Graduate Studies and Time-Out

Once when I was around 10-12 years old, I remember yelling at my mom and telling her that something she did wasn’t fair. I can’t remember what exactly she had done, but it probably involved justly punishing me for something I had done. Regardless, I told her it wasn’t fair, and she said, “Go ahead, send me to my room.” I gasped. Why would anyone want to be sent to their room? Being sent to one’s room in my house meant that you were in trouble. It also meant that you were about to spend a good deal of time bored. Why would anyone want that? Why would any sane person wish to be sent to time-out?

Yesterday as I sat in my study pouring over this research proposal of mine that continues to grow more unwieldy by the day, I thought to myself that post-coursework graduate studies is much like an adult version of time-out.

When you’re still in coursework, you are constantly surrounded by peers, and you look forward to getting together to play. You have lunch and coffee with one another, you talk about fun things that are happening, and you share your projects. Occasionally you may have a play group that you don’t particularly enjoy, but even these have their moments.

After coursework is finished, things change. You find yourself spending more and more time alone, shut inside small spaces and having to amuse yourself. Sometimes you emerge long enough from the depths of the library to see many of your friends still playing together, but ultimately this is short-lived.

What distinguishes this adult version of time-out from that which we know as children is that we have in some way chosen to be in time-out. Graduate school is, after all, voluntary. What’s more, the solitary life that follows coursework is regarded as reward for work done. You have done well in coursework, passed your qualifying exams, and now you are trusted to amuse yourself and stay out of trouble. In some respects, you begin to look forward to time-out.

This version of time-out is thus different from that which we knew as children. I suppose at least one thing is similar…all time-outs are temporary by nature, and eventually you get to rejoin the ranks and resume playing with others. Until then, I’m sending myself back to my room.

 

On the Death of Written Communication

Over this winter break, I’ve been reading through the autobiography of Mark Twain, released this past October. It is amazing on many levels.

I’m currently reading a section in which Twain recounts his life events as portrayed through the writing of his daughter, Susy, who at thirteen years old decided to compose her father’s biography. Twain reproduces the words of her biography in this section verbatim, and in fact he gives his future editors instructions to not change a single word, spelling included. He writes:

The spelling is frequently desperate, but it was Susy’s, and it shall stand. I love it, and cannot profane it. To me, it is gold. To correct it would alloy it, not refine it. It would spoil it. It would take from it its freedom and flexibility and make it stiff and formal. Even when it is most extravagant I am not shocked. It is Susy’s spelling, and she was doing the best she could — and nothing could better it for me.

What is striking (to me) about Twain’s instructions is not that he requested for his daughter’s spelling errors to not be corrected. What is striking is that they’re not all that bad for a child of thirteen. Susy consistently misspells “Buffalo” as “Bufalo,” and will occasionally leave out a letter or two from longer words like “extraordinary.” Aside from a few minor points here and there, her writing is actually phenomenal; her sentences are well-formed, her vocabulary is good (she uses the word incessantly at least twice), and she gets her point across clearly. Did I mention that she was thirteen when she wrote this stuff?

With Susy’s biography in the back of my mind, I’ve been struck lately at just how awful writing has become in recent years. Take, for example, the following screenshots. The first is from a review on Netflix, and the second is from a review in the Apple store:

These (extreme) examples are more for humor’s sake than anything else, but they do convey a point: written communication has changed.

I’m not sure what elementary education looks like these days (honestly)…I remember taking frequent spelling tests, and I remember typing papers on word processors that did not have spelling or grammar checkers. We were expected, not only to learn how to spell, but to care when we had misspelled something. Likewise, if a sentence wasn’t clear, we were told to change it. With the advent of more or less open communication mediums (like review systems and, let’s face it, blogs), people are able to simply write whatever they want and they assume that they’ve made their point (if they care to make a point in the first place). Often, people who “communicate” via Facebook, Twitter, reviews, etc., assume they’re writing to someone, when in reality they’re just writing into the air. It seems to me that this has at least contributed to the development of a writing style that operates apart from any rules of style or criticism. It’s the sort of writing style that makes sense to the person who wrote it, but not to anyone else.

