Guest Blog: “Coping with Comps: An Ordeal of Faith”

Part One of Two

by Gregory Jones, Kent State University

First let me say God is gracious.  Sometimes we over use the word “grace,” one of the most beautiful words in the English language.  However, having successfully passed doctoral candidacy exams this week, I can honestly say I feel God’s grace.  The point of this blog is to explore the comprehensive exam process as it relates to faith.  After all, perseverance is a Biblical mandate.

When the comps process began I was honestly very optimistic about the entire ordeal.  I thought it would be a time to become an expert, and then display that expertise in front of the professionals that I have grown to respect.  That perspective functioned well for several months of studying, meeting, and waxing eloquent about the classic works of history.  Then, unexpectedly, I experienced the doom and fear of failure.

The funny thing about “Calling,” is that it allows us to be certain that God’s plan will prevail in our lives.  For some, Calling is a radical career shift after twenty years of experience, for others it is a surety from grade school or high school.  I knew I wanted to be a professional historian sometime in high school, but it was solidified during my experiences at Geneva College.  After a few trips to hear colloquia and several good discussions with professors, I realized that God’s will for my life was to teach (my pure passion) and write about the past.

Despite that Calling, that certainty of God’s plan for my life and career, the fear of failure began to encompass me.  I had confident meetings with my examining professors, yet I still felt inadequate.  I could not get myself out of the way and let God do His work.  I pushed on in my studying, focusing almost entirely on the books, facts, and interpretations I could not remember instead of the wealth of information God helped me store in my brain.  Call it pessimism or broken human nature, but despite the Calling I felt, I still doubted my God.

Throughout this process, I experienced a refreshing and revitalizing new church.  In this new church I met people who were “Jesus” to me.  This may seem a bit out of place in a reflection of comps, but it is not.  From random hugs, handshakes, and conversations about sports, the weather, and missions, I experienced community in a real and meaningful way.  Also, God spoke through our pastor one Sunday.  God reached out and explained to me that there was no reason for me to doubt Him.  He had been faithful in getting me into two graduate programs, getting me through my Master’s degree, and finally through doctoral course work.  Why did I doubt Him now?

When God speaks to you (at least in my experience), it has never been a feeling of ominous presence or the fear the Old Testament prophets explained.  It was an overwhelming feeling of peace.  As I departed the service I told my pastor it was the best sermon I have heard at that church.  Looking startled (and humble), he simply said, “maybe it was just the sermon you needed to hear.”  He was right again.  I needed to hear that God’s Calling was there, but I needed to trust Him with it.  That Sunday, about a month from my comprehensive exam, I surrendered my exams to Jesus.  I told Him that I had given him my career, my marriage, my home, and my future so He could have my exams as well.

Meeter Center Launches New Web-based Resource for Reformation and Post-Reformation Studies

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (October 31, 2009) —

A newly-available research tool,
sponsored by the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies and the
Hekman Library at Calvin College and Seminary, promises to aid the work
of scholars from around the world. The Post-Reformation Digital Library
(PRDL) is a select bibliography of primary source documents focusing on
early modern theology and philosophy, spanning publicly-accessible
collections from major research libraries, independent scholarly
initiatives, and corporate documentation projects. The core of the PRDL
project involves the organization of thousands of documents available
in digital form from sources including Google Books and the Internet
Archive. Also included are the offerings of select libraries from
Europe and North America, which are beginning to make digitized forms
of their holdings available to the public. The project covers the work
of hundreds of authors from a wide variety of theological,
philosophical, and ecclesiastical traditions, from figures like John
Calvin and Martin Luther to the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621)
and Jacob Arminius (1560-1609). According to David Sytsma, moderator of
the PRDL editorial board, the current availability of a vast array of
materials is unprecedented in academic history. “The opportunity
presented by this kind of digital access is matched by the challenge to
the individual researcher to deal responsibly and comprehensively with
a broad cross-section of source material,” observes Sytsma, a doctoral
student in historical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. “The
PRDL is one way to help ensure that the reach of technical
digitalization does not exceed the grasp of the scholar,” he says. The
first stage of the PRDL project involved the collaboration of dozens of
scholars from around the world on a privately editable website, or
wiki. Once a standard level of comprehensiveness was achieved, the wiki
was transitioned to a publicly available bibliography hosted by the
Meeter Center. The site will continue to be updated and users will be
able to suggest revisions via interactive web forms. Dr. Richard A.
Muller, P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin
Seminary and current chair of the Meeter Center Governing Board, notes
the potential of the PRDL to advance research in a variety of
disciplines. “The Post-Reformation Digital Library will be a boon to
both students and professional researchers alike,” he says. Muller also
serves as a member of the PRDL editorial board, as does Lugene
Schemper, theological librarian at Calvin College and Seminary, who
oversaw the migration of the resource to Hekman Library’s LibGuides
system. Members of the PRDL editorial board represent institutions from
across North America and Europe. In addition to Muller and Schemper,
the PRDL editorial board includes: Jordan J. Ballor (University of
Zurich/Calvin Theological Seminary); Albert Gootjes (Calvin Theological
Seminary/Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, Geneva); Todd Rester
(Calvin Theological Seminary); and moderator David Sytsma (Princeton
Theological Seminary). Schemper led a roundtable discussion of the PRDL
and other digital research tools at the Fall meeting of the Chicago
Area Theological Library Association earlier this month. Board members
Jordan J. Ballor, David Sytsma, and Todd Rester are scheduled to
present on the PRDL at a “New Technologies” session at next year’s
annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, to be held in
Venice, Italy (April 8-10). Access the Post-Reformation Digital
Library: http://libguides.calvin.edu/prdl

