This is a Q&A blog post by Talbot School of Theology Visiting Scholar in Philosophy, William Lane Craig.

Question

Hi Dr. Craig, I greatly appreciate your ministry and have learned so much from you. One of the most encouraging things you have shared is actually your story of failure in your Ph.D. studies in Germany and how you managed to bounce back and overcome that. I have had setbacks in life and studies (as have we all) and it was a great encouragement to me.

My question, in some ways, is about another aspect of your personal life and I hope it might be of wide enough interest for you to share your thoughts. Let me give some background info that is relevent.

I am a 34 year old father of three young kids, 5, 3, and 1. I earned my masters degree in theology before getting married with the goal of getting into a funded PhD program and earning my Ph.D. or completing part of it before having kids.

It was not to be, however, and my wife and I had our daughter a little less than 2 years after we got married. I still pursued Ph.D. opportunities, praying that the Lord would open the doors if it was His will and soon I was preparing to go study with the theologian/philosopher William J. Abraham at Truett Seminary where he was moving but he sadly passed away the summer before I moved down there.

I put my Ph.D. dreams on hold for a few years and my wife and I had two more children. An opportunity opened up for me to pursue a funded PhD part time at a university (its all fully accredited) while still working full time so I am doing that now. My wife and prayed and agreed that I should go for it.

I am getting ready to start my 4th semester and overall things are going well but I am exahusted. I get really good grades and feedback from my professors and they have enouraged me by saying I have written some good papers that I might be able to turn into articles to publish. So things are going well but I feel as though I struggle to remember many of the things I learn from semester to semester. I feel overwhelmed with all the information and feel as though I will never grasp the info I need to be a really good philosopher.

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions from an exhausted dad who is trying to make the most of this opportunity the Lord has given me on how I can remember what I am studying or how I should approach this? Did you have periods when you were studying where family and work demands just felt overwhelming and you struggled with your studies?

My promise to my wife before starting was that I would make sure not to neglect my family and she says I have been doing well at that but it means finding time to study happens when I am tired.

William Lane Craig Response

Yours is an inspiring story of perseverance, Joshua! If you’re really writing publishable papers, then you are smokin’! Given your dear wife support, I am sure that the Lord will give you strength to complete your degree successfully.

Three small pieces of advice occurred to me concerning your situation.

1. Every budding philosopher experiences gnawing self-doubt. I’m not kidding! It is so common, not only in grad school, but even as you embark on a philosophical teaching career, for one to be filled with feelings of intellectual inferiority and inadequacy. That is an occupational hazard of becoming a philosopher; it just goes with the territory. The best way to handle it is to ignore it. God has given you certain gifts, and you are responsible to actualize them as best you can. Don’t compare yourself to others, who may be differently gifted. As I have often said, success is not what you are compared to others, but what you are compared to what you could be. Just do your best and let the chips fall where they may.

2. I have found that the best antidote to forgetting things that you have read is detailed note-taking. This practice revolutionized my study life. I was troubled by the fact that I could read a whole book and after the book was replaced on the shelf, if I were asked what it was about, all I could do was say a couple of general sentences! It seemed pointless to have read it. I realized then that I would need to take notes on everything I read and then file those notes in folders. Taking notes has the disadvantage of slowing you down tremendously in your reading, but afterwards, you have a document that you can keep and consult. Moreover, simply the practice of writing something down tends to burn it into your memory better. You can compensate for the loss of time by learning some speed-reading techniques. I was skeptical of these at first because I thought speed reading was just skimming. But in fact, I found that we all have bad habits when we read that slow us down. By learning certain techniques, we can speed up our reading time, and that allows for better notetaking.

3. Finally, in terms of sheer tiredness, I highly, highly recommend that you adopt the practice of taking a half-hour nap after lunch every day. When we lived in France, we found that this was the normal practice. It really works! Several years ago, I found that by the late afternoon, my head was just swimming and I could not concentrate. So I began to follow the French habit. By conking out for a half hour immediately after lunch, I can wake up completely refreshed and ready to work tirelessly all the way until 6 PM. It is really uncanny the effect that this has. You may not at first be able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but my experience is that if you begin to adopt the practice of lying down, you will develop this ability. This will help you to be re-energized and to keep going.

I hope these little comments are helpful to you and wish you the greatest success in your studies for the Lord work!

This and other resources are available on .