Category: Scholarship
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And the Best Background Music for Writing Is . . .
Which kind of music helps you do your best thinking, writing, or creating? I took several stabs at that question as I wrote my dissertation. I tried Rachmaninoff but found my heart too carried away with the emotion of the music. Sometimes I brought in Mozart’s chamber music. But most often, I enlisted Bach, supplemented…
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Sick of My Dissertation Topic?
People have asked me whether I ever got sick of my dissertation topic, as someone might ask a person who had vowed to eat only lasagna for breakfast for several months. Actually, the opposite happened. As I neared the end of my dissertation, I became increasingly fascinated with the topic, especially as it intersected with…
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How I Prepared for My Doctoral Comps
Doctoral. Comprehensive. Examinations. Cue the late-night studying, caffeine addiction, panic sessions and ulcers. Well, not the ulcers. But just about everything else. The short story is: I passed! And the long story—for anyone interested in finding out—is how I prepared. Obviously, doctoral comps are going to differ widely, depending on your field of study, area…
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Writing? Close Your Laptop. Use Pen and Paper.
Here is one of the most important writing habits I have learned over the past couple years: I avoid using my computer until I know exactly what I’m trying to say. I have wasted hours staring at a blank Word document, waiting for inspiration from the blinking cursor, or–this is my personal weakness–obsessing over the…
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Six Convictions of the Christian Scholar
At the outset of my PhD program, my professor assigned a paper with the topic “faith and scholarship.” Due to the word count limitations, what I’ve posted here never made into the paper I actually submitted. But writing that paper compelled me to think through the convictions that would guide me as I began my…
Jonathan M. Threlfall 