For our first graduate student interview, we sat down with Ryan Ramsey, a third-year PhD student in Religion. Ryan studies World Christianity and Pentecostalism. He holds a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School (’19) and a BA from Lee University (’14). He is also a fellow with Baylor’s Academy for Teaching and Learning. Before coming to graduate school, Ryan taught middle school. Ryan is husband to the lovely Ellie and father to the precocious Penelope. In his free time, he loves hiking, roasting coffee, and basketball. Ryan also gives a defense of Dichotomy, contra a previous post from BearTracks about the pros and cons of Waco coffee shops. Thanks so much for taking the time to tell us about your writing habits and coffee principles, Ryan!
BearTracks
So where do you like to write? I know you said this tends to be a lot of places, but, like, an office, home, coffee shops, outside? Where do you tend to cycle through?
Ryan Ramsey
I like to write in my backyard. I like to write, um, I have a writing group, we meet up in in the GRC, and I can usually get stuff done there. I write in the GRC a good bit, using the breakout rooms. If I have editing work to do, I will oftentimes go to coffee shops, like Dichotomy. Usually just Dichotomy. I don’t go to Pinewood because there are too many undergrads there.
BT
Yes, which is an unfortunate recent development. So it sounds like when you are in the creative mode you need more silence or less people-distraction, but when you’re in the editing mode you can have more of the buzz in the background?
RR
Yes.
BT
That makes sense. So this question is maybe for, well, I’m doing a mix of talking to grad students and professors, but do you find you still acquire a lot of books at this point in your career or has the pace slowed somewhat as you’ve gone along in your PhD?
RR
That’s a strangely relevant question because I do, I have found when I was in seminary I frequented any free bin and would take anything remotely pertaining. You know I only got books for Christmas, things like that, but I think since COVID, I have been more interested in finding digital resources and books that are available online through the library.
BT
So what would you say are the best times and places for you to write? We already kind of covered places.
RR
In the morning, probably between 8 and 11.
BT
Is that when your writing group meets as well, is that a morning group?
RR
Yeah it is. I can’t write, I’m usually fried by the afternoon. I try not work in the evenings unless I have to. Usually the earlier, my brain is better.
BT
The perk of having a family in grad school. It means better boundaries, sometimes.
RR
Yeah, yeah. If I have to do editing, I can do editing in the afternoon, but…
BT
Not the creative process?
RR
Yeah.
BT
That’s fair! How do you capture your research? Are you a notecard or journal person, do you do it on the computer?
RR
I do it on my laptop, and I try as best as I can, to either copy full quotes and keep lists of quote sheets or I just write prose, as if I’m writing something that, theoretically, I could copy and paste. Usually with full citations, and that makes that a lot easier in the long run.
BT
Do you immediately start writing on the computer, or do you have any portion of your writing process that you do longhand?
RR
Uh, no, but occasionally, if I am somewhere away from my computer and an idea comes to me and I have something to write on, I will sketch out ideas, I might jot handwritten notes down.
BT
Are you a marginalia person in your physical books, or no?
RR
Oh yes.
BT
I think you kind of have to be as a scholar. Are you a detailed marginalia person? Because I find I have become less talkative with my books. I do a ton of underlining and starring things and bracketing things, but do you “talk” to your books in the margins?
RR
Occasionally. I more often make brief, one sentence, one word notes to highlight, say, “prophecy” in the margins, so when I go back through….
BT
I think you answered this earlier, but do you read digital books and what are your feelings on digital books?
RR
Yeah, I’ll say this. I read digital books and I listen to digital books using text-to-speech as a way to, A) give my eyes a break, and B) allow me to do other stuff while I’m reading, like washing dishes usually.
BT
Out of personal curiosity, is there a program you use for the text-to-speech, or do a lot of the books just automatically have that feature? How do you get the books to talk to you!?
RR
Well, if it’s a PDF, I’ll just highlight the text and use the program on my Mac, but if you use any books on Archive.org, which is a really great resource and has many books, that has an automatic with your account; you just hit the audio button and it automatically plays, but you do have to watch out because it will read the footnotes to you in unhelpful ways.
