The Life of the Mind, Part I

Graduate school is a very interesting thing.

I have come to realize first, that it's not just about learning things. That's an undergraduate's job: absorb, learn, expand, wonder at the beautiful and marvelous world we live in! But real scholars do not simply listen - they speak and produce. That is for PhD students to worry about, mostly - producing journal articles and dissertations and conference papers.

At the MA level, you are caught in between. You must be open and listening, to get a broad base, and yet you must start to turn towards production. But in order to do so, there are many new frameworks one must take in; it is not just theology I am learning.

There is the framework of my discipline - theology is subdivided into fields, and these fields all have their own ways of speaking and thinking. I cannot speak like a systematician in a historical class; I must be sensitive to the approach and the questions that are being asked. (more on this for another post) So what kinds of questions must I be asking, what kinds of answers will people find helpful within the context of this field?

There is also the framework of my own mind. Many jobs are about simply doing things, and perhaps finding small ways to streamline your tasks to the ultimate goal, but the things you are modifying are tasks, protocols, stages, actions. To understand the process of graduate study is to come to know what this instrument is, this mind of mine, and how I can use it, and how I can't use it. There is first of all finding out how I think - in theology it is astonishingly easy to find one's sub-discipline simply by examining the nature of one's mental tools - what kinds of questions do you ask? If you want to know what culture this idea came from, be a historian - I want to know what it means and what we can take from it, and how it connects to everything else - I am a sytematician, and of a very philosophical variety. Yet how must I balance the analytic tools with the intuitive sensibilities, considering the view that I have on the nature of truth? This is a question that I must constantly attune myself to, so that I can be making the most of these tools I have, keeping the blades sharp, and perhaps shaping new tools for myself if possible.

But there is also the framework of pragmatic use - one's mind does not function at its best at all moments. This involves a whole new set of questions: when I can use it - what times of day, where I can use it, how to make it carry on when it wants to shut down, and when to give up and relax for a time before trying again. Little things can become critically important - fasting days in Lent by necessity turn into days of fasting from work as the day goes on, for as my body does not receive its proper nourishment my mind turns to water. Sleep is enormously important for keeping a sharp edge to my thought, to swim with the current instead of being buried under ideas. Diet probably is important too - but ask Lisa about that, that's not my expertise. To be at my peak requires discipline in the activities I do - I know that starting the day with a passive entertainment form like a TV show will ruin my concentration for perhaps the whole day; I know that dawdling on the internet divorces me from this deeper mode of thought and concentration - a certain quality in the environment that is the deepest wellspring of thoughts. Of course, this place of deepest thought involves a steady pace and a concentration unhindered by what needs are being pressed upon me from the outside - this is often unhelpful for times when I need to be writing papers, for I must adapt myself to the needs of the day, not simply what I wish to think about.

I use myself almost as a third person, but in a way graduate studies can make of it a commodity, a detached objectification of your being - it is not only me, but my livelihood. But you see my point - the MA level is in part to get a preliminary understanding of the subject of theology, but it is largely to learn about yourself, whether you are capable and willing to move on to a doctoral program and devote the rest of your life to studies, to brave the risk of failing and having to start your life completely over if you find you can't be hired. This is a very real possibility that graduate students must face in this market. Graduate school is a real challenge to one's very self - we find how sharp our mind is, how far we can push ourselves, how much discouragement we must weather, and what kind of reward at the end is necessary to keep us going - if it is something outside of the joy that comes through learning and discovering both inside and outside of class, it probably is not enough to get us through. We're all asking ourselves, "Do I have what it takes to make it?" We all look up at our famous professors with a mix of awe and envy at times, hear success stories and hope that ours will some day sound the same. It can almost become a slavery - to ideas, to work, to this box that we are expected to fit inside.

It is a system we must understand and cooperate with, and yet keep ourselves detached and untamed by its easy categorizations. For, like all human structures, it bears the deep wounds of the fall, and can become a force antithetical to the dignity of the human person - ourselves, our peers, or those "outside."

"It's all in the balance," they say - find that balance. We must learn to be excellent teachers, excellent researchers, excellent writers, and excellent networkers. We must have an excellent grasp of the generals, and a solid specialization in particulars. We must work hard, but keep our sanity. We must work with the system, but never let it dominate us. I cannot help wondering if "balance" means to them "absolute perfection in everything we do" - but this is only another balance - to resist the vain pull of the spectral scholar-you-wish-you-were against the under- or overrated scholar-you-are-now, to find the scholar you may truly hope become -- and yet to not be too attached to this notion either.

Above all else, there is one aspect, one balance of this system in particular that greatly concerns me, especially in the field of theology or philosophy. But I will have to save this for another post. My paper is calling.