Case in point, undergrads. In communicating with undergrads this past semester, both through e-mail and through paper grading, I was struck by how good and how bad their written communication can be. I read some really great papers as well as some not so great papers. I received some e-mails that I understood and some that I didn’t. I know, therefore, that bad writing isn’t just an “age thing.” It might in part be an age thing, but its more of an education thing. I offer here an example of what I’m talking about:

• In more than one paper, I encountered abbreviation slang such as LOL and OMG. So, for example, “When I read what X had said about the Gospel of Mark, I was LOL!” Or, in another case, “One time I met a Christian who said X, and I was just like OMG.” Neither of these quotes are verbatim (for the sake of privacy), but you get the point.

When I encountered things like this, I obviously made note of them in my comments. Every spelling error, every slang abbreviation, every nonsensical sentence received some sort of mark. In conversations that followed, students were upset about my comments, and some could not understand why I had counted off for things that were so “small.” My response to them was always that one of the purposes of college is to learn how to communicate, and one of the means by which we communicate is writing; if your writing does not clearly communicate what you’re trying to say, then your writing is not fulfilling its goal. A few replied that this is simply how people communicate these days.

So, I wonder…has the craft of writing (broadly speaking) taken a turn for the worse, or is it just evolving? Are slang abbreviations simply destined to become a part of the way that we write, or are they nuisances that need to be squashed? Is the consistent spelling of words useful, or is it really just another form of oppression?

I welcome your comments and criticisms.

On Paper, Kindles and New Year’s Resolutions

The time has come for people to start making new year’s resolutions; eat less, workout more, make new friends, etc. I’m typically pretty bad at keeping whatever resolutions I make, so for the past few years I’ve shied away from making any. Regardless of how you feel about the tradition, I suppose a new year does provide some sort of tangible “reset” button for one’s life (or at least aspects of it). In that spirit, I’ve decided to make a few new year’s resolutions for 2011…I share one of them with you here.

This past summer, my awesome wife allowed me to indulge in a rather extravagant purchase…a briefcase from Saddleback Leather. My rationale behind making such a purchase was (and is) complex: I was tired of purchasing bags that were bound to fall apart after a couple of years; I was tired of having bags that looked like garbage (because they were falling apart); I needed a bag that could handle whatever I decided to put in it.

The last bit of rationale is what has led me to one of my resolutions for 2011 — use less paper.

Here is a picture of my bag:

Here is a picture of the contents of my bag on a pretty normal day:

In case you can’t tell how much crap is in the front divide, here you go:

This bag is built like a tank, and its weight matches its build. Seriously, it is heavy. With my tendency to load it up with a few books, folders filled with class materials, my laptop, power cord, pens, etc., it can weigh in easily at over 30 lbs. That is a conservative estimate. Needless to say, my back muscles have seen amazing growth over the past 6 months. That said, the other day I journeyed to campus after having emptied the bag of most of its contents — the semester was over, and all I needed was my laptop and a couple of small items. The feeling of walking around without all that weight over my shoulder was invigorating, to say the least. So, for 2011, I’ve decided that I’m going to explore some ways to travel with less weight. I imagine that this resolution will take many forms, but at a basic level, it is going to involve using less paper.

I have already taken a first step to accomplishing this goal — the purchase of an Amazon Kindle. I’ve only had the thing for a few days, but so far it is really impressive. I can load it up with all those articles that I want to read, as well as class notes, syllabi, paper drafts, etc. The process of taking notes and highlighting on the Kindle is going to be a learning curve, but what isn’t these days? To be honest, I don’t see myself purchasing electronic theology books for the Kindle any time soon. For starters, if I’m going to shell out $20-30 bucks for a book, I want to have the book and not just a file. Moreover, the Kindle’s electronic format doesn’t preserve page numbers, so if you want to cite a book that you’ve purchased through their store, you have to go find the actual book anyway. That said, the majority of the weight that I find myself carrying these days is comprised of articles and assorted printouts for class, and the fact that uploading and reading .pdf files on the Kindle is quite simple lessens the need to print out everything that I come across.

Its a small start, but a start nonetheless. After I get more accustomed to the Kindle, I’ll likely post some sort of review regarding its usefulness for the purposes listed here (if you’re interested).

