I have spent much of my life sitting behind a desk in a classroom.
I first did so at a Main Street Baptist church in my hometown. My tenure there was brief. One morning, I did what rural children do when they need to use the restroom: I dropped trou and went, urinating proudly beside the monkey bars on the playground.
A parent-teacher conference occurred the next day. I made it another couple weeks before all parties agreed it wasn’t the right fit.
I fared better as I grew older. I mastered reading and writing while cursing all things related to arithmetic.
In middle school, I reluctantly learned algebra. I forsook its originator for taking the letters I used to make sentences and stories and turning them into equations involving two trains speeding toward one another:
If the first train leaves Town A at 5 am, traveling at 60 miles per hour, and a second train leaves Town B at 7 am, traveling at 70 miles per hour, where will the two trains meet if the distance between the towns is 455 miles?
“In hell,” I silently hoped.
By high school, I learned where the toilets were and used them regularly.
Later, I bounced around colleges like an 8-year-old in a trampoline park—sporadically, flailing and without a trace of self-awareness. I kept writing, camping out in English departments before moving on to study religion, philosophy and theology.
In this discipline, something clicked. I became enamoured. I not only learned but was asked to contribute and build upon what I was learning. My aptitude had found its subject. My love for writing was fed through research and essays.
And there wasn’t a bit of calculus in sight.
If you stay in school long enough and shell out enough money, they start giving you fancy paper with your name in Gothic font. I’ve collected almost a handful.
These single sheets come with titles. I can now throw in extra letters before or after my name when I pen a signature. My latest addition is a terminal degree, meaning it is the highest level of education you can achieve in a specific academic or professional field.
The term “terminal” works, too, because at different times during the project, I wanted to die while trying to finish it.
So now, when people shout for a doctor in public, I can rush over and ask them what sort of existential crisis they are experiencing or if spiritual malnourishment is the cause of why they are on the ground and bleeding.
“Can you write me a prescription?” some ask.
“For prayer?” I say back.
“For Percocet,” they wail.
“I’m not that kind of doctor,” I say.
“So not a real one then,” they say.
I pray for them anyway, and don’t send them a bill for my services.
I once knew a minister named Larry. He was smart, and more importantly, knew he was smart. I would sit in his office and stare at a book collection he had whittled down as he inched close to retirement, while he’d tell me about the heyday Camelot years of Southern Baptist Seminary.
At the time, I was closing in on completing another degree. During our talk, I mentioned my upcoming graduation, and this caused Larry to pause.
“Have you come to terms with what that’s going to mean for you?” he asked.
Now it was my turn to pause, and I shook my head.
“You know, when I finished my PhD, I remember shaking the hands of my professors after successfully defending my dissertation. All that went fine, but when I started walking across campus afterward, the reality of the situation set in,” he said.
“And what was that?” I asked.
He motioned with his hands in the air. “That all of it was over.” He snapped his fingers, “like that.”
Larry let the silence fill the room for a moment before adding, “You’ve spent the last three years of your life pursuing something. You’ll need time to adjust, not chasing it.”
I knew Larry was on to something. His words hit a little too close to home. Much of my identity was rooted in the academy. Crossing this finish line would leave a hole. One I would try to fill in again, not two years later, when I returned to school for my doctorate.
Why did I keep going? Why keep pushing? Why log over a decade in higher education?
Wasn’t spending all nighters at the kitchen table poring over notes about the Syro-Ephraimite War enough? Shouldn’t the 25-page paper in Baptist History on Roger Williams and soul freedom have been enough? Did I really need to rise early to highlight another chapter of Kierkegaard or finish Amy Jill-Levine’s “The Bible Without Jesus?”
If I’m honest, I didn’t know how to stop.
If I am more honest, I wanted validation.
I wanted to prove I wasn’t dumb.
There is a stigma in the South around education. I felt it early. Stand-up comics had a field day with anything happening below the Mason-Dixon. Shows like The Simpsons and its character Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel informed me how the rest of the world viewed those like me who grew up beside livestock and fields of produce.
My people weren’t only Southern, they were Appalachian—marked forever by the trope of being poor, backwards and uneducated. Because of this, I tried hard to cut short anything resembling a drawl.
I didn’t want to sound stupid or ignorant. I tried to overemphasize anything ending in “i-n-g.” I didn’t want to be thought of as a redneck, hillbilly or hick. I “code-switched” before I even knew what it meant.
This caused me to seek approval in the classroom. My accomplishments indicate that the bottom-of-the-barrel statistics about public education in the lowest of the already low 48 States didn’t apply to me.
Over the years, I convinced a fair number of people it wasn’t the case. However, it’s still questionable if I’ve ever convinced myself.
Time takes away a lot, but it gives reflection. Knowing this, I’m holding together some feelings as the church I serve prepares to hold a Graduation Sunday.
That morning, high school seniors and freshly minted college degree holders will proceed decked out in a cap and gown. Regelia, their parents, I’m sure, will appreciate getting one more wear out of.
And oddly enough, I’m going to join them as a master of ceremonies, but also a participant. This will be the first of any type for me.
I’ve never walked for any of my previous degrees, never attended a commencement. I couldn’t tell you what a baccalaureate looks like. I always had an excuse not to go. Even for the doctorate, the drive and cost to make a several-hour trip with small children seemed torturous at best and selfish at worst.
I tell myself I’m not big on pomp and circumstance. And still regret for not going flirts with me.
Why? I believe I held off from performing this ritual because secretly, I know what it will mean—that it’s all over and I don’t know how the hell I really feel about that.
Larry was right.
And so, as I write this, a robe and hood are heading my way. I’ll suit up and stand with other recent graduates, all of whom are younger than me. I’m unsure if I’m doing it for closure or because I’m expected to.
However, I am sure of one thing: I want my family to see what they helped in doing. My wife, kids, my mother, and my sister. My father, who is on the other side of eternity. All should have the opportunity to celebrate and know that without them, I would never have reached the finish line.
Afterwards, I’m sure we’ll all go out to eat at some restaurant where the food is good but the company is better. There with the people who matter most, I’ll lean over to my wife and whisper to her the words Jesus spoke so long ago. “It is finished.”
To which I know she’ll lovingly reply with the grace of an angel and the patience of a saint, “It damn sure better be.”
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Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and McAfee School of Theology where he earned his Doctor of Ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
