I sit on a few boards and committees, which help me to both stay informed across fields and spaces, but also act as an advisor so they can hear my perspective and hopefully incorporate the knowledge about potential solutions I know into their efforts. Some of the groups I’m a part of meet far less than others. It depends on the nature of the group and work, and what our scope is focused on. I’ve found that groups that meet less often can sometimes find “interesting” ways to coordinate and handle logistics. 

Over time, you get used to things like your name being misspelled or even being associated with a previous role and not your current one. We’ve all had our information reproduced by someone who knows little to nothing about us. It can be a fun game of surprise, at times. Sometimes you can correct it, hopefully gently, and sometimes it isn’t worth trying to correct it at all. It might depend on the day, or even the meeting, but you just go about your business in the end. Brushing it off, knowing it won’t be the last time.

Recently, though, I have had this consistent interaction around education, rather more specifically around degrees. It’s had me thinking about the impact of our fixation on formal education and how we deem some forms of knowledge as “expertise” and others as immaterial. 

One of the groups I’m a part of had to convene over the past few weeks. Before we all met, there were emails being sent with our bios and backgrounds. Sometimes I find myself overwhelmed in email communications, and when I am, I just take a cursory glance at my information. I’ve missed misspellings, certifications, titles, all sorts of things in the past, but have learned the importance of not misrepresenting myself, at least not overrepresenting my skills or qualifications anyway. This group sent out my bio and background and had somehow determined that I had a BA. It was funny because nearly everyone on the panel held a PhD, and then here I am, being told by a stranger that I have a BA. 

The tricky part of this entire post is the fact that I don’t share my degrees. I made a decision several years back that if I held the title of “Director of Lived Experience,” I would do everything I could to model the value and lessons lived experience truly holds. No one told me to do this. No one asked, but it was important to me because I see the role as a very specific type of knowledge that does not benefit from, or require, a formal education. In many of the spaces I find myself, education IS credibility. It establishes this unspoken acceptance, and your type of education, or level, rather, lets people know if you are or are not an expert. Which is such an odd merit judgment, especially given the number of people I know who hold degrees that have nothing to do with their roles or work, and the very many more who hold degrees but seem not to even understand the basis of their education. 

I made a very intentional decision when I took on this lived experience leadership role: to strip my degrees from all my public spaces. I don’t submit my degree when I submit speaking abstracts to conferences, and I know, I know that I have likely lost opportunities because of the assumptions people make about that lack of letters behind my name. I do have to admit that my stubborn and defiant nature has grown to where I enjoy seeing myself treated less than, because of that assumed lack, too. I have learned so much about how we regard others whom we believe to be “uneducated.” I have seen it when I shake a hand, and there is this ever-so-slight recoil. This physical reaction of judgment. I am somehow less than, them.

Thinking back to the BA beside my name, I realize that the most interesting part of this small interaction wasn’t the fact that someone somehow decided that was my degree. (I imagined them hunkered down over a computer somewhere searching frantically by the way, which made me chuckle.) It was that when I corrected the error, by telling them what it may or may not actually be, and sharing very directly that I prefer not to list it, they chose to list them anyway. I told them I didn’t like listing it, and they decided that my preference around sharing my education did not matter. I wondered how my education really impacted this once-in-a-while meeting. 

How odd, to me, that my life, my choice, my comfort, was not considered. No, not even – not considered, but completely dismissed. When do we dismiss someone’s wishes about themself in such a trivial manner? There was no back and forth; they made a decision against my will, and it was such a normal, mundane decision, even though the circumstances couldn’t have been normal. I wonder how many “educated” people tell others not to list their education? How truly often can that interaction take place? 

I mean, we all navigate these professional spaces where degrees hold power and prestige, and I have rarely seen another person choose not to list their educational accomplishments. I’ve even seen those who don’t have formal degrees grope desperately for certifications or letters, so they can have access to opportunities. We’ve all seen that. Better yet, we all know how often it happens. That drive to be seen as an equal. To be valued. To be considered knowledgeable, intelligent, smart, the list goes on and on. This is in part why I made my choice. So others who were not “degreed” could see that anyone could have an opportunity. That there was someone out there navigating the spaces I do, who doesn’t have anything but her name to go on. At least on paper. It’s so slight that I doubt it’s been realized by anyone else, but I hope someone saw my name stand on its own and felt they could reach for and even touch more. 

Because, while the lessons I learned in a classroom have deepened my skills and knowledge, they do not compare to the life lessons that came from my lived experiences. They did not open my eyes in the same way, or redirect how I walk through the world so abruptly. I have felt hurt and immediately known that I could never knowingly hurt someone else in that same way, so I changed myself. I course-corrected. I spoke differently. I showed up better. Or, I stayed away altogether. I did it much faster, with deeper resolve, and with a knowing that I have never felt come from a book or lecture. 

Epistemically, our fields of mental health and suicide prevention were built for and by academics, researchers, and clinicians. They had no choice but to pursue formal education in order to create best practices. But, I wonder if, over time, and especially now, as lived experience leadership truly begins to blossom, if those degrees aren’t being weaponized against us? I wonder if our credibility judgments don’t still steer toward formal education and away from experiences we don’t know how to quantify or “letter”. I mean, how would one credential a suicide loss and not somehow flatten the humanity, the pain, the torturous lesson left behind where a person once existed? You can’t. You simply can’t, and we should never try that. 

By lettering and credentialing so heavily, do we lessen impact? 

Our spaces need formal experts who can bring theory, intersectional knowledge, and grounded learning, but we also need those who maybe couldn’t go through a system that was never built for those with deep mental health challenges. Those who couldn’t show up to school, because of the toll it would take on their minds. We also need those who see the world without the degrees, so we can help all the people who exist across our communities who don’t have them either. We need all of us, in our many forms, both learned and lived experiences. We need both valued in nuanced, but no less equal ways, too.

Most of all, if our spaces say they value lived experience as much as they are claiming these days, maybe, just maybe, we should rethink our need to force others to feel that the only way they can contribute to these spaces is if they have letters behind their names. 

I mean, we are all still just people first, aren’t we? I know that, of all my so-called accomplishments, what truly matters most to me is that I am first and always a person who tries to help others. 

Susie Reece, Not Applicable

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Not Applicable: 

Does Not Apply. 

Does Not Make Sense. 

Not giving the information because it is not intended for you or your situation.