Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 June 2008 07:19:39
A while ago I mapped my world, kind of thinking that as my world has shifted a few degrees since I wrote that I would update with a blog (or two) on why my world is as it is now.
The boxes are beginning to be packed and the plans frantically put in place because I have got a place at uni - simple. Um, no. The boxes are beginning to be packed and the plans frantically being made because:
I threw in an application to a uni that I didn't know too much about and they came back and offered me a place on a course they thought I could handle, based on their exeperience of students with my profile and need to make sure they got it right so their statitics will hopefully show achievement and retention when I finish.
The form got sent to that uni because I had an idea of research I wanted to do, but had no idea how to make it happen. I went on the internet and e-mailed an author for an idea of who might be good to approach with this kind of research proposal. This approach happened to be the one I took because I happen to live in the West, in a time when Google is my friend and women are encouraged to go for it.
I approached the author I did because I he'd written a book I'd found useful when I'd done the dis for my MA. I found the book useful because it fitted the paradigm I was working within. The paradigm has been shaped by my experiences as a hippy evangelical growing up in a secular radical household. I was using the book for a MA because I happened to live within a family that supported education and had parents who were willing to finance it. I also happen to live in a time and place, and be of a social class which means it is socially acceptable for women to explore academia.
The MA was in Applied Theology and the dis I was doing was looking at the experience of lone parents in churches. I was doing the course because I got turned down for another, but my application happened into a department that was offering this course. Part of the reason that course was offered was because the uni happened to be in a city with a rich ecclesical history. The topic I looked at for my dis was borne out of experience, an experience that came out of the fact I live in a society where family shapes are changing and becoming fragmented. I also live in a society where divorce is acceptable and lone parenthood is becoming more common. Additionally I happen to live in a time where qualitative research methods are commonly used. It's also a time when theology is ready to embrace other disciplines in reseach.
So I guess that I am in my current place, yet again because I am simply a product of the time and space I happen to be living in. If I were an atheist it would be the luck of the draw, as it is I reckon God happens to have drawn the threads together like this for me. So yet again we're back to Calvinism and predestination - scary. Perhaps tomorrow I'll look at the choices involved to give the free will side.