Featured Graduate Student, March 2007
Christopher Harwood

Interview:

How would you describe your area of study to your grandmother?
Remember when you were a little kid and you had questions about everything? You didn't really know how to answer them exactly, not at first, but you tried anyway. You were doing rudimentary philosophy, everyone's first academic discipline. Then you learn how to read and how to do experiments, how to paint and to cook, and all sorts of other ways to make sense of the world and your place in it. It's as if we discover maps that tell us where to explore in order to find what we are looking for. If you want answers in science, the "experimental method" map tells you where to go and look. That sort of thing.

For many questions, nobody has mapped out where to look for answers. People who think they can find them just have to up and look wherever their intuitions lead. Whoever tries to answer questions like this is still doing philosophy. These folks draw the first maps, see how well they trace the coast and how accurately they report the elevations. All they have to help are tools that can show them when they have made mistakes and must start over ( e.g., logic, criticism). When they finally find or make a good map--when they figure out a method for answering certain questions--they hand it off to another discipline, often a brand new one. So that's what I'm trying to do: find reliable answers to questions in the hopes of hitting on something useful or important.

That is what I would tell my grandmother, at least if I wanted to be a little pretentious about it. I would also thank her and my grandfather, because without their help I would never have been able to attend Virginia Tech.

If you were able to merge another discipline with yours, what would it be?
No, see, you already were philosophy at one time. All of you, even the arts departments. We're trying to get rid of more of you, not take you back. Just keep letting us know about all your cool ideas and we will do new things with them. Send letters back to Mum (philosophy), and don't forget her or brush her off when she pesters you about something--but don't try to move back in either.

Please describe your most meaningful academic relationship.
I am and have been fortunate to work with a number of great people, and have had enough significant relationships that I fear selecting one would be a slight to the rest. However, it was a particular blessing to have worked under David Lay Williams at UWSP. My entire outlook on university-level teaching was molded by observing his method because he took it as seriously as his research, because he knew how to lead students to answers rather than providing them, and because the learning process was fully cooperative--student participation was always meaningful. He oversaw my independent study of Rousseau, the single most educational course I have ever taken: it was about good writing, solid research, rigorous argument, close reading and accurate interpretation, high and inviolable standards, smart career decisions, and the whole process of actually doing philosophy every bit as much as it was about The Social Contract or Emile. Along with my wife, he was the one who told me it was time to quit my academic hiatus and get back to work. (The chain of people that built on each other's efforts to get me to commit to doing philosophy goes: Greg Gilson, to Dôna Warren, to David Williams and my family. Anything I do--anything good at least--they are responsible for as a result.) I have to respect how that all tallies up to count as my most significant relationship in the field.

What accomplishment (academic or other) are you most proud of?
Marrying who I did reflects incredibly well on my judgment, and the fact that she is as happy with the choice as I am is the one thing that will persuade me that I might actually be a decent person.

What is your primary reason for persevering through graduate school?
See the two answers above.

If you hadn't been admitted to graduate school, what do you think you would be doing right now?
I know that Eileen and I would still be teaching middle school in Kayenta, Arizona. Kayenta is just south of Monument Valley, on the Navajo reservation (also called the Navajo Nation) and in the Great Basin Desert. Kayenta Middle School had a dedicated staff and school administration, many great students, and if I had not secured this opportunity we would have had every reason to stay.

How do you find the balance between work, play, and your other non-academic responsibilities?
Balance? How quaint. Balance is what smart people do. Self-destructive work and sloth cycles is what I do. I had to give up on proper sloth cycles, actually, so I find little bits of time when I'm between tasks, or I catch lunch with people I like to talk to. I have managed to fit in a bi-weekly game night, and talk to people in my department whenever the opportunity arises, so I'm not wholly devoid of free time. Fortunately, class itself is pretty entertaining here. We've got some smart folks.

So, yeah, I'm still working on it.

What is the last book you read strictly for pleasure and how long ago was it?
I am reading Ovid's Metamorphoses, and it is reasonably interesting. The last non-work book I really hit it off with was Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. After finishing, I noticed that Prince Myshkin and Tyler Durden from Fight Club represent contrasting takes on the theme of "original or special people solving the plight of those who are merely clever," and this spun out into major revisions for a project I had (and have) on the back-burner. The book became work; such are the hazards of a career in philosophy or English.

Which field are you most happy that you did not enter?
Another student was recently telling me about how social psychology has collapsed under ethics board restrictions. I could cope with "Thou shalt not do harm" as a limitation, but the present system of "thou shalt leave no lasting marks of any kind, ever, and not even maybe" seems to be derived more from the Prime Directive of Starfleet than real-world ethical concerns. Even if there is good reason for the present system, and there probably is, I would be frustrated to have entered a science in which there is very little to look at beyond surveys--especially when some many of the most significant social psychology experiments proved the worthlessness of related surveys.

How do you think earning an advanced degree will change your role in society?
An advanced degree changes the job options available to us, and for some of us this sort of work is the most fulfilling option, but we are deluded if we think holding an advanced degree itself changes our role in society one whit. By all means, be proud of the accomplishment. Just don't get to thinking that your profession is inherently more noble or deserves more recognition than that of the other kid who works a business desk, or a mop, or a hammer, or a particle accelerator. The only thing that determines your contribution to society is your actions, and you can make significant, meaningful contributions to your community from wherever you are at.

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