The purpose of this autoethnographic study was to critically examine my lived experiences as a first generation, gay, Mexican-Ecuadorian American navigating two contrasting graduate programs in choral music. I attended a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) for my master’s program and a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) for my doctoral studies, both of which were programs led by White professors. My master’s experience was characterized by supportive and nurturing mentorship while my doctoral journey was marked by a toxic departmental culture and the need to endure rather than grow. Placing these two institutional contexts in dialogue helped me investigate how geography, faculty mentorship, and institutional culture intersect with race, identity, and belonging in graduate choral music. For this study, I drew from several theoretical frameworks to develop a conceptual framework. First, I used Racial Battle Fatigue (Fasching-Varner, 2015) to analyze the cumulative psychological, physiological, and emotional stressors associated with navigating hostile and isolating spaces as a queer person of color. Next, I employed both Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and the Sense of Belonging framework (Strayhorn, 2019) to analyze how in-group and out-group dynamics shaped my experiences across these two institutions. My master’s program was led by two White professors who facilitated my inclusion into the institutional in-group and affirmed my identity and fostered growth. In contrast, my doctoral program was led by three White professors, some of whom positioned me as an outsider within a predominantly White institutional culture, leaving me both racially and professionally marginalized. These graduate choral experiences helped illustrate how mentorship, institutional culture, and geography may intersect with race and identity. This study employed autoethnography (Denzin, 2014) as method, situating my experiences within broader cultural and institutional contexts. Data sources included personal journals, coursework materials, email correspondences, recorded conversations with my therapist, and memory work reconstructed through critical reflection. My narratives were thematically analyzed using iterative coding (Neale, 2016), and emergent themes included moments of belonging, in-group affirmation, out-group exclusion, and racial battle fatigue. The goal of this study was to aim for resonance and transferability (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011) and encourage the reader to recognize systemic issues within choral music education. By juxtaposing my thriving in my master’s program with my struggle and survival in my doctoral program, this autoethnography shows both the successes and failures in supporting queer students of color.