{"id":40113,"date":"2025-01-23T06:23:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T14:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=40113"},"modified":"2025-01-23T06:23:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T14:23:34","slug":"i-was-a-soldier-kind-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-was-a-soldier-kind-of\/","title":{"rendered":"I Was A Soldier – kind of"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, I read two books edited by Ray Land and Jan Meyer on Threshold Concepts: Threshold Concepts in Practice<\/em> and Overcoming Barriers to Student Learning: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For 15 straight months, I would spend a few weeks or a month in place, learning people\u2019s 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, \u201cAll learning affects a change in self\u2026an ontological shift.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Syed Mohamed et al. define ambivalence as \u201cSimultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings toward knowledge deemed troublesome as a result of previous held beliefs.\u201d[2]<\/a> I struggled to reconcile the person I was becoming with my previously held beliefs. Land describes this as the troublesomeness of knowledge: \u201cOne source of troublesomeness of knowledge is the ontological shift, not the conceptual difficulty. It\u2019s about do I want to become this kind of person where it\u2019s leading me.\u201d[3]<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Threshold Concepts are \u201cconcepts in any discipline that have a particularly transformative effect on student learning.\u201d[4]<\/a> People become insiders when they go through the liminality and fully embrace the transformative effect of the Threshold Concept.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

Failing to fully embrace the Threshold Learning of being a soldier has also prevented me from fully embracing being a veteran. There\u2019s 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 \u2013 I already have and still sometimes do. I must continue to recognize that I am still in liminality. I haven\u2019t grasped all the concepts yet, but I don\u2019t need to. I\u2019m current with where we are \u2013 living in liminality and continuing to grow.<\/p>\n

As Salmona et al. say, \u201c\u2026perhaps demonstrating an awareness of being in
\nliminality and the difficulties of contending with troublesome knowledge associated with the doing and achieving of a doctorate, in itself, is a threshold concept.\u201d[5]<\/a> I\u2019m glad to recognize my liminality and to cross the threshold of Threshold Learning with all of you now.<\/p>\n

Is my Army service less than because of how I got out? Maybe, I don\u2019t 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Ray Land, Ray Land: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge<\/em>, 2012, 21:07, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WR1cXIdWnNU.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ahmad Thamrini F. Syed Mohamed, Ray Land And Julie Rattray, \u201cAmbivalence, Hybridity And Liminality: The Case Of Military Education,\u201d in Threshold Concepts in Practice,<\/em> ed. Ray Land, Jan Meyer, and Michael T Flanagan, (Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2016), 83. DOI: 10.1007\/978-94-6300-512-8<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ray Land, Ray Land, 23:05<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jan Meyer and Ray Land, Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge<\/em> (London: Routledge, 2006), xv, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.4324\/9780203966273.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>Michelle Salmona, Kaczynski, Dan And Wood, Leigh N. \u201cThe Importance Of Liminal Space For Doctoral Success: Exploring Methodological Threshold Concepts\u201d in Threshold Concepts in Practice ed. <\/em>Land, Meyer, and T Flanagan, 161.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"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-40113","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\/40113","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\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40115,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40113\/revisions\/40115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}