What I chose wasn’t traditional gold or silver, but a silicone ring—lightweight, durable, and adorned with a golden laurel wrapping its circumference. Inside, etched in gold, is simply: WWU 2025. The initials of William Woods University and the year I became Dr. Armstrong.
Unlike the ornamental class rings so common in American high schools and undergraduate programs, doctoral rings trace their heritage to the medieval guild system, where advanced study conferred not just knowledge but status and responsibility. According to Clark (2006), doctoral candidates in theology, law, or medicine were historically awarded a gold ring “not merely as ornament, but as a public sign of scholarly authority and devotion to the truth” (p. 115). These rings were sometimes even blessed by ecclesiastical authorities, blending the sacred and scholarly.
Today, that tradition persists more in spirit than in form. My silicone ring may appear humble compared to its medieval predecessors, but it is no less intentional. My fingers are large, and soft metals warp easily. A metal ring would have been impractical, possibly short-lived. But this ring—like education itself—is built to endure the daily grind. It is, in a word, practical. And in that practicality lies meaning. As William Morris once wrote, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I believe this ring is both.
The laurel design was a deliberate choice. In ancient Greece and Rome, laurel wreaths crowned not just victors, but poets and philosophers—those who triumphed not in war, but in wisdom. “The laurel is the poet’s crown,” writes Tennyson (1855), evoking the symbolism of earned knowledge through discipline and reflection. In the Renaissance, the laurel came to represent humanistic achievement and moral clarity. In my own case, it marks not victory over others, but perseverance through long nights of study, the drafting and redrafting of my dissertation, and the vulnerability of defending it in person during a colloquium presentation I requested deliberately—because I wanted to fully inhabit the moment.
The engraving—WWU 2025—grounds the ring in time and place. It is a private reminder of a very public accomplishment, a commitment not only to my discipline but to my identity as an educator. The word doctor derives from the Latin docere, meaning "to teach." It does not imply mastery, but responsibility. In that etymology lies my truth: that this degree is not the end of the road but a recommitment to the work of teaching, mentoring, and leading.
Education is never static. As bell hooks (1994) wrote, “Education as the practice of freedom… is not just about liberatory knowledge but about creating possibilities for growth and change” (p. 207). My ring is not a seal of finality but a token of promise. I wear it not to declare what I have done, but to remind myself of what I must continue to do. Its circular form echoes the rhythm of the classroom: each new student, each new year, each new question begins again the sacred process of learning.
I chose a ring I could wear not just in ceremony, but in life—while teaching, while guiding students, while standing in front of a museum exhibit, or walking the halls of a school. It is a quiet emblem, one that rests between the fingers that write, point, support, and sometimes simply rest on a student’s shoulder to say, “You can do this.”
And so the ring, humble and unbroken, becomes both artifact and aspiration. Not just a marker of completion, but a symbol of continuity.
References
Clark, W. (2006). Academic charisma and the origins of the research university. University of Chicago Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Tennyson, A. (1855). Maud, and other poems. Edward Moxon.