Guerrilla Scholarship: Learning Beyond Permission with Dr. Sheldon Greaves

In this episode of Dissertating: In the Trenches and Behind the Scenes, TiffianyAnn Lundine sits down with Dr. Sheldon Greaves, author of The Guerrilla Scholar’s Handbook, to explore what it means to pursue rigorous intellectual work both inside and beyond the academy.

Together, they discuss how doctoral education shapes scholarly identity, why curiosity often fades, and how learning can unintentionally become transactional. Dr. Greaves introduces the idea of guerrilla scholarship—the pursuit of meaningful intellectual work without waiting for institutional permission.

The conversation also explores the importance of reflection, intellectual humility, and creating space for ideas to grow. For doctoral learners navigating exhaustion, isolation, and the pressure to finish, this episode offers a powerful reminder: scholarship does not belong only to institutions—it belongs to anyone willing to stay curious and keep asking better questions.

The Guerrilla Scholar's Handbook, available on Amazon. 

https://amzn.to/4114Sd6

Transcript

Dr. TiffianyAnn (00:00)

Welcome to Dissertating, In the Trenches and Behind the Scenes, the podcast where we talk honestly about the doctoral journey, not just as an academic process, but as a human one. Today's conversation is about scholarship specifically. We wanna talk about what it costs, what it gives, and what happens when learning starts to lose life. I'm joined today by Dr. Sheldon Greaves. He's the author of the

Guerrilla Scholars Handbook. His work invites us to rethink what it means to pursue rigorous intellectual life. In this episode, we talked about curiosity and exhaustion, about identity and becoming. And we also talked about how doctoral education can both sharpen us and at times narrow us. We explored why and how scholarship

can remain rigorous without becoming transactional. This conversation is for doctoral learners who are still in it, those who may have stepped away, and those who are quietly wondering just how to finish without losing themselves.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (01:07)

Dr. Greaves, welcome to Dissertating in the Trenches and Behind the Scenes. I did get your name right, right? Tell me I got your name right.

Sheldon Greaves (01:14)

You did, yeah. Thank you, Tiffany,

and it's a pleasure to be here.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (01:19)

Oh, I'm so excited. You have a unique background. You're very eclectic and have have you just have this innate sense of curiosity is what I gather. this and maybe some of your own experience in doctoral education led you to write a book, right?

Sheldon Greaves (01:43)

That is true, yeah.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (01:45)

Excellent. What's the name of the book?

Sheldon Greaves (01:47)

The book is the Guerrilla Scholars Handbook.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (01:51)

tell me what is guerrilla scholarship? how would you define that for our listeners?

Sheldon Greaves (01:56)

Sure, I define guerrilla scholarship as pursuing interesting and maybe even important intellectual work, but doing so in a way that, well, doing so outside the confines or without the resources of academia, but using creativity and innovation and persistence and

bit of dumb luck to replicate those resources. And sometimes that actually gives you a perspective that you're not going to find in academia. And that is a good thing.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (02:22)

Okay.

So what problem made this idea necessary for you?

Sheldon Greaves (02:33)

Well, I was working on a PhD in ancient Near Eastern studies at And at the same time, my spouse was working on her PhD in classics And so we were basically a young couple putting two kids through college, namely each other. And

What happened, what evolved was that we had to come up with way of balancing things. It got to a point where we had this arrangement where she would work for a year and I would study and then the next year we would switch. And so that meant that every other year I was not registered So I didn't have access to the tools that I would normally have.

for working on my degree, but I also had to keep up on my studies and what was going on. So that meant that I had to get creative. And when she was in the same situation, she had to get creative. And that meant that, for instance, we had to find ways to access library materials.

We had to find ways to stay in touch with what was going on in the field. And another interesting side effect of that was that on those off years, we were doing this in the San Francisco Bay area, well, in Silicon Valley during the early years of the computer revolution. So there was an unbelievable amount of really interesting stuff going on.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (03:56)

Mm.

Yeah,

Sheldon Greaves (04:03)

⁓ that

Dr. TiffianyAnn (04:03)

yes.

Sheldon Greaves (04:05)

was kind of, well, it was distracting. And I tend to be a generalist by nature, by temperament, and so was my wife. So, you know, along with a subscription to, you know, the Journal of Biblical Studies, there was a copy of Scientific American.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (04:09)

Hahaha!

Sheldon Greaves (04:27)

And along with archeology, there was a subscription to Wired. And I found myself, for instance, here's this guy who's in school literally learning to read clay tablets, among other things. I find myself participating in discussion groups on this emerging new thing called nanotechnology. I was the only humanities guy in the room.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (04:40)

Thank

Sheldon Greaves (04:50)

But it was fascinating and we were members in good standing of the Pacific Astronomical Society. So we would go out and, and, know, use their observatory and go to lectures on astronomical stuff and what have you. So yeah, you know, we were keeping up on our stuff, but there was also a lot of other things going on and,

Also, just watching a knowledge revolution happen is a very interesting thing to observe while you are, in fact, working on a doctorate.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (05:26)

Okay, tell me more.

