In three weeks, I'll drive to Detroit and defend my dissertation. Assuming I don't set the room on fire or accidentally punch one of my committee members in the neck, I think they'll approve my work and I'll be done. Finally.
I'm in the process of finalizing my formatting and trying to make sure that every little detail is taken care of. It's a weird, exciting time, and it's a little hard to wrap my head around the idea that it's almost over.
Anyway, one component of finishing up the final document was writing an autobiographical statement. I wasn't sure what they wanted, so I went ahead and wrote what seemed right and was then told it was too long. Apparently, they only wanted something short and to the point, and I had written a three page essay. So I cut out the essay and wrote a paragraph because I'm all about getting this done, you know?
But I like what I wrote and I don't want it to just disappear into the junkyard file I've been building for the last eight years. So I thought I'd post it here. It's a little lofty and more formal-sounding than what I usually post, but what the heck - PhD-ing requires a certain amount snooty obnoxiousness, I think, so here's some of mine:
I was born and
raised in the high deserts of southeastern Idaho. My parents were both fourth
generation members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the
area where we lived is a main artery in what is known as the Mormon Corridor,
the stretch of land from southern Alberta, Canada to northern Mexico that LDS
prophet Brigham Young systematically colonized in the 19th century. My
personal identity is deeply interwoven with my membership in the Mormon church.
Every major decision I’ve made and each important life event I’ve experienced
has been shaped and colored by my relationship with my religion. At times, that
relationship is fraught with conflict and cynicism on my part while at other
times it is a source of guidance and peace for me.
Because I
recognize Mormonism’s centrality in my worldview and because I believe in the
efficacy of writing and research for finding answers to important questions
(both personal and academic), I have used my time in graduate school to unpack
my particular set of religious, cultural, historical, academic, and aesthetic concerns.
During my MFA program at Boise State, my thesis project was a book-length
series of poems centering on the conflict between a Mormon’s desire to reach
spiritually upward and the various temporal appetites that detract from that
reaching.
Once I decided to
continue on to a PhD program, I knew two things for sure: I wanted to pursue
film studies (because I wanted a subject I knew I would still love even after
years of close study) and that I wanted to study Richard Dutcher’s work. As I
wrote in the dissertation itself, Dutcher’s work has profoundly affected me
since I first encountered it, sometimes in positive ways, sometimes not.
Positive or negative, it was important in ways that were a little mysterious to
me. I believe that grad school can and should be an opportunity to work out
questions and ideas that matter.
Dutcher’s work matters to me. Mormonism matters to me. Sorting out my own
sometimes conflicted feelings about my religion and reconciling them with my
academic pursuits matters.
Over the course of
the eight years it has taken me to get to this point, I had some of the most
challenging and profound life experiences a person can have: my wife and I
welcomed our third and final child after a seven year gap, my father died of a
heart attack right in front of me while he was out visiting my family in rural
Illinois, my mother died just four months later after finally succumbing to the
effects of years of aggressive breast cancer treatment, and, as a result of
their passing, I fell into a deep depression that lasted a couple of years. My
religious faith was tried and almost worn thin in ways I’d never experienced.
My relationship with my beliefs changed like they never had before. Serious
academic pursuit is hard work. I think it is made harder still by the fact that
it happens as real life is constantly impinging on it.
I was in my early
30s when I began this project. This January I will turn 41. Over the course of
this project, I have gone from being a relatively young man to approaching
middle age. I have more children, more wrinkles, and more pounds on the scale
now than I did when I began, having spent the better part of a decade working
on this project. As I write this statement as part of preparing the final draft
of this dissertation, I look back and think that, while I wish it had taken
about half as long, it has been time well-spent and I am glad I did it.
Writing, studying, and talking about my church and my faith in combination with
film, something that has been central to my life for every bit as long as
Mormonism has been, created new understanding and also generated new questions
and concerns. In other words, it has done exactly what both academic study and
religious practice are supposed to do: shed light while raising new questions
to pursue. One Book of Mormon prophet
taught, “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of
men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and
blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my
counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give
more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken
away even that which they have” (2 Nephi 28.30). I feel as though I have spent
the last eight years learning line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little and there a little. I certainly haven’t come to any kind of “fullness of
knowledge” about film studies, Mormonism, or even Richard Dutcher whose life
and work continue to evolve and change in unexpected ways, but I made a
tentative forward step into the darkness, testing the ground beneath me as I
go, and found something useful, rewarding, and new as a result of my attempts. Stepping
into the unknown, attempting to make a connection, being both rewarded and a
little confounded by what’s found on the other side? This seems to me to describe
the process and aims of both religious faith and scholarly pursuit. Despite how
separate they sometimes seem, it gratifies me to realize how related the two
worlds really are, and I am glad to have spent the last eight years working on
a project that, I hope, created a few new nexus points between them.
