I Was A Soldier – kind of
This week, I read two books edited by Ray Land and Jan Meyer on Threshold Concepts: Threshold Concepts in Practice and Overcoming Barriers to Student Learning: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. The article by Syed Mohamed et al. about soldiers, liminality, ambivalence, and hybridity stood out to me. I want to share a little of my personal story about a time when I lived in liminality and ultimately landed in what Syed Mohamed et al. call ambivalence.
I was a soldier. From 2008 through 2011, I served in the United States Army as an interrogator at the height of the Global War on Terror. I was assigned to a J2X, and our office oversaw all the human intelligence and counterintelligence for our area of operation. Our intelligence showed that money from opium sales out of Afghanistan was being used to buy weapons and women in other places around Asia. My team would travel to and live in these places to investigate people we suspected of supporting terrorist organizations.
For 15 straight months, I would spend a few weeks or a month in place, learning people’s rhythms and drawing out their connections. Then, we would roll through their compounds, doing our soldier thing. I was good at what I did, yet I struggled internally. In hindsight, I was in liminality. I was able to mimic and enact the right skills but never embraced the whole reality of being a soldier. Ray Land says, “All learning affects a change in self…an ontological shift.”[1]
I am a Christian, but I did not grow up that way. I became a believer at 17 during my senior year of high school, and I had already signed a contract to go into the Army that year. I could never shake the reality that God wanted these people to glorify him. The people who died in combat were no longer capable of giving God the glory. That was my ambivalence.
Syed Mohamed et al. define ambivalence as “Simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings toward knowledge deemed troublesome as a result of previous held beliefs.”[2] I struggled to reconcile the person I was becoming with my previously held beliefs. Land describes this as the troublesomeness of knowledge: “One source of troublesomeness of knowledge is the ontological shift, not the conceptual difficulty. It’s about do I want to become this kind of person where it’s leading me.”[3] While I could operate as an insider, fulfilling the tasks and duties. My prior beliefs as a Christian conflicted with my new knowledge as a soldier. I left the Army as a Conscientious Objector when God called me to the ministry.
Threshold Concepts are “concepts in any discipline that have a particularly transformative effect on student learning.”[4] People become insiders when they go through the liminality and fully embrace the transformative effect of the Threshold Concept.
Because I never crossed the threshold during my time in the Army, I never feel right in the presence of other veterans when serving comes up. I simultaneously feel proud of the accomplishments of the schools I attended and ashamed about how I left the Army. Even now, 14 years later, I feel anxiety writing this as I think about the veterans in this space who will read this. Will they think less of me for being a Conscientious Objector?
Failing to fully embrace the Threshold Learning of being a soldier has also prevented me from fully embracing being a veteran. There’s a point for me for today: if I fail to stay current in this program, then I risk falling behind, missing concepts, and being stuck behind. I want to stay current to avoid the compounding effects of falling behind. I will feel like an imposter during the program – I already have and still sometimes do. I must continue to recognize that I am still in liminality. I haven’t grasped all the concepts yet, but I don’t need to. I’m current with where we are – living in liminality and continuing to grow.
As Salmona et al. say, “…perhaps demonstrating an awareness of being in
liminality and the difficulties of contending with troublesome knowledge associated with the doing and achieving of a doctorate, in itself, is a threshold concept.”[5] I’m glad to recognize my liminality and to cross the threshold of Threshold Learning with all of you now.
Is my Army service less than because of how I got out? Maybe, I don’t think so, but the VA does. Here is a prayer request. I was honorably discharged. Fourteen years ago, the VA certified my benefits, and I used 30 months of the GI Bill to pay for undergrad and seminary. When I applied to use the remaining money for this school year, the VA contacted me and said I should never have received the GI Bill, and they asked me to repay all of my schooling benefits. I’ve appealed this to a law judge in D.C. whose office has previously sided with Conscientious Objectors. I could use prayers for this to come back in my favor.
[1] Ray Land, Ray Land: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge, 2012, 21:07, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR1cXIdWnNU.
[2] Ahmad Thamrini F. Syed Mohamed, Ray Land And Julie Rattray, “Ambivalence, Hybridity And Liminality: The Case Of Military Education,” in Threshold Concepts in Practice, ed. Ray Land, Jan Meyer, and Michael T Flanagan, (Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2016), 83. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-6300-512-8
[3] Ray Land, Ray Land, 23:05.
[4] Jan Meyer and Ray Land, Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2006), xv, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203966273.
[5]Michelle Salmona, Kaczynski, Dan And Wood, Leigh N. “The Importance Of Liminal Space For Doctoral Success: Exploring Methodological Threshold Concepts” in Threshold Concepts in Practice ed. Land, Meyer, and T Flanagan, 161.