Sheldon Greaves (05:27)

⁓ So,

for instance, one of the first things I did when I got to the Bay Area after we arrived was I joined the now kind of semi-legendary Berkeley Macintosh users group. ⁓ Our first purchase, our first major purchase as a married couple was a Macintosh computer with a whopping 128 kilobytes of memory.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (05:41)

Okay.

Hahaha!

Sheldon Greaves (05:53)

but, that was kind of a big deal because up to that point, you know, people were typing stuff and I had done that on typewriters and cutting and pasting meant literally cutting and pasting paper. we were working on this new, figuring out this new technology. And for instance, with the Macintosh and because of the way it was set up,

Dr. TiffianyAnn (05:57)

Hmm

Sheldon Greaves (06:17)

Suddenly here was the opportunity to have fonts in different character sets. So she was doing classics. She could type in Greek. I could type in Hebrew. How cool is that? When she did her master's degree, it was a translation of a Greek text with English commentary. She did it on an IBM Selectric.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (06:27)

I

you

Sheldon Greaves (06:40)

with a bouncing ball thing and every time she switched from English to Greek she had to change the ball, you know, on the thing. And suddenly that isn't a thing anymore. We had this little 300 baud modem that we could use to access the library catalog at Stanford University.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (06:51)

It's so hard.

Sheldon Greaves (07:09)

When we arrived, Stanford had a card catalog. I mean, a real honest to goodness dead tree card catalog, drawers, huge drawers, mean, practically big enough for living spaces, you know. ⁓ And within what four years, all that was gone and replaced by computer terminals, you know, so there's this this whole discussion going on of

Dr. TiffianyAnn (07:13)

Okay. Those drawers.

Just pulling them out.

Wow.

Sheldon Greaves (07:36)

What is the role of the computer in academia? What is the role of a as a tool for research, as a tool for writing? It wasn't anything like the controversy about AI because the computer wasn't gonna write things for you. there were a whole bunch of questions about how can you...

use this to do better research. So that was that was a big deal. ⁓

Dr. TiffianyAnn (07:59)

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate

that. I remember writing my thesis for my master's and in like the 11th hour, I'm typing on a computer and this was back in 2009. So I mean, we've come a long ways even since then. And I just remember flashbacks of being in typing class on those electric typewriters and

Sheldon Greaves (08:07)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (08:27)

I was a horrible typist. so I carried with me loads of whiteout loads of it. And in a and I was slow. And so papers were this thick because of the foot the whiteout on them. also going back to even high school education, writing that senior thesis with the cards, the three by five cards, and I

Sheldon Greaves (08:34)

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (08:51)

I even reverted back in my thesis, going back to those three by five cards, because it's what I understood worked at one point in time. And so I get it. But at that moment, I remember thinking, this is so forgiving. This word processor is so forgiving. I'm so grateful I'm doing this five chapter thing, because I would never call it a book.

Sheldon Greaves (08:58)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (09:17)

but a five chapter thing on a processor because I would, I never wanted to go back to the days of typing on an electronic typewriter ever again. So thank you for that story.

Sheldon Greaves (09:21)

Mm-hmm.

no, yeah, no. And

putting footnotes down where you don't have to count the lines and decide how much space you've got. Yeah, it's not, three by five cards are kind of making a comeback, by the way, which I find very interesting, but that's another thing. But one of the practical upshots of all this was that we were exposed to a whole bunch of really interesting things that were going on.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (09:34)

⁓ my gosh.

You

Sheldon Greaves (09:54)

And it kind of spoiled us, spoiled me certainly. And what happened as I was getting closer to finishing my dissertation, now ancient Near Eastern studies, you don't take that out into the world, hang up a shingle, you know, and say, I'm open for business. So academia was pretty much where I would be going. But the problem that I found was that

they expect you to pick a lane and then you stay in that lane. And woe betide anyone who wanders outside that lane, especially if you end up on someone else's territory. And in fact, I have a section in my book where I talk about one of my professors who didn't stay in his lane and

Dr. TiffianyAnn (10:32)

Ugh.

Sheldon Greaves (10:41)

long story short ended up having to take early retirement because he pissed off his his department chair one too many times by You know studying this when he meant to be studying that now it actually ended well for him and you know, which is good,

Dr. TiffianyAnn (10:53)

Go ahead.

Sheldon Greaves (10:58)

Now, another corrupting influence for me was a book that I encountered.

early in my doctoral program. It was by a gentleman named Ronald Gross and it was titled the Independent Scholars Handbook. And his, it was basically a guide to sort of like what my book is. It's a guide to doing scholarship outside of academia. But he also made a point, a very important point that a lot of the really interesting and innovative research

Dr. TiffianyAnn (11:13)

Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (11:31)

was being done outside of academia by independent people. And he pointed to people like Betty Friedan or Eric Hoffer or Barbara Tuckman or Buckminster Fuller as examples of people who were doing significant intellectual stuff, but they didn't have a university affiliation. And he pointed out that

In many cases, that lack of affiliation gave them the freedom to do things that they otherwise would not have been able to do. And that was certainly true in my case, as it turned out.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (12:02)

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. And you've kind of touched on it a little bit. If I'm hoping maybe you can go into this a little bit more, but how do you separate rigor from institutional permission? Because I think I think that this is something that as students, whether we realize it or not, we are always looking for the permission to do what we need to do next. And I think I think this is something that separates the learner from the scholar.

