Rainbow Devilcast Episode 1 Transcript

TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 1:

[begin transcript]

[theme music: Two-Hearted River by Snake Oil Salesman]

SG: Hello, and welcome to Rainbow Devilcast. I’m your host, Savannah Grace.

Throughout the podcast, which is an output of Duke University’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, we’ll be talking to some of the folks doing great work at the Center and around campus to further the body of knowledge and justice.

Today, we’re bringing you some words from Skye Wilson. I’m lucky enough this year to get to work with Skye; she’s the new program coordinator at the Center, meaning she does the dirty work of all the events that we put on. She orders the food, does the logistics, makes sure we have the spaces, et cetera, et cetera. By all accounts, she’s a superwoman.

I’m sitting with Skye in her office. She’s dressed brightly, in red pants and a teal sweater, and she offers me her candy bowl as she finishes writing an email before we record. There’s a bisexual pride flag hanging above her desk, and the bottom two shelves of her bookcase are stacked with clothes to donate to the LGBTQ Center of Durham’s Trans Closet events. She smiles easily, and talks with a gentle, assuring tone, leaning slightly back across the desk when she gets to a place of passion.

[theme music]

SG: So, can I ask you to say your full name and your pronouns, please?

SW: My name is Skye Wilson, my pronouns are she/her/hers.

SG: And what do you do at the Center?

SW: I am the student development coordinator here at the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity.

[pause]

SW: When I was an undergrad, I worked at the LGBT Center at UNC as a work study student. I really loved the job, I just liked being able to connect with folks who also identified within the community, and then also just to be doing such great work. I feel like what I was doing was making a difference on campus. I never thought about that as a career, so I kind of came to this job in a roundabout way, actually.

Once I got out of school, I was doing some filmmaking and videography work, and I was using that medium to do advocacy work and to inform people of issues by doing…I made a little TV series or whatever for YouTube with a couple of friends. I made a documentary for the LGBT Center at UNC that they’re actually still using during some of their trainings, so that really makes me feel good ‘cause that was quite a while ago.

So yeah. That’s kind of what I was doing for a little while, and then I went to grad school, and I got a job there as a graduate assistant. They didn’t have an LGBT Center, which really sucked because I was literally the only person on payroll at the university who dealt with LGBTQ issues, and I was part-time, I was like twenty hours a week. So it was just way too much for one person to handle at twenty hours a week, ten, twenty, thirty thousand students. So it was a lot of responsibility that I felt at that job. And so I ended up actually leaving that, because it was taking up too much emotional time and actual time and I wasn’t able to get to my studies as well as I should have been doing.

So I left that position and started doing my internship at the LGBT Center in Norfolk, Virginia. And there I was doing counseling, I was doing mental health counseling with folks who identified within the community, or folks who didn’t identify within the community but walked into the Center. I worked with a lot of trans folks and lower SES folks and people of color and I just really liked the diversity that the LGBT Center up there pulled in. I just really loved that work, and that’s when I started thinking, “I can actually do this for a living.” And so I talked to my supervisor there, and they were looking for an assistant director, and she offered me a job. And I really, really wanted it, but at the same time I didn’t want to live there. I’d applied for this job here at Duke, and ended up getting a phone call like the same day that my supervisor offered me a job with this job offer. I was like, “Ugh, I’m from North Carolina, I want to go back, this is exactly where I want to be,” so like I said screw it and I took this job. And I couldn’t be happier.

I felt really lucky to have choices, especially in the field I really wanted to go into, because when I was in school I was realizing "maybe I don’t want to be a therapist full-time, maybe that’s just not the life I want to live." And so like to get two job offers on literally the same day for two amazing jobs was, ah, it blew my mind. I didn’t know how to handle that. Actually, when I got the phone call from Nick here at the Center, I was…it was the Friday before my brother’s wedding on Saturday, so I was in the car with my aunt, I was like taking her around town while she was hunting for shoes for the wedding. I was driving and my phone rang and it was Nick, and so I answered the phone while I was trying to make a really wide and dangerous left turn, which is not a good idea, so I don’t recommend it. Like, thinking back he could have gone to voicemail and it would have been fine. But…so that’s where I was. In the middle of a dangerous intersection. [laughs]

SG: [laughs] Is that a metaphor for your life?

SW: Ooh. I like that. It might be. I do feel like I live at an intersection a lot, so.

[pause]

SW: I don’t feel like I have a typical day, which is such a cliché answer. I mean, I feel like a typical day, ish, would be…me coming in, answering some emails, kind of seeing what’s been going on for the few hours that I wasn’t here overnight, because there’s always something. And checking in on any programming that happened the night before just so I can see what’s going on with folks and get a lay of the land.

