The End of a Chapter

Last Wednesday, I attended my graduation ceremony and officially became a Doctor of Philosophy 💃

A few weeks before the big day, I got a call from the university letting me know I'd been nominated to give the valedictory address on behalf of the graduating cohort. I was genuinely shocked and had a brief (big) sob after I'd hung up the phone. This was a huge honour and not at all something I'd anticipated given how little of my best attention I'd devoted to this doctorate (especially since becoming a mother). 

Preparing that speech gave me a chance to reflect on the milestone a bit more deeply, and sparked a prayerful recollection of what the last five years of life have meant. I'd love to share a little of it here - and I'll put in the video link too in case you'd rather hear than read.

My valedictory address starts at approximately [56:50] in the livestream recording above

"...As I know has been the case for many of us graduating today, my doctoral degree happened alongside a period of great change and growth in my personal life. I moved interstate for this PhD. My beloved dad George passed away right before I commenced my candidature - and gosh, he would have loved to be here today. I got married a month in, had a baby halfway through and another just a few weeks after submitting my final corrected thesis. 

As my husband and my mum, sitting out there somewhere with my newborn, can attest, in many ways this degree happened in the background of my “real life”: chugging along, stretching my brain, bringing me to tears of frustration, and also enriching, bit by bit, the life I was living outside of academia. What it's taken me longer to realise is how much all the growth and upheaval in my “real life” was enriching my study too.

 We bring ourselves to the table when we research, when we study. We draw all the messy, emotional, constantly transforming strands of who we are into how we approach knowledge and how we communicate. And this isn’t actually our weakness getting in the way of our work. It’s our humanity bearing fruit for the sake of other people, for our world. 

In his recent encyclical about AI, Pope Leo reminds us that “artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” In other words, computational power isn’t the same as the hard-won wisdom that comes from loving and suffering alongside our learning. 

When we bring our grief with us into research, we also bring our compassion. When we bring our uncertainty about who we are becoming, we also bring our curiosity. When we bring our overwhelmed, multitasking, multiple-hat wearing selves, we also bring our creativity, our resilience, and our best problem solving. We learn and research in the midst of our messy lives, and those same messy lives are what enable us to make our study and research worthwhile - to make them truly human. 

For many of us here, today feels like a sigh of relief. An “I can’t believe I made it” moment or maybe an “I can’t believe I survived it” moment after years of struggle and self-doubt. I for one feel genuinely shocked that I’m standing on this stage today, and didn’t throw in the towel somewhere in the midst of first year doctorate imposter syndrome. Only you know what your story has been, what “real life” you’ve been living alongside the degree conferred upon you at this ceremony. Only you know what it’s cost, and what you have gained. But today we have proven to ourselves that somewhere deep within us was a strength we didn’t know we had. 

And so, fellow graduates of 2026, I want to offer you my most heartfelt congratulations- not just for the degrees you’ve earned today, but for the lives you’ve lived alongside. For surviving all that was hardest - and best - about these years. For the compassion, curiosity, and creativity that you’ve brought to the table not in spite of, but because of the mess. Thank you for the humanity you have brought with you into your education, and that you will take with you past these doors into whatever you go on to. This university, this state, and our beautiful world are the better for it."

 

It's funny to finally be at the end of this chapter, which has demanded so much from me and taken place over such momentous years of my life. I'm glad - so glad - it's done forever. And yet I'll miss the particular things it demanded of me: clear thinking, linguistic precision, a lot of reading, and a whole lot of writing. 

I've written so little over here at Ardent Devotion in the last five years. Inevitably my marriage/ newlywed years, grief from my dad's death, and living away from the friends and community who precipitated lots of my writing, have each had their impact. But I really do blame my PhD for my silence in this space: any spare brain power or time I've had seemed like they needed to be directed towards the thesis.

But now that I'm really, truly, irrevocably Dr. Kate - and now that my teaching contract has ended and I'm officially a full-time mum for kind of the first time - I feel a welling up of ideas for the personal/devotional writing that I'm finally at liberty to do.

~~~

When my mum was packing up our old house in New Zealand last year, she found a printed WordArt flow chart that I'd made when I was twelve years old mapping out exactly how I wanted my life to go: high school achievements, travel, a bachelor's and master's degree, fall in love in 2018 (weirdly accurate), get married, have two baby girls, get a PhD... by 30. 

Aside from filling me with a spooky sense that I'd been subconsciously living out my 12-year-old dreams entirely unawares (and that I'm possibly stronger willed than I ever realised), this document amused me for another reason. It ended there: thirty, a doctor of philosophy, two daughters. 

That was my "end of history" moment, the end of the concrete ambitions I had as a twelvie. And lately I've been wondering if that has been the extent of my imagination for a long time. 

Have I, in fact, arrived at the end point of what I've dreamed? Is this the summit, beyond which there's not much further to pursue? Are my thirties just for maintenance mode - maybe a few more kids, a bigger house, but largely unchanging rhythms of life? 

Or is this finally where I leave room for the Holy Spirit?

When directly asked, not that long ago, my dear sweet husband admitted to me that my worst quality is that I will only do things that I have decided I want to do, in precisely the time frame I want to do them. 

It's given me food for thought.

Because of course he's right: the twelve-year-old who mapped out the life I'm now living has, with a few exceptions, doggedly chosen her own way. Yes, I have prayed deeply and tried to listen for the Lord's voice for half my life now. But gosh, I've been a self-willed, obstinate little mule.

(If I had become a nun, there's no doubt the evangelical counsel I'd have had the biggest struggle with would have been obedience)

Anyway, all this to say: perhaps this thirty-year-old who has reached the end of her ambitions might be open to a Will other than her own. Maybe the end of this chapter will be the catalyst for new pathways in prayer, new discernment of how to serve the Lord and others, new surrender to plans not of my own choosing.

Ardent Devotion has always been my sacred little corner of the internet and a record of what God's been doing in my heart. And He's by no means been silent these last five years as I've laboured to bring this PhD into the world; I've just lacked dedication to writing about it here.

But now on the precipice of a new season, with a firm resolution to listen deeply and obey a bit less reluctantly, I hope this blog can continue its mission of chronicling one messy little soul's journey of continuing to fall in love with her Creator.

And if you're here for the ride - bless you. I'm so glad we're friends.

With love,

Mrs. Dr. Dear 

AMDG