Sheldon Greaves (12:19)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (12:36)

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sheldon Greaves (12:39)

Yeah, if I understand your question, I think I do. when you're in school, they sort of tell you, here's your assignment, go to work. And the permission is implicit. But you also have someone that you can go back to and say, well, I was doing this because Professor So-and-so said this was a good, or this class assigned me it, and so here I go.

And there are implied constraints. For example, if I'm going to something about nomadic lifestyles in Genesis, I'm not going to go off and start writing about the Laffer curve in economics or something like that. You don't do that.

there's this, you called it permission and I really like that because it's not, it's surprisingly difficult to learn to say to yourself, that's something that interests me, I am going to go pursue it. And I think it's even harder now because even after we get out of school, there's this

implicit restriction that if you go off and do something, it needs to be something that's going to make money for you or somebody else. You know, and that that has frankly been one of the harder obstacles for me to overcome. Just, you know, you sit down and you want to study

Dr. TiffianyAnn (13:54)

Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (14:05)

I don't know, some innocuous but not terribly profit-generating thing. And there's a little voice inside that says, how is this going to pay the rent?

Dr. TiffianyAnn (14:19)

Yeah. So where does, because I can imagine when we've spoken before and even now, like your curiosity just floats to the top. I can see it. I can see that that really prepares you. Where does a lack of curiosity show up?

Sheldon Greaves (14:36)

The lack of curiosity, I think, shows up as a function of exhaustion.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (14:41)

Okay, let's talk about that. Give me an example.

Sheldon Greaves (14:42)

You know? Yeah. ⁓

Well, OK, everybody who does a dissertation or a master's thesis reaches a point where they're just tired of it. And I don't think it's because they're tired of the subject, because even someone who hates their dissertation will snap to attention and tell you all about the subject if you ask them.

In fact, good luck getting them to shut up about it. So it's not the, yes, okay. It's not the subject, I think. It's the process of wrangling it and wrestling it and getting it down on paper in a way that satisfies your committee. Or there are the extraneous things like,

committee politics. Or another thing too frankly is that achieving the necessary level of rigor can be exhausting because frankly that can be really tedious, know, going through all that. And the other problem too is that when you're doing a dissertation there's kind of an expectation that you're going to do the dissertation and that's it.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (15:43)

Mmm.

Sheldon Greaves (15:56)

you that's all you focus on. Everything else kind of has to get shoved off to the side. And I think that's kind of unnatural for most people.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (16:06)

Okay.

What do you mean by everything else gets shoved off to the side?

Sheldon Greaves (16:10)

Well, you don't get to, it's kind of frowned upon for you to go off and look at other subjects. Take another class in something that isn't necessarily associated with your topic. I've seen instances where someone might need to take another job to pay for things.

seen people in programs have, you know, advisors or what have you kind of frown on that. So that's taking you away from from finishing your doctorate. Sometimes they might get roped into doing some research for, you know, one professor or another that they need to do in order to, you know, continue to pay for whatever. But they don't, you know, it doesn't necessarily pertain to their

to their degree or to their dissertation. So you have these things that are pulling them kind of in different directions and things that can get in the way, things that delay you. And it's like, when is this thing ever going to be done? And I had moments like that. It took me longer than it probably should have. But then again, like I said, was checking out every other year.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (17:24)

Yeah, you were being creative, still getting it done. But being creative, I appreciate that. Sometimes that's what's needed. Yeah. What would you say the internal costs are when learning becomes transactional for a learner?

Sheldon Greaves (17:26)

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Wow, that's a wonderful, wonderful question.

I think what happens is that you start kind of carrying this mental spreadsheet around in your head where you're measuring the cost of what you're doing with what you'd like to be doing, what you'd rather be doing. You might feel, you know, tied to the nature of whatever that transaction is. You know, you got to do this in order to finish that. And I think

I think in a way it can even cheapen the experience of learning because now it's just, it's no longer a journey, it's a chore. And that's never good. That's never good.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (18:18)

Right.

I believe both you and I find value in learning as a whole inside the institution and outside of the institution. But we both know that there is a purpose for doctoral education. Right. There is a purpose for it. It's not always the funnest thing.

Sheldon Greaves (18:26)

Mm-hmm.

dear.

No, no it isn't

Dr. TiffianyAnn (18:39)

But how does doctoral education shape scholarly identity?

Sheldon Greaves (18:43)

well, you know, one thing that it does, I think, is, it instills a certain discipline that is necessary. you learn, at a very high level, how to tell sense from nonsense. your mind develops a very keen cutting edge that is, is useful. You see the world.