About the Author
Robert Radcliff
Hi! I'm Robert, and I'm seeking to understand who God is calling me to be in my community while helping others do the same. I enjoy reading, training for triathlons, and using exclamation points!8 responses to “I Was A Soldier – kind of”
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Great post, Robert. Curious, thoughtful, intelligent, and vulnerable. I pray that your situation is seen favourably by the legal system.
I think you’re onto something when positing whether awareness of being in a liminal state is part of a self-awareness threshold concept. It sure seems troublesome, sometimes alien, and discoveries are transformative. I find that knowing my own mind and thinking is a significant part of the process!
What do you think or do to live in peace in the liminality and when the cognitive dissonance sets in?
Joff, I’d love to have a brilliant answer to how I live at peace in a liminal space. I don’t think I do this exceptionally well and am prone to anxiety. I’m learning to trust the processes around me—even when I developed them. Things may not be working as fast as I want, but if we’re headed in the right direction, maybe that’s enough.
One of my strengths is rest and sabbath as intentional devotion and recognition that God is ultimately in control. You will likely never see me comment or post on Fridays. I need a day of rest, even from school. I can get the rest of my comments in on Saturday morning. There’s something about recognizing that this will pass and that God is in control that gives me a sense of peace.
Robert,
Personally, I am thankful for your willingness to serve and your willingness to follow your convictions as a Conscientious Objector. I will be praying and trusting the Lord with you as you face this recent unexpected challenge.
I, too, have felt the anxiety of falling behind and the cascading effect that may have. It sounds like you are finding soloists while living at the threshold of your learning journey. I am beginning to see its potential, but not there yet. I do wonder if it’s realistic to have contentment while being in liminality. Or if we will always feel the need for production, forward motion, and accomplishment.
Thanks, Darren. I think there’s some insight into putting Threshold Concepts as our second week. It shows the need to stay on top of everything because falling behind likely means staying behind for the rest of the semester.
There’s probably also some insight in applying Adler’s word to read past what we don’t understand because it will fill in later. Being in liminality now is okay as long we keep going, and it will fill in during the semester or the summer.
Agreed, It will be most interesting to look back towards the end of the semester as we begin to understand the reasoning behind the order.
Robert, thanks for sharing this. Even fourteen years later, I can sense the lingering liminality when approaching this part of your life. I have been out of the Army for 12 years now and I still can’t watch any movies related to the military or war. I carry shame from my time in. I have yet to explore it in therapy because It;s just too scary. I was 18-22 years old during my time in service and though I was in special operations and did multiple tours in Afghanistan, I feel I skirted by and shortcutted so much of my duty. I was demoted, dropped from schools, peered out, transferred to different jobs within my unit, etc. I was a young punk with a chip on my shoulder who hated authority. I don’t know if I was a good soldier. If I could go back, I would do things differently. I don’t like to talk about my service with others. I don’t have pride in it. All I have is shame. If I were to do the deep work around this I would find the grace to give myself for that season of my life and receive the gifts that came form it. But I haven’t.
I don’t think you’ve done anything shameful. I think what you chose was virtuous and courageous with historical roots.
I really appreciate you making the connection about not crossing the threshold while in service and that affecting you today when around other veterans. I think this is a crucial point. It is helping me see that for me to fully integrate and cross this threshold, I need to return to it in a safe space with some help.
Thanks for this.
Christian, thank you for your comment. I was moved to tears reading it last night. It resonated with a part of me that often remains hidden—a vulnerable part of my life centered around being tough. I’m glad to have you in my peer group and as my friend.
Robert,
I appreciate your honesty and candidness. There is no shame in the choices you have made. These are tough decisions for any person.
I formally requested to resign my active duty commission twice. The first time was during the drawdown in the post-Cold War period. The Army effectively downsized and allowed officers to leave and forego their remaining commitments. I just missed this window. However, my commanding officer’s comment upon this request was a bit snarky. He asked if I would go work for my family’s business and presented the question in a demeaning and sarcastic tone. That wasn’t my choice, as I was leaving for grad school, but I took the opportunity to jab him back and effectively tell him that I was from a long line of commercial salmon fishermen from the Pacific Northwest. I also shared with him that it can present life-threatening risks and was much tougher work than performing as an Army aviator. Needless to say, I didn’t win any friends that day.
The second time was just over a year later, and newly married, I came to the conclusion that with the amount of downsizing, there was even a higher degree or likelihood that I would yet again be deployed. In 6+ years, I had 3 equivalent buckets of (1) Army training, (2) non-combat roles, and (3) combat roles. At that juncture I thought it was much more conducive to raising a family if I left the service.
My roommate from WP took advantage of the early-out provisions and became a missionary in China. He is now in NYC performing a similar type of work.
I wish you the best as you pursue the legal channels and will pray for you. Nobody enjoys those types of surprises.