Searching for my voice in academic and social research

Searching for my voice in academic and social research after years of being in organizations.

I had been distant from this beautiful community that filled me with hope when I first joined, because I needed to resolve a personal question and a personal debt I'd carried for years: to return to academia and pursue a Master's degree.

After much doubt, searching, and even fantasizing, I decided to study a Master's in Humanistic Studies in Colombia. I've already started my second semester, and although I arrived with some certainties, I've been accompanied more by doubt, uncertainty, and the sense of searching in a territory I like but don't yet know.

I wanted to come back here, to this community that welcomed me from the start and where I felt my voice as a woman was taking shape. Because right now, my voice as a woman in academia feels lost. I even ask myself whether I've ever truly found my voice as a woman, because after so long inhabiting worlds mostly populated by men, it's a legitimate question.

For many years, I've had an insatiable search for how to live better, and this has led me from aesthetic choices to the deeper decision to begin a therapeutic process. It's curious that this question always brings me back to moments in my childhood when I lived better, when I found my refuges: reading, writing, and drawing. And yet, my searches as an adult have been about belonging to community, and I've wondered whether this is a way of finding answers to how to live better.

And what is living better, or living well? Is it the absence of problems, or is it the possibility of navigating the world held and cared for? This is the voice I'm looking for, because in a world that tells you there are endless options, voices start to become background noise, and even your own risks getting lost in it.

I still haven't decided what my thesis research will be, but I hope this path helps me not only find my voice, but continue giving voice to those who find no resonance in their own worlds.

Searching for my voice in academic and social research after years of being in organizations.