I think in sharper focus than you might otherwise do. The other thing too, and this was something that one of my professors kind of told me when I was working on my master's degree and I was contemplating going for a doctorate. And he says that there is something to having that as part of your identity as a person. He says there were times

in his life when things were not going well, when he was really in a bad place, but he says no matter how bad things got, I could always say to myself, you are doctor so-and-so. Which I found very interesting and I have resorted to that on a couple of occasions. The other thing, and I almost hesitate to...

bring this because it sounds kind of not terribly kosher is that having you know those three magic letters PhD after your name means you get taken seriously in context where you have absolutely no business being taken seriously. ⁓

Dr. TiffianyAnn (20:09)

hahahaha ⁓

Sheldon Greaves (20:15)

After

I graduated, one of the projects that I somehow got involved in was with a group of people from the Society for Amateur Scientists. We were involved in a contest to see which non-governmental organization could design, build, and launch a vehicle that could carry a two kilogram payload to an altitude of 200 kilometers. Now, just for the sake of scale, the

the shuttle used to orbit at 180. So it's way out there. So basically I was on a team of rocket scientists, you know, and I discovered that I had a flair for, for logistics. So I found myself, you know, helping to arrange like a launch site and, collecting materials and whatnot. And in my initial contacts with people, I would refer to myself as Dr. Greaves. And suddenly I was taken seriously.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (20:42)

Okay.

wow.

Sheldon Greaves (21:05)

Nobody told them, I didn't bother to tell them that part of earning that doctorate was, you know, reading the laws of Hammurabi in the original Old Babylonian. So, you know, but, you know, that's...

Dr. TiffianyAnn (21:16)

Even the title

is transferable is what you're saying.

Sheldon Greaves (21:19)

Yeah, well put. Yes,

that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So there's that.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (21:24)

that's funny. That's funny.

But to look at the

The other side of this. In what ways can doctoral education distort scholarly identity?

Sheldon Greaves (21:36)

My initial thought is that it takes us back to the business of specialization. It's easy to see yourself as being only a specialist in one thing and not others. One of the things that happens, I think, in a doctoral program is that people kind of develop an

an aversion to crossing disciplinary lines. I kind of lost that somewhere along the way, which has been a blessing, quite honestly. But what I think a doctoral education does that kind of compensates for that is that you learn how to

Dr. TiffianyAnn (22:01)

little bit.

Sheldon Greaves (22:15)

ask really good questions. If you're not doing that, you're doing something wrong. Because that's such an important part of any kind of educational endeavor and the further you go, the better the questions that you learn to ask. And that's important. The other important thing is knowing how to...

stop and listen and wait for the answer. There's a, there's kind of an assumption that having a doctorate makes you arrogant intellectually, and I've certainly seen that. But I think if someone goes through the process right, does it properly, it actually, it should instill a great deal of intellectual humility.

because you know how much you don't know. You know just how big even your field is. And there are how many areas that you do not understand and would need to really dig in to reach any kind of level of competence and to be okay with that. And carry that humility out into the world where, you know, the rest of the world is there waiting to teach you.

You need to be open to it.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (23:20)

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, so my next question sounds almost counterintuitive to this, but but what happens when somebody out grows their future that they imagined originally?

Sheldon Greaves (23:28)

You

Yeah, that kind of happened to me with about two years to go in my doctoral program. ⁓ I kind of had a path laid out and that path turned out to be non-viable. So I had to make a decision. Do I want to finish this or not? And I decided it was better to have a doctorate than not have a doctorate, regardless of the field. And what happened?

Dr. TiffianyAnn (23:43)

Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (24:01)

What happened to me was that I kind of went out into the world, decided, okay, well, I'm going to do something else. I'm not sure what it is. Started out doing technical writing for various Silicon Valley companies, which is pretty much what any humanities major in Silicon Valley did after they graduated, because engineers cannot write.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (24:19)

I mean exactly,

Sheldon Greaves (24:25)

They cannot

write. I even had, what's that? Even in code, well, it's funny you should put it that way because when there was this one programmer, chief programmer, had, he could not understand why anyone would need to document the code that they were writing. And I said, look, just think of me as an English compiler, okay? You know, I take what you do. I turn it into,

Dr. TiffianyAnn (24:28)

Even in code? Even in code?

Sheldon Greaves (24:53)

meat code, human code, you take stuff, turn it into machine code. That's our role. okay, I get it now. But then you go out there into the world, you have this training. It's not just in being able to, in your particular field. One thing that I've learned and I'm sure you've seen it too is that if you've completed a doctorate,

Dr. TiffianyAnn (25:01)

you

Sheldon Greaves (25:16)

you have, ipso facto, pretty deep experience in project management. You know, and you can make that case. So that kind of takes you a little ways out. But then I guess I just started looking around and trying to be open for opportunities to use an active, use my mind to do other things.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (25:23)

Yes.

