this was one of the happiest days of my life. At the age of 17, I had told my friends that I wanted to earn a doctoral degree. I'm sure at the time I was simply being cocky because all of my friends had huge plans upon graduation, and I was - quite honestly - lost. My freshman year of high school, my guidance counselor - upon meeting my "brown" mother - had told us that I should simply go to community college to earn an associate's degree. The bar for my future educational endeavors was set low, and it stayed with me for a majority of my adult life. For years, I always prioritized work, family and significant others over completing my education. It wasn't until 2015, when I was admitted to the Interdepartmental Program in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), that I realized that I was able to achieve more.
Being accepted to UCSD/CSUSM is a dream come true. I am honored, humbled, and blessed to be offered an opportunity to become Dr. Kelly Leah Stewart. The next 3-4 years are going to be filled with amazing opportunities of personal and professional growth. I will get to expand on my research on Saint Boniface Indian Industrial School, and hopefully expand the narrative for California Indians who attended the school. I will get to work with amazing scholars in the field of Education, one of whom is my brilliant sister. I am hoping there will be opportunities to travel in order to share my research and meet amazing scholars to collaborate with. Most importantly, I get to show my nieces and nephews that the sky is the limit. They can achieve anything they set their minds to, and I am proof of that.
As the rest of November and the month of December flies by, I will be committing myself to beginning my coursework for my first quarter. I will be looking for outlets to write about my thoughts and my understandings of the readings I have been assigned. This blog will serve as a forum for those reflections. In addition, it will be a place that I write about my journey to becoming Dr. Stewart, EdD. I want to share all of the joys and heartaches, wins and losses, accomplishments and struggles, and my overall experience as I grow as an individual and as a scholar. I failed to document much of my journey during my master’s degree program, and I will not make the same mistake twice. The journey to a doctoral degree should be shared, and I will share it with all of you.
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