And then usually around ten or eleven students start rolling into my office, so usually my day consists of me trying to fit work in between students, because students are the most important thing. “Student” is literally in my title, so like, my job is to serve students. So whenever someone walks into my office I try to make an effort to maintain, be present, and to be with them and to be whatever that they need in that moment. Sometimes they just want to sit down and do homework with me in my office, and that’s cool. Sometimes they just stop by to get some candy. Sometimes they want to talk about some really deep things, so I’ll close the door and we’ll talk for an hour or whatever the person needs. So that’s why I don’t really consider myself having a typical day, because it really depends on who walks into my office at a particular time.

The thing that I’m the most excited about here is the students. Like, y’all, and I’m not just saying this because you are a student here, but y’all are so freaking smart. Like, you all know what’s going on in the world, you all understand the theory, you all understand how it applies in the everyday world and you all want to make a change, and that energy really keeps me going and it keeps me happy and it keeps me wanting to come in, because I can see that there will be a change. It’s not going to come as fast as any of us want, but I know that, looking and working with y’all, I know that one of you or all of you or some of you are going to be in history books because of a change. And just to know that I have a small part of, like, a hand in that, that makes me feel really good. I think that’s how it should be. And that’s the great energy I get from working at a college campus, and particularly this university.

Something I’m apprehensive about…Um, sometimes I worry that I’m not giving enough. Sometimes I worry that I’m not being enough for folks. So that really helps me to keep on my toes, motivates me to read more and to know more so that I can do more to help more. But sometimes I do worry about that, that I’m not fully able to provide what may be needed here.

SG: What’s something you want every student who comes through your office to know when they leave it?

SW: That I’m here to help them. That I’m here to…whatever change they want to make, I’m here, I’m a resource, and that they truly can come back, and that someone cares.

SG: I’m on a mission to ask every one of this podcast’s guests to share their practices for self and communal care in an ever-shifting world, especially in a university setting where priority is placed on the now, and the fast, and the prestigious. It’s important to be able to slow down, so, after our interview, I asked Skye to share with me some of her rituals and habits that give her some of her restorative energy.

SW: One thing that I really enjoy doing is, like, I have this special tea that I drink at night, so I make myself a cup of tea and do a little meditation, basically. So I’ll just sit with my tea and reflect on my day, and I’ll turn off all my electronics for that time, and just sit until I feel ready and calm and able to transition on to going to sleep or reading a book before bed or whatever it is I’m going to do. So that just really helps me to think through the day, helps me to plan a bit before tomorrow, but then at the same time being able to focus on what’s right in front of me, which is my tea and my coffee table and that’s…that just reminds me that sometimes that’s really all you need is what’s right in front of you.

Another thing I like to do is read. I really like reading. That’s time I like to take, if not every day, every couple of days at the very least. So I’m reading like a bunch of books, because I’m always reading a lot of books, because I’m terrible about finishing them. But the book I just started is called Stiff. It’s a story, not story, it’s about the history of cadavers and the things that our body does after we die.

I love podcasts. One thing I do is I listen to podcasts when I fall asleep, because it helps me to not think about the day and not to get caught up too much in my head. And then I take the bus into work every day and home, and that really helps because I get to put on music or a podcast, and for those ten minutes, that’s all I’m doing. All I’m doing is listening to this song, or this podcast. I’m not thinking about anything else, and it really helps me transition between personal and professional, though the two are interchangeable, really. But it just gets me into a better state of mind.

One of the podcasts that I listen to religiously, like, as soon as it comes out, is called “The Read.” It’s my favorite because they talk about pop culture, they talk about politics, they kind of talk about everything, and they also do listener letters where folks like write in about their crazy lives and ask for advice. So it’s just a really good mix of humor and vapid pop culture information, but then also talking about the real issues. At the end of the issue they do a read, and talk about what’s on their mind or their heart or what’s making them upset that week, and it’s usually something in the political realm, and they’re very real. They’re two queer Black individuals, and so I just really enjoy hearing their point of view. Almost always it mirrors mine, but they will add something that I hadn’t thought about, and try to see things in a different perspective. So I like that they challenge me. And they make me laugh.

[theme music]

Thanks again to our guest this episode, Skye Wilson. Rainbow Devilcast is produced by me, Savannah Grace. Our theme song is Two Hearted River, by Snake Oil Salesmen. Other music for this episode was Departures, by Airtone, Flower, by Doxent Zsigmond, and Acoustic Breeze, by Ben Sound. Big thanks to my emotional supporters, Angel Collie, Skye Wilson, Nick Antonicci, Meda Conner, Mellie Bonnano, Janelle Taylor, Michael Bleggi, and Quinn Baker. Find newest episodes of the Rainbow Devilcast by subscribing to the Duke Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity on YouTube or Soundcloud. You can also find the episodes and more info about the center at studentaffairs.duke.edu/csgd. Peace and love to all.

[fade out]

SW: I loooove podcasts so I listen to...Now I’m on a podcast. Wow.

SG: We’ve come full circle.

SW: It’s like Inception.

[SW and SG laugh]

[end transcript]