Sheldon Greaves (25:40)

Boy, did that ever happen. The year after I, well, I need to back up a little bit here. About four or five years before I graduated, I had the unpleasant experience of being mugged in East Palo Alto, which was at that time sort of the unofficial homicide capital of the United States.

something like 46 homicides in a township less than a quarter of a square mile. And that kind of shook me a little bit mentally and kind of made me realize that my otherwise excellent education had some gaps in it, like how do I protect myself? So after I graduated, I went looking for a place to kind of rectify that because at the time I didn't have the money or the time to do it.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (26:04)

Wow.

Sheldon Greaves (26:23)

And I came across this place that was called the International Institute for Professional Executive Protection. It was a school that trained high threat level bodyguards, executive protection specialists. And part of that training was some really interesting martial arts stuff. There was this new, new to me and to a lot of other people system called Muay Thai, which I'd never heard of.

and it was really quite new at that time. And, this was, this was part of what they, what they taught. So I, I went there and, what kind of, sold me on this was I asked the guys as well. How come, why should I, why should I study with you instead of taking a karate class at the YMCA? He said, they teach it as a sport. We teach it as a job skill.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (27:14)

Mmm.

Sheldon Greaves (27:14)

like,

okay, good answer. Here's my check, you know. So I'm doing this for about a year and my teacher is this absolutely brilliant, not only martial artist, but apparently, but had been involved in a whole bunch of other really interesting shadow type stuff and he's working to help get this

Dr. TiffianyAnn (27:18)

Thank you.

Sheldon Greaves (27:37)

desk-bound, middle-aged academic wimp in touch with his inner you know? But after about a year of this, I let slip that I have an advanced degree from Berkeley, and he perks up and he says, could I see you in my office? And I'm like, crap, what is it? know, because that's never a good thing. But we get in there and he sits down and he says, look, I've got this little school here and when...

Dr. TiffianyAnn (27:40)

you

Sheldon Greaves (27:59)

We take people through the program, the executive protection program, they get this certificate and that's all very well and good, but I have aspirations for bigger things. I would like to take this school and make it a full-fledged university that teaches bachelor's and master's and doctoral programs. And I want to branch out into intelligence and counterterrorism as well as executive protection. And...

Dr. TiffianyAnn (28:14)

wow.

Sheldon Greaves (28:23)

He says, but in order to do that, I need people with advanced degrees to help me. I've got a business degree from a school in India. No one's going to take me seriously. He was an Indian national. He's an American citizen now. And he says, but you do technical writing, you just told me, and that's a lot of what I need, you know, to make this happen. And then

There was that moment he leans across the table, he looks me right in the eye and says, how would you like to co-found a university with me?

And I mean, what else can you say to something like that? You know, it's like, my gosh, you know, well, my, initial answer was, yeah, I'd love to, that sounds great, but you have to understand, you know, if you're talking intelligence and that sort of thing, my knowledge of that field basically comes from the fact that I've seen every episode of get smart, you know, and

Dr. TiffianyAnn (28:55)

right. No thank you. Be on my way.

you

Hahaha!

Sheldon Greaves (29:18)

And he said something, his answer was very interesting. He said, look, you've been here for about a year. You always show up. You come twice a week, you train hard, you pay attention. I am convinced that you can do this. And I was like, okay, I'm in all the way, you know? And long story short, we gathered various people around from a wide range of,

three letter government agencies, both here and abroad. And we eventually did found what became Henley Putnam University. We got national accreditation and we did our degree programs. I actually wrote most of their doctoral program and it turned out to be just an unbelievable experience because I got to learn

Dr. TiffianyAnn (29:59)

Wow.

Sheldon Greaves (30:05)

about the world of intelligence and counter-terrorism from people who were actually doing it. And I was taking their knowledge and putting it into these courses. Now, what gave me the wherewithal to do that? Well, it was my doctoral training, not the training in ancient history, but the training in taking information and doing something with it, knowing how a class kind of works because I'd been in so many of them.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (30:11)

Wow.

Ha.

Sheldon Greaves (30:31)

you know, learning how to take material and writing it to a standard that the accreditation people would accept, you know, all these sorts of things played into it. The fact that I also had expertise in the Near East or what's today is the Middle East also didn't hurt, to be honest, because, you know, when he...

proposed this to me, I realized that yeah, this is a great idea because Islamic fundamentalism was starting to surface. even though a lot of people were saying, well, the Cold War is over. This was 1996, yeah, 96, 97. says, yeah, the Cold War is over. It's all unicorns and rainbows now. What are you doing that for?

Dr. TiffianyAnn (31:16)

Mmm.

Sheldon Greaves (31:17)

And then of course, 9-11 happened and suddenly everybody, that's why you're doing this, you know. So it was an interesting experience. It was an enriching experience. And among other things, I'm now a member in good standing of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, ⁓ which is kind of a cool thing to have on your CV.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (31:22)

Right.

Thanks

So fascinating.

Sheldon Greaves (31:41)

And I have some interesting and scary friends that I've made along the way.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (31:46)

That's absolutely fascinating. I remember in our initial conversation, you talked about balancing your schedule, your wife's schedule to help. And there was some financial things there as well. So it wasn't

Sheldon Greaves (32:01)

yeah.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (32:02)

It wasn't always the internal shifts that needed to happen, but the external that you needed to manage to. ⁓ And I appreciate your finding balance with that and finding persistence in all of that.