BT
That’s helpful. What is some good advice you’ve received on writing?
RR
Keep editing your work. Edit, edit, edit. That’s kind of general.
BT
What stage, do you do the Anne Lamott “sh***y first draft” and then edit, or are you an edit-as-you-go person?
RR
It depends. It depends most on the amount of research and footnotes I’m doing and the section or paragraph. I usually find the more I spend fiddling with footnotes, the more polished that paragraph tends to be, and the more I just plop it out, like it’s the first draft, the more likely I am to cut it entirely.
BT
What do you think is your best piece of written work at this point in your career? What are you most proud of? It also doesn’t have to be academic, I know people write other things.
RR
I mean I have a published article that I like a lot of, and I’m fairly proud of portions of it, especially the introductory framing.
BT
Okay, what was the article on and where was it published?
RR
It’s called “Christ in Yaqui Garb.” It’s about Teresa Urrea, who’s a figure I study. It’s published in an open-access journal called Religions. And then some of my other work, I’ve got a work that I’m presenting at the Conference on Faith and History, again on her [Teresa Urrea], that’s like a gender analysis about perceptions of her in popular U.S. newspapers, and I’m really happy with the analysis of that.
BT
So name a few favorite authors from your field of study. Who are the people who, when you read their stuff, you’re like, “Ugh, I wish I had written this”?
RR
I think Betsy Flowers is a fantastic writer. Theologian Miroslav Volf is a fantastic writer, and he’s someone that edits, edits, edits, and edits. I really like reading Robert Orsi. One of the people who’s written a lot of Teresa Urrea, who I study, is Luis Urrea who is a novelist. And so he writes novels on her.
BT
Is he any relation to her?
RR
He is! He’s like a kinda distant great-grand nephew. He’s just a fantastic writer, so I really enjoy reading him. That’s not really in my discipline, but it’s something I read for my discipline.
BT
That’s great, cool. Okay, finally, what’s a book you should have read by now but haven’t? And you can interpret that as you will. It could be in your field or literature in general or…
RR
Oooh. I don’t know.
BT
The Bible? Just kidding.
RR
I need to think, just then I have to include what books do I say I’ve read, but I haven’t actually read them! Haha.
BT
Haha. Grad-school “read” them?
RR
Yeah. I mean there’s a lot. And the fact that I have comps studying right now doesn’t help.
BT
Is there one you’re most embarrassed to admit? We ask real gritty questions here.
RR
That’s the problem. What would I admit that I haven’t read?
BT
This is a candid interview Ryan, you can be honest here.
RR
I know, I know. I don’t think I ever made it though Mere Christianity.
BT
For the addendum, I understand you took umbrage with BearTrack’s piece on Dichotomy, and we want to give you an opportunity to give a defense of Dichotomy.
RR
Okay. The important thing to know about Dichotomy is that you have to order the right thing.
BT
Okay, getting the good stuff here.
RR
I am well aware that their drip coffee and pour overs are not what they need to be – they don’t dial in their machines well enough to get the right ratios for that, so it ends up being a little watered down. Their espresso, though, is fantastic. You have to order espresso. When I moved here, before moving here I looked on Sprudge; it’s a really hip, weird coffee website. It writes news stories on coffee shops and stuff like that, and Dichotomy was the one featured. And so Dichotomy was a place that I knew about coming in and was excited about and not disappointed with! And the only time i’m ever disappointed there is when I order drip coffee. But anyway. I’ve got a lot of good memories there. Before COVID, our little history of theology cohort would go there. And that’s a place where, when out daughter was born, that’s where Ellie and I went out to get drinks when my mom offered to babysit for two hours. And when my in-laws lived with us for two and a half weeks before Penelope was born, because Pen was ten days late, my father-in-law and I went there do get out of the house, so he could do his crosswords and I could write my papers. So, all that to say, I have lots of good memories there, but the crux of it is you have to order the espresso.
BT
Okay, we will make due notice of this and put an asterisk in the original post and say “Since publishing this, we have heard from readership that…” haha.
RR
That sounds good.