What's Brad up to?

Waaay back when we first moved to Durham, I did a post about Brad's school life. I thought I'd do an update on him now that we're closing in on finishing year 3.

Quick refresher: Brad is working on a Ph.D. in Early Christianity/Historical Theology. His end goal is to teach one day. If you'd like a more thorough explanation, click on the link above, or better yet, ask him sometime. The explanation of the ins-and-outs of his studies can get really confusing, so I try to avoid going too in-depth and risking making it worse.

In his program (and most American Ph.D. programs, I think), students spend the first two years doing coursework (i.e. taking classes) full-time. So, for his first two years, he took about 3 courses a semester, plus a couple of audited courses along the way (plus a bunch of other reading and study groups. There is so much work and time involved.). Before beginning his second year, he had to pass at least one of his language competency exams. He took- and passed!- his French exam his first year and then his German exam this year (incidentally, he formally studied French in an 8-week crash course at BC, and he audited an Intro to German course here for one semester. He's a learning beast.). 

At Duke, beginning the second year of a Divinity/GPR (again, see the above link) Th.D. or Ph.D. program, students also begin precepting (facilitating/teaching), which is mostly for smaller, auxiliary classes connected to very large required courses for masters programs within the Divinity school (the Div School offers a Master of Theological Studies and a Master of Divinity). Brad has precepted for two sections of Church History part 1 and one section of Church History part 2. These experiences have been great for him to start finding his groove as an instructor, and he's gotten really good feedback! He's currently a teaching assistant for another Church history course.

The third year of his program (which he is in the middle of) does not involve formal coursework; he has spent most of this year developing and working on a reading list of texts relating to his field to prepare for his preliminary exams (most schools call these "comprehensive exams," but Duke chooses to call these exams "prelims" instead.). He has a committee that he works with to design the questions for his prelims and then who will administer them in just a few weeks. He'll have 4 days of written exams and one day of oral exams. It's a pretty big event, and his entire school year so far has been building to this point.

Providing that he passes his prelims, he will then work on his dissertation proposal. Presumably, a lot of the resources he's been reading for his prelims will overlap with the process of preparing for his dissertation proposal. Once he has his proposal together, he'll present it to a committee, and if it's approved, he'll be considered ABD ("all but dissertation," which means that a student has done everything required for their degree except submit and successfully defend a dissertation.).

At that point, things are relatively open-ended. Funding for a Duke Ph.D. lasts for 5 years, so that is often the goal (because who wants to run out of funding??). There are avenues for obtaining funding for additional years of study, and many- if not most- students end up seeking out such funding. Brad has a goal of finishing his program in five years, but so far, no one can remember the last person from his track who actually did that. 

He's been zeroing in on the topic he hopes to write his dissertation on and has been putting in a lot of time researching and preparing for that (there will be a section about his proposed topic as part of his prelims). I'll write more about his dissertation as it becomes more defined.

Life in academia is such an interesting thing. In some senses, it provides a lot of flexibility (summers are largely self-structured and Christmas breaks are lengthy), but in other ways, Brad puts in so much more time than he would in a more traditional job. He can easily clock 60-70 hours of work in a week. Without even trying. He has so much reading (really dense and difficult reading, for the most part) that he can spend hours (like, 6) working through 40-50 pages. He logs a lot of time preparing for and participating in reading/discussion groups that aren't required but are good disciplines (I hate these groups because they're always at night and for several hours each). It's really amazing and unbelievably admirable the work ethic that he has. And it's also admirable to me that he can talk to normal people (i.e. non-academics) about his- very niche-y- discipline in ways that don't make us feel ignorant. Or, at least not too ignorant. ;)

So, that's what Brad is up to these days. The next few weeks are very important, and then, hopefully, he will be able to take a slight mental break for a bit before gearing up for dissertating. Whew.