Sheldon Greaves (32:06)

Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's true.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (32:19)

I don't know, maybe you've been curious from the day you were born, at this level of curiosity. My grandmother used to tell me all the time, you asked too many questions. And I grew up thinking that that was a bad thing. I'm like, don't ask a question. Don't ask a question. And I know that going through the doctorate really helped change that narrative for me personally. and it.

Sheldon Greaves (32:30)

⁓

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (32:40)

And it sparked that curiosity that I stifled for so long. ⁓ But I had a hard time balancing what I wanted to learn. So is learning for pleasure possible during the dissertation or is it something that you would recommend only after you're done?

Sheldon Greaves (32:44)

Mm-hmm.

You know, I think it's possible. in most of the time I enjoyed working on my dissertation and my advisor at the time was smart enough we went through several topics and she would kind of probe as we went through. Well, does that sound interesting to you? Would that be something you'd enjoy doing? You know?

And so it was yes, sometimes no. I had an interesting corollary experience with that. Last year, I was working as a substitute and educational assistant at one of the local high schools. And one of the kids there was getting ready to write a paper for something for one of her classes. And

She was saying, well, you know, they're thinking about writing about this, but I'm really interested in this. And he says, which one should I do? And I said, come on, that's a no brainer. Write about the thing you're interested in writing about something you're not interested in. That's the worst. You know, just go with what really grabs you. Okay. Okay. So a couple of days later, she comes back. She's just beaming. says, that was so much fun. You know, so, you know,

that's on a small scale, I think the way schools should be, know, the way the dissertation should be.

Learning is naturally pleasurable, really. There are a few, phrases that perplex me more than makes learning fun. You know, to me, that makes about as much sense as makes breathing fun, you know, because we're always doing it, whether we whether we realize that or not, whether you're perusing

in the checkout aisle or reading Homer in the original Greek, you know. It's just something that we do. And in fact, I think that's part of what is being leveraged by social media. It takes advantage of the fact that learning some new little factoid gives you a little dopamine hit and that's kind of been leveraged, I would even say weaponized.

to hold our attention so that we keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling forever.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (35:09)

Sure.

So I'm thinking through this and I'm not certain I know how to frame this, so bear with me. I agree with you that we are constantly learning, right? But I think that there's a difference.

Sheldon Greaves (35:15)

Hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (35:24)

And I don't know what it is as far as those who wish to engage in it and retain it. What is the difference between the person who just is taking in information versus learning? There's gotta be a difference, right? Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (35:39)

Oh, there is. Yeah. I imagine

it's like the difference between someone who just kind of goes through, you know, they walk here, they walk there, they get up, they get down, or the person who is moving in order to train for something like an athlete. You know, there's the direction, there's the purpose, there's the intensity, there's the this

Dr. TiffianyAnn (36:00)

Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (36:08)

kind of hunger that comes and it can be cultivated, but it can also be lost. And that's kind of the, kind of, think the biggest difference. I mean, that's frankly the best I got. I mean, I've known people who,

Dr. TiffianyAnn (36:10)

Thank

Sheldon Greaves (36:27)

for them learning has sort of become almost something that it was kind of like.

like some psycho crazy girlfriend they used to have and they don't know what they ever saw in it and they're happy that it's behind them and they never want to hear from them again. But then there are other people for whom it's just, it's a beautiful thing, it's enriching, it's wonderful. I think for my part, I think I got it from my mother.

Well known my dad too, he was a pretty curious guy. So I kind of grew up realizing that, there's nothing wrong with this. This is a cool thing.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (36:59)

you

I love that. I love that for you that you had that

community to support you in that way. I'm sure my grandmother was not, I'm a hundred percent sure that my takeaway from her was the negative. And I don't believe that that's what she meant. My grandmother engaged in banter with me as if it was a celebration all the time. Like she just, that was, that was our thing, you

Sheldon Greaves (37:09)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ha

Uh-huh.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (37:31)

But

so I have a hard time believing that she didn't think I should ask questions or you know become engaged in discourse in any way. but I'm curious and I'm sure you've heard this from lots of doctoral learners that you know the doctoral journey can be isolating and

Sheldon Greaves (37:41)

You

Yes.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (37:52)

And I'm just going to be completely frank. Like I found myself needing to turn off all technology, the phone, silence the phone, calls and everything else, and even remove Facebook and all the social media because I was using it as a way to avoid.

And maybe not everybody's like this. So for those of you who do not experience this, kudos to you. But for likely the majority of us who find social media as a great avoidance tool, how would you encourage people to, in those times of isolation that you may be feeling this and wanting to resist whatever you're working on, to step in

Sheldon Greaves (38:14)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (38:38)

with more of that curiosity mindset and or how do you or maybe it's a redirection. What would you describe that as

Sheldon Greaves (38:46)

yeah, now see, I had an unfair advantage because when I was working on my dissertation, none of that stuff existed. The worldwide web actually got launched the year I graduated 1996. you know, but there was still email, there was still AOL, you know, but that wasn't social media, not even close. ⁓ And, you know, cell phones and all that sort of thing. mean, cell phones were phones. They weren't small handheld.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (38:56)

Okay, okay.