Eunomius of Cyzicus vs. Gregory of Nyssa

After what has turned out to be one of the busiest months in my recent past (honestly, ask my wife), I find myself in the wake of a project that consumed the majority of my time for the past two weeks: a dense reading of a passage from Gregory of Nyssa’s Against Eunomius. Just this morning, I discovered that I could have said everything by means of a graphic, which I now present to you. Honestly, this pretty much sums up the debate (or at least its aftermath).

The Final Countdown

It is 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, which means I have exactly 96 hours until my final paper of the semester is due. It is a dense reading of a passage from Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium I. Here it is, if you’re interested:

(194) ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς προδήλοις, ἐν οἷς οὐδεμίαν ἀμφιβολίαν τὸ τῆς ὑποταγῆς σημαινόμενον ἔχει, κατὰ τίνα νοῦν ὑποτετάχθαι τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος οὐσίαν τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποφαίνεται; ὡς ὁ υἱὸς τῷ πατρὶ ὑποτάσσεται, καθὼς νοεῖ ὁ ἀπόστολος; (195) οὐκοῦν κατὰ τοῦτο συντάσσεται τῷ υἱῷ τὸ πνεῦμα, οὐχ ὑποτάσσεται, εἴπερ τὰ δύο πρόσωπα τῶν ὑποταττομένων ἐστίν;

(194) But in the obvious cases, where the meaning of subjection admits no ambiguity, in what sense can it be shown that the being of the Spirit is subject to that of the Son and the Father? As the Son is being subjected to the Father, as the Apostle thinks? (195) Surely in this respect the Spirit is aligned with the Son, not subjected to him, if the two persons are both subjected?

Interested? I didn’t think so.

A few things that I have learned in the past couple of days:

1. Gregory of Nyssa is sometimes confusing, and doesn’t always give good reason for why he disagrees with someone.
2. My research carrel in the library is one of the coldest indoor places in Milwaukee. Seriously, I’m bringing gloves tomorrow.
3. Eunomius was wrong.
4. The French will continue to confound me until the day I die.
5. Reading Nyssa in Greek is far better than reading him in English.
6. Writing on Nyssa’s Greek allows one to wax poetic almost indefinitely.
7. I blog to avoid writing my papers.
8. Papers do not write themselves.

96 hours to go…see you all on Wednesday.

SBL 2010

One of the great things about flying around the holidays (at least over the past couple of years) is that sometimes airlines will find a sponsor for their in-flight wireless internet. This year, Delta teamed up with Google, and as a result I’m typing this from inside the plane…for free!

SBL this year was nice. It was great to be back in Atlanta for a weekend (where I lived for four years), and it was nice to catch up with some friends who have been scattered across the country to study and work. The papers I went to were all quite good. Some stick out in my head more than others. Sunday night, there was a book discussion/review of Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down, which included great responses from Beverley Gaventa, Doug Harink, Stephen Fowl, and Rob Wall (whose paper was given by a colleague). I have not yet read the book, but I’m looking forward to doing so over Christmas break!

This morning, I attended a session sponsored by the Society of Christian Ethics entitled “What Biblical Scholars Wish Ethicist Would Start/Stop Doing With Scripture” or something along those lines. Stanley Hauerwas was scheduled to be there, although he had to cancel for some reason. Stephen Fowl and Terrance Fretheim made some great points, and although Hauerwas was not able to make it, there was some good discussion afterward.

As usual, the book room was greatly tempting, although a limited budget provides one with the means to resist much temptation. I picked up Michael Gorman’s Reading Revelation Responsibly as well as the new Fundamentals of Biblical Greek from Eerdman’s…I’m planning on working up an informal review of it in the near future. I resisted the urge to add more modules to my already stellar Accordance Bible Software…I told the representative there that I might be more inclined to buy something if I could use it on my iPhone…they’ve been promising an app now for about a year and it is still not out. Hopefully by Christmas, or so I’m told.

SBL at this time of year is not without its drawbacks, of course. As a student who is still in the thick of classes (although thankfully nearing the end!), this time of year is exceptionally busy. I currently have two sizable papers on my plate, and for one of them I’m having to wade through Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae in some depth. To my dismay, I found myself needing to go off by myself a few times this weekend to get some reading done. I’m looking forward to next year, when I will be done with my qualifying exams and able to focus more on the conference.