Contact Jordan J. Ballor at (616) 617-7669 or jballor1@calvinseminary.edu
for more information. About the Meeter Center: The H. Henry Meeter
Center for Calvin Studies is a research center specializing in John
Calvin and Calvinism that opened in 1981 and is located at Calvin
College and Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/about/

SSRC

The Social Science Research Council “is an independent nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of social science research and scholarship. Founded in New York City in 1923 as the world’s first national coordinating body of the social sciences, it is today an international resource for interdisciplinary, innovative public social science.”

This year, the student fellowship competition includes a field on secularization. One of our own CFH grad students participated in the SRCC program last year and highly recommends it. There are several other fellowship and grant categories so take a moment to peruse their site. Applications are due in January.

And have a happy Thanksgiving!

Labyrinth

I know this is a blog about faith and history, but sometimes it’s a blog about faith keeping us sane in our graduate school journey.

I have had a particularly difficult week with my work (and life, to be honest). I have struggled and wrestled with my work in monumental ways, which has in turn yielded little progress. I have come to hate it, to second guess myself, to question my calling, etc. In the grand scheme of things I suppose it’s just a dissertation, but it’s hard to tell yourself that in the thick of things.

As I biked home from my coffee shop/office for the day on Wednesday, I decided to stop at a neighboring university to walk the labyrinth outside their chapel. Labyrinths have a diverse history and record of uses, but churches have long used labyrinths as meditation tools. They resemble a maze, but there is only one way to walk and that way guarantees coming to the center.

I entered with the word peace on my heart and mind, and meditated on God’s peace and guidance as I slowly followed the winding path. About 3/4 of the way through, I became incredibly frustrated. I could see the exit and felt tempted to just walk out. I could see the center, but could not understand how I was going to get there.

It’s the same with finishing my Ph.D. All I can see some days is a tangled mess that I’m in the middle of. I’ve come to far to just walk out, but the path to the end seems impossible. In the labyrinth, I determined to just walk slowly, to just keep moving, to trust that God would help me to the end. And I made it to the center.

I’m trying to apply that 10 minute experience to my life-to just keep walking, to trust, to put something on the page or go to the library or meet with an adviser even when I don’t want to. The end is in sight. And I’ll get there.

Find a labyrinth: World-Wide Labyrinth Locator

Our Love/Hate Relationship with Grad School

“No [one] who worships education has got the best out of education…. Without a gentle contempt for education no [one]’s education is complete.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

I appreciate this quote not simply because I think highly of Chesterton. I believe it speaks to the tension we feel as grad students. We all have days when we curse our books and papers and impossible deadlines. We may disagree wholeheartedly with half the theories, arguments, and approaches of our colleagues and professors. We may struggle against the entire notion of organized academics.