Great.

Sheldon Greaves (39:12)

But yeah, distraction has kind of become the bane of intellectual existence now. I don't know if you're familiar with, what's his name, Johann Hari's book, Stolen Focus, where he talks about how we're losing this ability to focus on things. And what you did, I think, is exactly

Dr. TiffianyAnn (39:23)

Mmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sheldon Greaves (39:39)

right. You have to turn it off. You have to create, in fact I have a whole section in my book on creating a zone of silence and there's this wonderful old book that I think was written back in 1920 or something by that by a Catholic theologian by the name of A.G. Sertillange and it was called The Intellectual Life.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (39:51)

Okay.

Sheldon Greaves (40:09)

And it was the audience, the intended audience was young men who wanted to enter the priesthood and become theological scholars. But it still got a whole bunch of really interesting advice for people who want to pursue a life of the mind. And he has an entire section in there on creating a zone of silence for yourself. This is in 1920. So

Dr. TiffianyAnn (40:33)

you

Sheldon Greaves (40:33)

You know, but it still applies. And in fact, I borrowed. Yes. And I borrowed quite heavily from him and from other sources in writing my own section in my book about creating a zone of silence. and you, have to be able to do that. But the other side of that is that you have to, you have to cultivate an inner space where you are comfortable with your own thoughts.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (40:36)

The horses were running fast.

Sheldon Greaves (40:58)

Now, I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's, again, I talk about this in my book, there was this study that was done in which a team of psychologists asked people to simply be alone with their thoughts in a room with nothing to do for X number of minutes and then report on how they felt. And most of them just hated it.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (41:21)

Wow.

Sheldon Greaves (41:22)

nothing

to do. So they made a new thing where you would they would sit in the room by themselves alone with their thoughts and they were hooked up to a little electrode thing and if they wanted to they could give themselves electric shocks.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (41:39)

Instead?

Sheldon Greaves (41:40)

Instead of being alone with their thoughts and an unsettlingly large number of those participants would rather shock themselves than be alone with their own thinking. Now, despite having written something about that, I don't have a pat answer for how you cultivate that, but I think

Dr. TiffianyAnn (41:51)

Ugh.

Sheldon Greaves (42:01)

It's something that you do deliberately. It's something you practice at. It's something you work at. you know, really finding that inner space, finding that inner quietude is so important because as you well know, a critical component of any intellectual endeavor is taking the time to reflect.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (42:23)

Yes.

Sheldon Greaves (42:23)

and think

and chew on things, know, ideas, ideas have gestation periods, just like any other living thing. And if you try to rush it or you skip it, you're not going to get anything good.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (42:39)

Huh. Can you say that again?

Sheldon Greaves (42:40)

So yeah,

ideas have gestation periods. They take time and you can't rush it. You can't goad it along. You don't want to deliver it before it's due or you're going to end up with something that's unhealthy or not long for this world. It's not gonna be as good as it could be. So, you know, that

that habit of reflection is something that we are very much in danger of losing. Maybe you could start with some transcendental meditation or something like that, but find some way to get that back. ⁓ And I think unplugging is kind of a primary criterion for that.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (43:20)

Yeah, that's important.

Yeah, yeah, I, the week I defended my dissertation, I had there's an author, he's actually a an adventurer of sorts, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he, he had what was called the 12 hour challenge.

The 12 hour challenge was to walk for 12 hours. Just to take a walk. No, I mean, I brought my phone for safety reasons and map the map 12 hours into my walk. I may not know where I'm at any longer. But I just walked and so I brought my phone. It was my pocket, but it was turned off and I had no earbuds.

Sheldon Greaves (43:47)

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right. Okay. Fair enough.

done.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (44:08)

I didn't talk to, like I intentionally did not talk to anybody. I And it was. It was the most. Settling process like I remember the first couple hours.

Like I kept running through agendas and I was speaking out loud to myself. I had to have the voice, right? Some kind of resonating sound. And I was just speaking out agendas. Probably hour two, maybe even hour three, I started to really become comfortable in my own head and process through things. And sometimes I don't even know that I was

Sheldon Greaves (44:25)

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (44:47)

really forming thoughts, but just being with myself on whatever journey I was walking on that day. was a beautiful way to end my my doctorate journey, but it was all about reflection. And so I can really understand. And I, I have a lot of respect for those who take the time to reflect. I see a

ton of growth in people who stopped to take time to reflect and to sit with the things that are most uncomfortable.

Sheldon Greaves (45:16)

Yeah. For me, my daily routine usually involves early in the morning, going to a local diner or a coffee shop and just writing in my notebook. I don't meet anybody. It's just me and the cup of coffee or the breakfast special or whatever. And I just write and think and try not to do much more than that. And if I can

Get that? I'm usually good for the day.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (45:40)

So I want to bring us to how we can shape our own scholarly journey while we're in this process, it's our process.

