Part One: My Life as an Academic Underachiever
I graduated on Saturday 26th February. The ceremony had been delayed for about a year and a half because of…well, you know what. I now have a piece of paper that confirms my possession of a doctoral degree in Systematic Theology from the University of Oxford. Anyone who has had an experience anything like this will know that there is a strange sense of anticlimax in obtaining such a qualification, particularly when it doesn’t really change that much practically about one’s current situation. In my case, having this doctorate has made no difference to my employment situation and it won’t hugely affect any future jobs that I will apply for in a priestly role in the Church of England. (Some people may think it looks impressive on a CV, but it’s probably just as likely to make people think that I am some kind of condescending boffin who will not make for a very good pastoral presence in their parish setting.) The most immediate difference it makes to me personally now, I suppose, is that it gives me, firstly, a sense of relief that I was able to obtain it and, secondly, a certain amount of intellectual confidence. The latter is not so much because I have the degree but because of the experiences that I underwent in order to get it: sitting with very intelligent and sharp people and having them question and cross-examine my thoughts about things, going to seminars with brilliant students and hearing intellectual conversation and the very painful processes of drafting, submitting, ditching and reworking bits of writing. That’s not even to mention that amount of reading that I did during those years…so much reading, I feel like I’m still recovering from the intensity.
But in order to really convey what it means, I have to give a little bit of background. I have always known that I have a certain amount of intelligence. But when I was in school I was pretty much completely disengaged. I messed up my first year of A-Levels and worked hard in the second year, finally obtaining some quite decent results, particularly in Philosophy where I practically retook the whole first year at the same time. I ended up getting 100% in several papers and very high marks across the board in the end. I had done well enough to go to the University of Kent to do Philosophy and English Literature, but I always had a dream that I would one day go to Oxford. I remember going to a seminar at Sixth Form College for people who were thinking of applying, but, by that stage, I really knew that I hadn’t worked hard enough and the opportunity wasn’t there for me. So I hadn’t got anywhere near it at undergraduate level but I still believed that, if I really applied myself, then maybe I could do it at for an MA. But I didn’t. Why not? I have to say that a lot of it was because of my personal conversion to Christianity. I became very passionate about my spiritual life and about the church that I was involved in and so I just did the minimum amount of academic work. And I got the same result I always had: mediocrity with minimal effort. Then I did an MA in Philosophy basically because I wanted to continue the same lifestyle and I achieved a similar thing, though even more underwhelming this time. I left the university scene with the feeling that I’d underachieved academically but at that stage I didn’t care very much. I was involved in Christian ministry and all I really cared about was that and the church. My dream of going to Oxford simply fell into abeyance.
What changed I suppose was a sense of intellectual and spiritual frustration with the church scene in which I was involved. As I always say nowadays, I don’t want to criticise any part of my background and I still believe that there is much that is good in the charismatic evangelical world and in the evangelical world more generally. But at the time it was stultifying to me and I needed something to help me to explore some of the discomfort and frustration that I was feeling. I was married by this stage, and Lorna and I decided that it might be a good idea for me to do something a bit different and so I looked at doing an MA in Theology and Biblical Studies at King’s College London. I quit my job as a pastoral worker for students at the church in Winchester, started a small business teaching young children piano and took up the offer I’d obtained at King’s.
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