When it’s clear that everything will never be the same again
Then I’ll make the choice to hear that voice
And do the next right thing.
Frozen II
I had this knack of sitting next to awesome people during my academic journey. As someone with social anxiety, I tend to look for the most confident person in the room and sit right next to them. My mother always told me, “Edward, stick with the winners.” This was definitely the case with Brittany Banks. We took an incredible LGBTQ film class together in 2013 at the University of Delaware. We bonded over movies like “Paris is Burning”, “Pariah”, and “The Boys in the Band”. I still follow Brock O’Hurn on Instagram because she told me about him and I remember her excitement when Disney’s live-action “Cinderella” was coming out.
Because life is so funny, Brittany and I both decided to become social workers. These past couple years I have followed her grad school journey and I am so proud of her. We recently reconnected while watching Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday concert and cried while listening to Bernadette Peter’s sing “No One Is Alone”. We were talking about her upcoming graduation in the time of COVID-19 and I wanted to highlight her success so I asked if I could interview her as part of my graduation series.
Join me as I find out about Brittany’s grad school journey at the Silberman School of Social Work in East Harlem, New York. We talked about her passion for working with kids as an in-school social worker and the ways in which our educational system provides unnecessary challenges for the kids she has serviced. We also discussed how various forms of media has been a helpful tool in coping with grad school stress and connecting with her clients.
