Seeing
as I am set to graduate in December, assuming I pass my single course, I have
been reflecting over my life during the grad school experience. To say life has been hard would be a dramatic
understatement: early on I had to deal
with the difficulties of learning a new field of study in which I had little
formal training; working 20-30 hours per week (often involving waking at 4 or 5
a.m. and being at class until almost 9 p.m.) on top of the course work and
commuting 40 minutes one way three to four times a week has made me more tired
than I could have ever expected; dumping
more money into keeping my twenty year old car running than the car itself is
worth; the difficulty that comes with the deaths of close friends and family
need not be mentioned; attempting, and subsequently failing, at romantic
relationships is a normal hardship that twenty-somethings deal with on a regular
basis; self- and socially-imposed criterion for success being unachieved like
driving a nice car, being self-sufficient, not studying humanities because of
the lack of money the field yields, the assumption that one should be in
serious romantic relationships at my age, etc., are all insecurities that all
millennials can probably relate to in some way; and, of course, my on-going
battle with being a Christian that doesn’t buy traditional Christianity (one
that started upon receiving an insufficient answer to the question, ‘Does God
love Satan?’ as a third or fourth grader) is as difficult as it has ever been
the past two years. However, despite all
of the milieu trials that have come with it, I still do not regret studying
philosophy because of two things I’ve learned: peace and the further importance
of community.
What
I mean by ‘learning peace’ is this: I’ve learned to be at peace with many of
the intellectual problems that come with being a theist in an anthropocentric
world (please remember, reader, that not all traditional theistic stigmas apply
to the author). Dabbling in ideas from
thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Kant, and Marx, and dealing with the
ideas like Existentialism, Post-Structuralism, Political Liberalism,
Neo-Marxism, Platonism, some extremely radical versions Christianity like that
of Hauerwas, MacIntyre, or Yoder, has resulted in the acceptance of ideas I
never thought I’d believe are true and the abandonment of ideas I held more
certain than that the sum of two and two being four. Some of these ideas I’ve
even posted about on this very blog. While I certainly have not solved
definitively things like the Euthyphro Dilemma or The Problem of Evil (will
anyone ever?), I do have answers I feel certain about. As a result of my
studies, the doubt regarding the existence of a loving God and whether life has
purpose has ceased has haunt me and the peace is nearly overwhelming. For this
alone graduate school has been worth it.
A
second thing that I have been learning for some time, but has been profoundly
reinforced by grad school, is the importance of community. Keeping the hours I
keep is not conducive for a healthy social life. Often I have to go to bed early, work
weekends, and spend what time I have left over reading or writing. During my first semester I rarely saw anyone
outside of work or class. Many of my
friends simply stopped inviting me to do things because the inevitable response
seemed to be, ‘I can’t. I have to work early.’ or, “Sorry, I have to get this
reading done.’ As a result, I have had
to intentionally prioritize and maintain relationships. Sometimes that has meant
giving up sleep or, sorry to any of my profs that are reading this, read less
thoroughly than I should. Friends I’ve
held dear, some of which for nearly a quarter of a century, were something I needed
to make time for again in my life so I did.
The community I’ve had with them has continued to be a source of joy
that I could not otherwise have without them being an intentional part of my
life.
As I said earlier, this has not been an easy two years,
but the things I’ve learned and the people that are a part of my life are
priceless. I read constantly about graduate students who regret their time in
higher education and how the debt they’ve accumulated is an unbearable burden,
but I cannot share in that lamentation. Without
graduate school I doubt I could have had either the peace or the relationships
I now possess and these have made all the difference.