Sheldon Greaves (45:50)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (45:52)

So how do scholars claim agency without bitterness?

Sheldon Greaves (45:57)

Hmm

Dr. TiffianyAnn (45:58)

Part of the point of going through a doctoral journey, or what I hope for all learners, is that they develop agency to raise their voice. That's really what this is all about. sometimes within the parameters of institutions or parameters of a job, there's always something that we have to check some balances.

Sheldon Greaves (46:22)

she's out.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (46:23)

And so how do we develop those, that agency without becoming bitter against all the checks and balances?

Sheldon Greaves (46:31)

boy, you know, that is a tough question. And I think a lot of that is just gonna come down to whether you are able or willing to take a look at the larger picture and say, okay, well look, if I get this done, then I can go off and do something else, you know, and see it as just kind of a side trip or even an obstacle.

Yeah, it's a problem. And in a way, guerrilla scholarship is kind of a response to that. It's a response to saying, you do have agency. You can go out and do this and do amazing things. And there are a number of other constraints that limit what can be done in academia. You mentioned what a professor would assign.

maybe that professor is assigning something because the grant that they have, that's all the grant will let them do. That's a problem. It's a huge problem as far as I'm concerned. And I think that speaking up and finding your own voice is part of becoming a scholar. This same gentleman who told me that having a PhD can

be sort of a personality boost. He also was fond of mentioning kind of in a sotto voce, you know, stage whisper that the purpose of graduate school is to become the peer of your professors, you know. And that was...

Dr. TiffianyAnn (47:50)

Somebody had a rebellious nature to him for sure.

Sheldon Greaves (47:54)

Yeah, yeah. Well,

this is also the guy who got drummed out because, you know, they wanted him studying Uzbek poetry and he ended up studying the Turkish Air Force, you know. but, know, we need to claim that agency. And I think one of the reasons why for me is that it's my perception that

Dr. TiffianyAnn (48:03)

Hehehehehe

Sheldon Greaves (48:18)

There is a vast waste of intellectual and artistic and creative talent in our society that is just appalling. So much of it is because people come out of the system and they're burned out. They're just tired. They don't want to do have anything to do with it anymore. And they don't. And I think that's sad. I think it bothers me that when

kids graduate from high school, it's kind of like, I never want to see another quadratic equation again or whatever like that. When what should happen is that they should leave high school totally jacked up on learning. They should have come out of that experience thinking that learning is the greatest thing in the world. So there's this feeling of waste and this feeling that there's so much out there.

that academia can't really address, just not because academia is bad, but because it's just the way it's set up. I mentioned grants, is there money for it? Is it in my discipline? Great, I can do it. How many times have you talked, anybody who's been in academia and say, have you ever had a project that you really wanted to do?

but you couldn't do it because the funding wasn't there or it was a little too close to the edge of your discipline. And they'll always have a story, especially after the second drink, you know? And it's true. There's just, you the agency is something that you do have to claim. And that's one of the biggest, I think, advantages of guerrilla scholarship is that it gives people permission

Dr. TiffianyAnn (49:40)

Yeah.

Sheldon Greaves (50:00)

to take that plunge. it might not always go the way you expect it to, What was it? The line from Don Quixote is charging a windmill. the windmill is gonna drag you through the mud and it says, or lift you to the stars. it's a risk. it's gonna happen.

There are no assurances, there are no guarantees, and that cuts both ways. It could go really bad, you could end up doing something you never imagined, and it's the greatest thing ever.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (50:33)

I hope that our listeners will check out your book. I'll put the link in the show notes

I definitely have appreciated the conversation. Any last minute things you want to say to our listeners today?

Sheldon Greaves (50:47)

I guess, other than stay curious, and, be brave and give it a try. You never know what's going to happen.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (50:58)

love that.

Thank you so very much for your time today.

Dr. TiffianyAnn (51:02)

Today's conversation with Dr. Greaves reminds me that the doctoral journey is not just about producing a dissertation. It's about developing the discipline to think deeply and the humility to keep learning. This journey requires more than intelligence. It requires the courage and tenacity to remain curious, even when the process becomes exhausting. One of the ideas that stayed with me from this conversation is the reminder that learning should never become

purely transactional. When it does, something important is lost. Curiosity fades. The work becomes more than a chore rather than a journey. But as we heard today, scholarship does not belong only to institutions. In fact, I would argue that you represent scholarship, not the institution. Scholarship belongs to anyone willing to ask good questions, sit with the difficult ideas and give those ideas the time they need to grow.

wherever you are in your doctoral journey, whether you're deep in the writing or navigating uncertainty, maybe you're celebrating the hill you just mounted. Take a moment to reconnect with the curiosity that brought you here in the first place. In the meantime, please subscribe and share this with your friends. Thank you very much for listening. And until next time, stay curious, be brave enough to ask the next question, and keep going.