{"id":40068,"date":"2025-01-20T15:24:37","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T23:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=40068"},"modified":"2025-04-23T07:29:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:29:39","slug":"living-in-liminality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/living-in-liminality\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Liminality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past 30 years, I have developed a specialty in tubular design. No, I\u2019m not a surfer or valley girl asserting that my designs are cool. \u2018Tubular\u2019 is short for tubular goods<\/em>, the pipes used to contain pressurized fluids in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. The industry has tens of thousands of people who use tubular goods, but less than 20 current practitioners who have devoted a career to understand all aspects of design, manufacturing, and use of oil country tubular goods. When your company spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year, you can call pipe whatever you like.<\/p>\n

I have a great amount of comfort and pride with my role as an expert. For example, an engineering team was franticly trying to reach me last week to clarify whether they could pressurize their surface casing beyond the performance rating cited in the global industry standard. It turns out, they were asking the guy who wrote that portion of the industry standard. I pulled up my figure used to define the standard and could definitively give them the answer they sought.[1]<\/a> At that moment, being the expert felt tubular, dude<\/em>. The moment, as always, was short-lived. How many people truly care about the impact of cold-expansion on collapse of seam-welded pipe?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nobody is born an expert. Malcolm Gladwell asserts that practice is what you do to become good, and it takes 10,000 hours to master a field.[2]<\/a> In \u201cOvercoming Barriers to Student Understanding,\u201d[3]<\/a> Meyer and Land introduce the term threshold concept<\/em> to describe opening a way of thinking that was previously inaccessible. It takes time and effort to discover and work through these concepts. Their first example presented heat transfer as a threshold concept for cooking. Never did I imagine seeing thermal gradients described in a DLGP required reading![4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Meyer and Land recognize that the threshold concept can be troublesome, \u201cKnowledge that is \u2018alien\u2019, or counter-intuitive or even intellectually absurd.\u201d[5]<\/a> \u00a0Furthermore, they describe the transitional period\u2014liminality\u2014when the individual is within the threshold itself. \u00a0If the transformation is protracted, there can be oscillation and even regression in progress. This is a key for the journey to mastery. In a companion book, Gina Wisker\u2019s chapter quotes M. Kiley\u2019s study of doctoral candidates stuck in their progress, \u201cIf only I\u2019d known that I was just in a stuck place it would have made it so much easier.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Getting Unstuck<\/h3>\n

I enrolled in the DLGP as a demarcation between my professional career and whatever comes next. I am trading mastery for the unknown. It is learning the first thing about new topics rather than the 132nd<\/sup> nuance of the same old thing. Though the program provides a forum for discovery, my journey is not limited to the curriculum.<\/p>\n

For example, I heard a fascinating interview of Joshua Swamidass on the Bible Project several years ago.[7]<\/a> Professor Swamidass is a computer scientist who works on modelling the human genome. He is also a follower of Christ who is deeply interested in whether the Bible and science are conflicting or complementary. In his book,[8]<\/a> he provides a hypothesis for how the biblical Adam and Eve can be genealogical parents to mankind without contradicting the genetic diversity research which requires a source much broader than two. That\u2019s a mouthful. I made it to chapter four before getting in that stuck place of liminality. Mitochondrial Eve was driving me back to the comfortable place of ignorance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And then Adler showed up.[9]<\/a> I was given permission to skip the part I don\u2019t understand and read the parts I do. I found Swamidass where I left him near the bottom of a basket. I switched from Analytical Reading to Inspectional of another book co-authored by Michaela\u2019s Biblical Studies professor.[10]<\/a>\u00a0I cannot fully judge either book because I have not worked through all the arguments.\u00a0I don\u2019t need to own Swamidass\u2019s Figure 3.2 on an equal footing with my Figure 3. But I\u2019m back in liminality and it is no longer frustrating.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> Rich Miller et al. \u201cCollapse Ratings of Cold Expanded Line Pipe Used as Casing.\u201d In SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition<\/em>, D011S001R003. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: SPE, 2019. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2118\/195971-MS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Malcom Gladwell. Outliers: The Story of Success<\/em>. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2008.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Jan H.F. Meyer and Ray Land, eds. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge<\/em>. London: Routledge, 2006.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Heat transfer is also a threshold concept for understanding how application of internal coatings changes the collapse resistance of cold-expanded line pipe. This knowledge changed my life but not yours, which is why you can skip reading the footnotes.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Meyer and Land, 4.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ray Land, Jan H. F. Meyer, and Michael T. Flanagan, eds. Threshold Concepts in Practice<\/em>. Educational Futures, v. 68. Leiden Boston: Brill | Sense, 2016. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-94-6300-512-8<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> \u201cThe Genealogical Adam and Eve.\u201d Accessed January 20, 2025. https:\/\/bibleproject.com\/podcast\/genealogical-adam-and-eve\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> S. Joshua Swamidass. The Genealogical Adam & Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry<\/em>. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Acdemic, 2019.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book<\/em>. Rev. and Updated ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight. Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science<\/em>. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2017.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past 30 years, I have developed a specialty in tubular design. No, I\u2019m not a surfer or valley girl asserting that my designs are cool. \u2018Tubular\u2019 is short for tubular goods, the pipes used to contain pressurized fluids in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. The industry has tens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3397,1429],"class_list":["post-40068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp04","tag-meyer","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40068"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41791,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40068\/revisions\/41791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}