Chapter 15: Psychosocial Adjustment to the Graduate School Environment

The experiences of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois at Harvard University in the late 1890s should continually be reflected upon by Black graduate students as they pursue their degrees in the first decades of the 21st century. “Du Bois famously remarked that he was ‘in Harvard, but not of it,” said Professor Henry Louis Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. “While Harvard was his fantasy place to study, Du Bois could not even live in the dorms.” He was “in Harvard, but not of it.” In other words, Du Bois had a physical presence at the university and did what he needed to do to achieve the goal of a graduate degree, but he was not part of the cultural dynamic that produced Harvard and schools like it. His psychosocial adjustment was dependent upon his thorough understanding of the duality of his experience, his acceptance of the reality that he was not part of the mainstream, and his determination to use the credentials he was acquiring to improve the condition of his people (Almore, 2011). The psychosocial adjustment of today’s Black graduate students is rooted in the extent to which they thoroughly internalize Du Bois’ perspective and understand that while they may be “in” a particular graduate program, they may not necessarily be “of” that program or university.