In short, another year, another SBL!

Plagiarism and Paper Mills

Today I ran across this interesting piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It is written by an employee of one of the many online “paper mills” that some undergraduate students (and, it would seem, graduate students) use when they want someone else to do their work for them. The piece is enlightening, and worth the time to read.

The Art of the Conference Paper

From “Inside Higher Ed,” here is an informative piece about how to improve your conference presentations:

Click here to read

 

How to Write a Paper Proposal

Presenting papers at conferences is a hallmark of the academic life.  The experience can be fun, informative, terrifying, edifying, or all of the above. Unless you are invited by a specific group to present, your entrance into the world of conference presentations will ultimately be the paper proposal. The problem is that proposals can be difficult to compose without guidance. This post is meant to provide some guidance in the discipline of crafting a paper proposal. You will likely need to tailor some of my advice to fit your individual needs, but I hope these suggestions will be helpful nonetheless.

Content & Structure

1) Pose the problem or idea from the outset. Do not try to build suspense or be poetic…get to the point in the first couple of sentences. At the beginning of a good proposal, you need to make it clear that there is a hole in scholarship that your paper will fill (or attempt to fill). Quotations from other scholars can sometimes be helpful in this task…find someone who embodies the problem that you’re addressing, and use them to illustrate the problem.

2) State that no one has previously addressed the problem, or at least that they have not done so in the way that you are now attempting to do. This is a short but necessary component of your proposal. You need to convince your reader at the outset that what you’re about to do in this paper has not been done before, that you’re doing something unique and not just toeing the party line.

3) State your intention on solving (or at least bringing light to) the problem. This is the place where you should insert the words, “This paper does X” or “This paper will show X.” Regardless of whether or not you like Star Wars, it is a good idea to follow the advice of Yoda here. Namely, “do or do not…there is no try.” This is the place in your proposal where you need to be bold and assert that you’re doing something new, provocative and cutting edge. Even if your paper will not drastically change the landscape of scholarship, you need to present it as if it will.

4) Make your reader aware that you’re familiar with the terrain that you’ll be discussing in your paper. Mention a few names and a few books, even if only in passing. Don’t make quotations a large part of your abstract…a few are fine, but if you’re going to draw attention to something that someone said, do it by means of your own summary.

Style & Formatting

1) Use the same font for everything in your abstract. This is actually a good formatting rule for any paper that you’ll write, and it always surprises me to see people use one font for the title, another for their name, etc. USE ONE FONT.

2) Avoid excessive italics. This is more of a suggestion than a rule, but I think laying off the italics makes for a cleaner looking page in general. Of course, you’ll need to italicize books and whatnot, but don’t lean on italics to provide emphasis to your words.

3) Longer words don’t make you look smarter. Please entertain a short rant, if you will…some people habitually employ the word “utilize” over and above “use.” There is nothing inherently wrong with this, I suppose, but the motive behind it is to replace a commonplace word with one that is a bit “sexier.” True, long words are sometimes necessary (especially in academics where we thrive on creating them), but you should avoid the impulse to go through your proposal and “upgrade” your vocabulary when you’re done writing. Foreign words and titles are the exception to this rule…if you can put something in Latin, Greek, French, etc., this DOES make you look smarter.

4) Keep your sentences short and concise. I love a good compound sentence as much as the next guy, but in a proposal you need to be blunt and to the point. Your reviewer will likely spend less than one minute reading your proposal. If they encounter a long, dense sentence that requires re-reading, they will probably just put yours down and move on to the next one. With this in mind, keep your prose as simple and straight forward as possible…this is not the place to impress by means of your verbosity…this is a place to convey clarity and your ability to summarize.

Editing/Proofreading

1) DO edit. Proposals are short, and deceptively so. Read through your proposal a few times, and send it to your colleagues to read through as well. If there is a glaring typo in the body (or the title, God forbid), your reader will notice and will likely not be pleased.

2) DO observe the word limit. True, the person reading your proposal will likely not have the “word count” feature at their fingertips, but they will know if your proposal is longer than the others on their desk. Don’t worry about the word limit when writing the proposal, but in the editing process go through and streamline your prose. Follow Thomas Jefferson’s famous quip, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

Those are my points of advice for writing a successful paper proposal. If you have others that I’ve overlooked, please share them!