But perhaps that’s not all bad. A “gentle contempt” toward the process of graduate education can keep us alive, on our toes, and constantly moving. If we’re loving every second, then maybe we’re not developing a necessary critical framework for our own lives, work, and experiences. Getting the most out of our academic journey requires us to engage the tension.

Q&A with Joel Carpenter

Dr. Joel Carpenter is professor of history and director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College. He reminisces with us here about his grad school experience.

How did you choose your area of specialty?

From high school on I was fascinated with U.S. history, and when I got to
college, my U.S. history professors (Ronald Wells and George Marsden) deeply
engaged me.  I went to Johns Hopkins to study with Timothy Smith, who was by
then running his Program in American Religious History, with funding from the
Lilly Endowment.  My first thought was to work on revivalism and 19th century
reform movements, drafting off of Smith’s famous book on the topic.  But Smith,
who had just finished mentoring a cohort of doctoral students doing
immigrant/ethnic/religious history, started asking me personal ‘roots’
questions.  When he found out that I had been reared in a rather sectarian
Baptist denomination, he encouraged me to do research on the history of the
American fundamentalist movement.  I found out that my professor back at
Calvin, George Marsden, was working in the same area, and I became hooked on
the topic.

How did grad school challenge and/or strengthen your faith?

I had a very good time socially with fellow graduate students, and the
professors with whom I was reading for exams took religious faith very
seriously as a historical and human factor.  All but one, I think, were
religiously observant themselves, after some fashion.  So I had no great crisis
of faith in graduate school.  Prof. Smith, who was a devout Christian in the
holiness tradition, and who thought constantly about faith and history sorts of
issues, was very encouraging and supportive.  So was Prof. John Higham, who had
us read Reinhold Niebuhr, and so too another Smith student, Ben Primer, who
introduced me to Peter Berger’s The Social Construction of Reality.  Berger’s
sociology of knowledge helped me push back intellectually versus those who
wanted to reduce religion to other, purportedly more basic forces.  All of
these factors and our knowledge of them are socially constructed, I found, so
none deserved any more explanatory power, privilege or leverage than human
religiosity.

But more than intellectual challenges, I had to face the loneliness,
unrelenting hard work, and questions of calling that come with graduate studies
in the humanities.  I received great help from the learned and wise pastor at a
nearby Baptist church, who gave me the best medicine available–the
responsibility of teaching the Sunday morning Bible class for university
students!  I found the assurance I needed as I studied the Gospel of Matthew
and the Epistle to the Colossians with the students.  Speaking to me
particularly were the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come unto
me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke
upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  This
has become a life motto for me.

What was the most enjoyable part of grad school?

I very much enjoyed the intellectual discoveries, especially those that I
gained on my own.  It was a time of rich learning and exploration.  I really
enjoyed the people.  We had a great social bond going, especially amongst the
American history graduate students.  It helped that I came from a Christian
sector that thought having a beer after work was OK!

What was the most challenging?

The unrelenting grind of reading and writing.  We lived in the library
carrels.  There were so many warm summer nights when we could see the lights at
Memorial Stadium, just blocks away, but we had to be satisfied with a brief
coffee break and then back down to the carrels.   The few times we went over to
see the Orioles play, we all felt guilty.

What did your scholarly “community” look like? How did you make use of
other scholars around you and how did such collegial relationships enhance your
own work?

At Hopkins, there were three large cohorts:  the American Seminar, the
European Seminar, and the “Atlantic” Seminar (which merged Americans, Euros,
and those looking at the Caribbean and West Africa).  We all met formally once
a month, when there was a student or prof. presenting a paper.  These formed
the nucleus of socializing too, including those who were T.A.s together for
undergrad survey courses.  We spent lots of time at coffee shops and bars and
grills, especially the infamous Grad Club, where we could get a beer and a hot
dog after the library closed at 11:30 pm. for about a dollar.  We exchanged
lore about professors, teaching, dissertating, job searches, and of course the
campus legends– e.g. about trunks of dissertation notes from European archives
lost at sea and the arcane questions that Prof. So and So asked at orals.  We
found out what each other were reading in fields beyond history per se to gain
perspective, context, breadth and depth, including period novels, sociological
and anthropological studies, and in what then were some rather arcane areas,
such as linguistic theories and semiotics.  Once in a while, deep into the
night, questions would turn to life’s deeper things–its meaning, the existence
and action of God, heaven or hell, sexual morality.  I think we learned as much
from each other as from the senior professors.

