Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

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Letter to a New Graduate Student

letter photo
Photo by lukemontague

Dear New Graduate Student,

I don’t know you. And yet today, I think about you and pray for you. The academic world is small and mobile enough that there’s a good chance we’ll be on the same campus at some point in our lifetimes, and yet this letter is probably the only chance I’ll be able to speak these words to you. And reflecting back on my own first year as a graduate student reminds me of all I want to say to you, to tell you that you aren’t alone. [Read more…] about Letter to a New Graduate Student

ESN Mentoring Letter — MidWest Faculty Conference

Woods at InterVarsity’s Cedar Campus. Photo taken by Thomas B. Grosh IV while on a reflective walk during the 2014 Midwest Faculty Conference.

Hannah, Thank-you for offering this letter of encouragement! The faculty with whom I shared your words at Mentoring over the Long Term: Crafting Conversations, a seminar co-led with Terry Gustafson (OSU, Chemistry Professor) at the 2014 MidWest Faculty Conference on The Ends and Goals of Higher Education in Twenty-First-Century America: Change and the Calling of the Christian Educator, were very appreciative. I look forward to posting material from the seminar in order to create a toolkit for those seeking to dig more deeply into mentoring. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director, Emerging Scholars Network

Dear Friends in Higher Ed,

I remember kneeling in the woods one fall day during graduate school, afraid. The reds and oranges around me were stunning, but I was more aware of my knees on the ground and of the growing disquiet I felt. I was afraid not because my secular department was hostile to my faith (it had turned out to be quite supportive of my interest in theology), and not because I was surrounded by the flashier sort of temptation (I lived in a small college town at the time). I was afraid because things like the resurrection of Christ seemed hazier and hazier to me as I got busier and busier. I had committed to a workload that semester that I really couldn’t sustain, and life came to seem a blur of classes, papers, and four-hour nights. I read Scripture each morning, but found it hard to concentrate because there was always another deadline pressing.

As I adjusted to the pressures of grad student life, I longed for a mentor who could advise me on living faithfully in the rush of competing deadlines, someone who could also guide me in integrating faith well with my subject. My department was very strong in mentoring and provided me with great professional and personal advisors. But it wasn’t really their job to ask how my spiritual life was going or supply direct advice on integrating faith and learning, and I hadn’t been there long enough to figure out who might be interested in that kind of mentoring. [Read more…] about ESN Mentoring Letter — MidWest Faculty Conference