Reason, Faith, the SBL, and the F-Word

In a recent issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Ronald Hendel offers a scathing reflection on the current state of the Society of Biblical Literature. See the full article here, as well as responses from SBL members here.

The article suggests that the SBL, by failing to preserve a sharp dichotomy between faith and reason, has effectively abandoned its mission to promote and encourage “critical” biblical scholarship. By forgetting the lessons of Blaise Pascal (“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know”, Pensées) and Baruch Spinoza (specifically, in his Theological-Political Treatise), the SBL has begun spiraling into “a confused domain of dissension and hypocrisy.” As this blog is, at least in part, an effort to explore and defend the inter-locution of faith in biblical scholarship, I feel that a response to at least few of Hendel’s points is warranted here.

Part of Hendel’s trouble with the SBL is that they have begun to allow the inclusion of what he deems “fundamentalist groups.” These groups include, but are not limited to, the Society of Pentecostal Studies and the Adventist Society for Religious Studies. Later in the article, he also includes “some postmodernists, feminists, and eco-theologians” as well as “creationists, snake-handlers and faith-healers” as implicitly under the same blanket. The problem with such groups, according to Hendel, is that some of their members proselytize at the SBL meetings. In response, I would say that Hendel needs to not use “fundamentalist” as a descriptor for every person who would seek to incorporate their own faith views into their biblical scholarship, or as a category for every person who would proselytize. The category of “fundamentalist” is, in my opinion, not a helpful one. It is somewhat akin to labeling someone as a conservative or a liberal…the categories may have meant something at some point, but now they are highly relative, as their meanings are largely constitutive of the person doing the branding. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fundamentalism” thus:

• A religious movement, which orig. became active among various Protestant bodies in the United States after the war of 1914-1918, based on strict adherence to certain tenets (e.g. the literal inerrancy of Scripture) held to be fundamental to the Christian faith.

In some contemporary Christian circles (and apparently, in some scholarly ones), “fundamentalist” has come to mean “someone who is militantly simple and closed-minded about issues related to faith, politics, culture, the Bible, etc.” Hendel’s use of the term in this article is both inaccurate and misleading. While I would agree with him that proselytizing has no place at SBL, I imagine the situations he describes in which it has occurred are exceptions, not rules. It seems to me as if Hendel’s frustrations with SBL, which he expresses in terms of “fundamentalists” now eating at the same scholarly table as historical critics, run deeper than simply allowing new groups to join and have their voices be heard. His lack of clarity regarding the word “fundamentalist” seems to highlight his tacit assertion that no one who would allow their faith and scholarship to converge should be allowed at SBL. On the absurdity of such a claim, Michael Bird once wrote a brilliant parody that is highly recommended reading.

The fact of the matter is that the SBL has always been populated by persons whose faiths and beliefs have influenced their critical scholarship. As I continue in the field of New Testament studies, I become more and more convinced that the possibility of exegesis without presuppositions is not really a possibility at all. We all approach the text from a certain perspective, and sidelining such perspectives for the sake of objectivity is proving to be quite impossible. This is, of course, a point of contention for some. My overall impression of SBL is that it is (and perhaps should be) a melting pot of sorts. True, there are persons in attendance at the meetings with whom I find little in common and with whom I have little interest in speaking about “scholarly matters.” I will refrain from outing them here. However, at one level, the sheer size of the conference, let alone the number of sessions held daily, makes avoidance of these groups and persons quite easy.

The course of action that is at least tacitly implied by Hendel’s article is that SBL should exercise strict guidelines in screening members for admission or participation. He fails to outline specifically what the criteria for membership might be, but one could imagine that it would have to go beyond the school at which one wrote their dissertation. What Hendel seems to hint at here is the need for a statement of faith (or lack thereof) that all members would need to agree to. What we’re talking about here is, for all intents and purposes, a CREED, a hermeneutical lens through which members would agree to read in community with other members. Adherence to said creed would control the interpretation of the biblical text so that influences such as faith would not be allowed to “corrupt” one’s reading. The creed of reason would, in theory, protect its professors from the meddling creeds of faith.

Am I alone in thinking that Hendel’s article is advocating its own brand of fundamentalism?