It is vacation time for me this week ... my one week each year to read, relax, engage in fun recreational activities [as much as skiing on a knee that needs replacement can be ... yes, this time it's the "other" knee ... and, yes, surgery is scheduled for April 20] and most of all take some time for thinking and introspection. How did I end up here? Where am I going? What is it going to take to finish the race? What adjustments are necessary? Where am I failing? And what might I actually be doing well? It somehow always seems to go back to my days at both Oklahoma State University as a budding engineer who just about walked away from college and life in the sciences after three semesters and my calling to Christ beginning a semester into my freshman year and culminating in His calling on my life into a career in the medical sciences and a transfer to Oral Roberts University eighteen months later.
What was really happening there on a cosmic, eternal scale? Is it even presumptuous to even go there? What makes one successful in the applied sciences? How much does the search for truth really even matter anyway? Can truth even ever really be known? And, if so, then how? Those are my thoughts ... at least for this week. Next week, sadly, it will likely be back to managing the chaos.
But not this week ... this week I am reflecting on a few specifics of my life in academics ... both as an undergraduate student still trying to "figure this science thing out" and then nearly fifteen years ago as first year medical school professor at Florida State University College of Medicine teaching my first ever medical student in his and their first ever medical school class. Did any of us even know what we were doing back then?
I remember nearly throwing in the towel on my college experience after a nearly disastrous fall semester in my sophomore year. I had to drop my Physics II class at mid-term because I had a "D" and I ended up making a C+ in my Thermodynamics class ostensibly because of a calculator malfunction during my final exam ... I was totally sunk at that point having to do all these crazy calculations longhand which was almost impossible, but the truth of the matter is that I never really had a clue as to what was really happening in that class, and the fact that I even had a low B entering the final exam was equal parts a miracle of God and lots of homework help from my dad. Differential Equations wasn't much better though I made a solid B in that class, but from the point in the semester that we reached LaPlace transformations I was totally lost and praying for partial credit on every question. Thankfully that was near the end of the course. I still have no idea how to do those problems to this day. So that Christmas holiday season was a time of deep soul-searching for me. Why was I even matriculating in college anyway? Was it just what came next? What it just what was expected? What would I do if I didn't go back? Where was God in all this anyway? It still never really occurred to me to seek His plan for my life, but more like I had to figure this out for myself anyway. But ultimately, I did feel like I needed to go back ... if for no other reason than to see what I could do if I really ever took my classes seriously. This just going to class but not studying until the night before the exam was not going to cut it anymore. That much was certain. But I had lingering doubts, despite what so many people had told me over so many years, that I was destined to succeed if I'd only put all my heart into it. So if for no other reason than that I felt like I had to go back and see if they were right.
And go back I did. I enrolled in 20 credit hours that semester ... 16 hours that were what was next on the engineering platform PLUS the 4 hour Physics II class that I had felt compelled to drop to preserve what was left of my GPA [3.50] at that point ... so this would be the test. And behind the scenes I now see that hand of God all through it. Though, to be truthful, I was more into MTXE ... the logo painted on the sidelines of my adopted hometown basketball team [Wichita State Shockers] after our family moved to tiny little Clearwater ... a Wichita suburb ... six months before. MTXE was short for "Mental Toughness Extra Effort" and became my mantra to get through my medical school and residency years. Later I would come to realize that it was always a lot more about God's grace than it ever was about MTXE on my part. That semester would become the high point of my undergraduate academic career as I made my first 4.0 semester since second grade that spring. Yes, I made an A in that Physics class I had previously dropped but that wasn't the class that changed my trajectory. That would be the engineering weed out class known as Statics and Strength of Materials [as it was typically taken BEFORE Thermodynamics and also before Dynamics. This was the class known to send nearly 50% of budding engineers back to their academic advisors to seek help in selecting a new major. And it was in that class that I made a perfect score for the entire semester including the final exam! A total shocker and a total game changer. My confidence began to soar following that semester and I was ready for what God ultimately had for me which really had nothing to do with engineering after all. But he had to get me to this point and then He called me to both a richer life in Him and one in serving His people often in their moments of greatest need.
But what I learned during that Statics class is something that I carry with me to this day and that is what I call "Holding on to the Doubt" ... this began with me staring at the blank space beneath each problem on my Statics exams. This was the kind of staring that often provoked such anxiety that it often caused students to rush into an ill-considered answer. But jumping too soon into solution space might cause me to miss some key element of the problem being posed or to answer a conceptually adjacent question [I did this all the time in Thermodynamics]. Not this time.
I resolved that the solution for my anxiety while staring at the unanswered question was to remain calm in the presence of the openness, to not close off the inquiry too soon and thus run at full speed into a solution that might not take the whole truth of the problem into account. Holding on to the doubt meant listening to all that the problem had to say and not making assumptions, and committing to a plan of action based on them, until the deepest truth presented itself. It was a philosophy that would serve me well in my last semester at OSU, through all of my Biology education at ORU and my subsequent medical training and in the thirty years that have followed. Often that semester I would end up with one of those "I see what you did there" smirks on my face when revelation would set in. That still often happens ... just hopefully without the smirk.
Holding on to the doubt is a big deal, and it is not always easy, but it has to happen, and it has to happen on many levels. Not only does HOTTD make us better thinkers ourselves but it also is indispensable in making a good thinking team/organization. Developing something new and novel is a nonlinear process and being a part of that process can be anxiety provoking because we may not know exactly where this is going and we may not be certain that we are really going to find a solution that works or meets our needs. The temptation to short-circuit the process can be strong. But it is only by HOTTD that we can allow ourselves to fully understand the problem we are trying to solve and to fully develop the best solution.
More about the Introduction to Doctoring Class I at FSU COM with the charter class to follow ... I haven't forgotten ... this has just gotten longer than I expected.
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