Find Somebody to Cry With Posted on January 16, 2008 Darrell P. Wheeler (bio) suggests that locating a confidant is vital for young researchers.

Other things I've learned along the way: if you could find somebody to cry with. I mean because you've got, whether they're real tears, or just somebody that you can vent with about the experience, I think that's essential. I have to have had a few close and trusted African-American male scholars who I could say, "I don't believe the degree of racism. I don't believe the degree of just inappropriate behavior I'm experiencing from so-called academics."

Because without that, I don't think I could've made it. There had to be a few people that I could just go to and scream and holler. Then after I've done that, then I can come back and smile at the world and say, "Okay, now I'm ready to not kill everybody in this sphere." Or to implode, and I think that's what happens.

You get scholars of the non-majority. They implode. They have been beaten up so much they don't want to submit manuscripts for review. They don't want to submit grant articles. They only want to engage their students. They don't want to engage their colleagues, and it's not because they don't have anything to offer. It's because they haven't found those outlets, and they've experienced so many atrocities and traumas in their professional careers and maybe their personal lives, that there's nowhere else to go.

So you have to find that one person, and it may not be at your home institution. In social work, we're trying to develop opportunities for LGBT faculty to reach across campuses, to reach other LGBT faculty because you may not have anybody on your campus. I think that's really important.

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