One problem I saw with some other evangelical students is that they kept to
themselves, studied in their rooms, didn’t go to departmental parties or
intermural games, and didn’t hang out after hours, either.  Their concerns
about worldly behavior and worries about studying hard enough got in the way of
some very important learning and engagement with other rising scholars.  Their
time in grad studies was impoverished and in some cases, imperiled, by their
lack of socialization.

What strategies helped you most in writing your thesis/dissertation?

It wasn’t strategy, but necessity.  I got a full-time teaching job before I
began writing dissertation chapters.  So it was pretty much a chapter per
summer, over five years.  That was all that I could manage, with a very heavy
teaching load.  I had a very hot topic, as things turned out, so some of my
dissertation chapters first appeared as papers given at invitational
conferences, and were published as essays and articles before they came out in
the dissertation.  That pattern worked well to help me make progress, but it is
obviously not a strategy!

Zotero

A few weeks ago I blogged here about citing sources. Well, I found something better than EndNote. It’s my new obsession: Zotero.

Zotero is a FREE web-based citation organization system developed by historians. Among other things, you can add sources from an online library catalog with one click, insert auto-formatted footnotes or bibliographies into a Word document, and organize your sources into multiple categories. It’s changed my life. Really. I’m not exaggerating.

Spend an hour or so getting to know this program and it will save you lots of headaches. Note: you need the Mozilla Firefox web browser, which you can install for free on any computer.

Q&A with the Pres.

CFH President Rick Kennedy reflects on his graduate school experience…
How did you choose your area of specialty (i.e. US History, Puritan history, etc.)?

I stayed at UC Santa Barbara from undergrad through Ph.D. and found my specialty in plankton-esque fashion as I floated through the department.  I enjoyed everything and settled in with a professor, Harold Kirker, who believed whole-heartedly in the good life of a liberal arts scholar.  I had had his classes as an undergrad.  He told me that graduate school was between me and the library.  He would take me for lunches, long walks, and recommend books to me  such as Portrait of a Lady.  He was very concerned that I know the names of all the kinds of birds on campus.  I picked a vague specialty because he was not interested in me having a specialty.  In the end it was the perfect education for someone who would become a teacher  at a dinky Christian college.

How did grad school challenge and/or strengthen your faith?

At UC Santa Barbara there was a dynamic medievalists named Jeffrey Burton Russell.  He was writing a five volume history of the concept of the Devil when I first started studying with him.   He was the center of a Faculty and Graduate Student group called “Faith and the Intellectual Life.”  We met once a week for years.  It was great!  Catholics, Prots, liberals, conservatives, scientists and humanities-types.  Ten or fifteen of us every week.  It was ad hoc.  We just reserved a room and did it.  I went to church every Sunday, helped out with youth groups, and attended “Faith and the Intellectual life.”    My faith was stronger after grad school.

What was the most enjoyable part of grad school?

The most enjoyable part of grad school for me was the hanging out.  So many interesting people doing interesting work.  When we were teaching assistants and had offices a bunch of us were sort of department rats, hanging around in the late afternoons thinking the big thoughts.

What was the most challenging?

The most challenging matters for me were learning languages and getting documents.

What did your scholarly “community” look like? How did you make use of other scholars around you and how did such collegial relationships enhance your own work?

What I learned best from my colleagues in grad school was during our work as teaching assistants.  The jobs I later got threw me into various teaching situations.   For good and ill, I had learned to handle such situations from three years as a teaching assistant.

What strategies helped you most in writing your thesis/dissertation?

My strategy for finishing my dissertation was No  Procrastinating! and lowered expectations.   Every day had to see some progress.  As for publication, I would think about that later; right now the job was to do as best as I could given the constraints of my life.

Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Christian Graduate Student

Reposted from the Emerging Scholars Network by Bob Trube

How does one live well as a Christian graduate student? Bob Trube, GFM campus staff, has stewed over that question with members of the InterVarsity grad fellowship at Ohio State. Here are their recommendations of seven habits that should be incorporated into the life of every Christian grad student.

1. Spend regular time with God.

• Time with God is not another academic task. Rather it is time listening to God in scripture and prayer, meditating on Christian truth and its bearing on your life, and speaking to God in prayer about who he is, who you are, and what concerns both of you.
• Brief regular time with God is better than sporadic extended time. Regular time with God reminds us to live in dependence upon God throughout each day.
• Remember that regular time with God is not a “to do” to check off or a ritual to gain God’s favor. Rather it is a discipline that helps us to “practice God’s presence” throughout the day.

2. Spend regular time with your spouse or roommates.

• Grad school can be murder on those you live with. Your spouse may think you are married to your computer or having an affair with your study carrel. Your roommates may wonder when you are going to do your share of the cleaning around the apartment.
• Set aside regular time to be together, preferably when you are not “spent.” Give your spouse your best, not your leftovers. Plan regular “dates.” Don’t neglect physical intimacy.
• We find it helps to take some time weekly or more often to talk over and coordinate our calendars and see if our time use reflects our priorities.
• Pray together regularly.

3. Have a focused pursuit of your graduate studies with appropriate boundaries.

• Remember the axiom, “work expands to fill the time you give it.” Don’t make an open-ended commitment of your time to your studies but set boundaries that permit you to give appropriate attention to your academic work as well as to the other habits on this list.
• Take the first minutes of a work session to identify clearly what you are trying to accomplish so that you don’t needlessly fritter time away.
• As much as possible, set time limits for a task (e.g. I will compile that annotated bibliography by 4 pm today).
• You can’t read everything! Learn to skim, to use bibliographic resources, abstracts, etc. to familiarize yourself with the research literature in your discipline and to help you be selective in to what you give your attention.

4. Participate in the life of a local church.

• Participate in the weekly times of worship in your church. Contribute financially according to your means. While the time you have for other involvements is limited, find opportunity to share in fellowship and ministry with people who are not graduate students!

5. Meet weekly with other Christian graduate students.

• Life as a graduate student has its unique challenges. One of the gifts of fellowship with other grad students is that these are people who understand your world. Sometimes, they may also understand your excuses and challenge you in your walk.
• Make a commitment to at least one gathering of grad students that will become a non-negotiable in your schedule. Graduate students who don’t do this usually don’t intend to be out of fellowship — it just happens by default. Also, such a commitment helps foster deepening relationships by communicating that these people are important in your life.
• Look for and help nurture a graduate fellowship that helps you think about your calling as a grad student and about the lifestyle and intellectual issues that challenge you. This fellowship should also equip you for witness and ministry in the university.

6. Pray for opportunities to befriend and share Christ with grads in your department.

• In particular, are you praying for your office mates, the people in your study group, or those who “share” your advisor? While you are at it, are you praying for the salvation of your advisor?
• Do you believe that you could be instrumental in leading one or more of these people to faith in Christ? Imagine the impact our graduate fellowship could have if each person brought one other person to Christ!
• Take advantage of social opportunities like department happy hours or other informal get-togethers to build relationships.
• Witness is often a matter of being honest about who you are and what you believe when the opportunity arises. Pray for boldness to be straightforward with the truth in such situations.

7. Take conscious steps to integrate your discipline with your faith.

• Are you convinced that “all truth is God’s truth” — that the pursuit of truth in your discipline is pleasing to God? In Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell defended his participation in running events in these words, “When I run, I feel the pleasure of God upon me.” Is this so for you? Remember to give thanks for the moments of joy in your work where you feel God’s pleasure upon you.
• Often, integrating your discipline with your faith involves going back to the first principles of the faith and asking what bearing these have on the content and the practices of your discipline. Above all, this means staying close to Jesus and going deeper in your understanding of the faith. Unfortunately, many Christian grads and faculty have a highly sophisticated grasp of their discipline but an elementary level understanding of the faith.
• Seek opportunities to interact with other Christians in your discipline on this campus via articles and books and at conferences.

Citing Sources

Every historian knows the importance of citing all your evidence. Footnoting or endnoting can be a harrying process, nonetheless. Here are two things I use to help:

1) The Chicago Manual of Style Online has a listing of how to cite different kinds of sources. It’s not quite as exhaustive as the print version, but very handy and up to date.

2) The software EndNote is great for keeping and cataloging your sources. You can purchase the software or use the free online version. The program even allows you to pull citations right from the Library of Congress website so you don’t have to type in all the info.