Tuesday, September 13, 2011
On Chalk
On the sudden discovery of a white board hanging next to the blackboard: "Chalk it up to modernization." ~Dr. Hahn
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Day-Maker #42
Mail in my mailbox. From friends and family is best, but even Amazon packages make me smile. Mail in my mailbox means this is home.
Life Lessons from the Classroom
Yesterday, my favorite quotes were humorous. Here are some from today that stuck with me for other reasons...
"The only thing worse than feeling inadequate is feeling adequate." ~Dr. Hahn
"The Cross is God's unrequited love for us." ~Fr. Pattee
"The only thing worse than feeling inadequate is feeling adequate." ~Dr. Hahn
"The Cross is God's unrequited love for us." ~Fr. Pattee
Monday, September 5, 2011
Words of Wisdom from a Theologian
From my first Principles of Biblical Studies II (The New Testament) class with Dr. Bergsma:
"The last time you could sleep in the woods safely was Eden. People do do it these days, but it is a foolish thing. They ought to be at home in their beds."
"God forbade them to eat meat from a pig. This was probably a good thing. Pig's meat is gross, if you ever put it under a microscope. Of course, they didn't have microscopes then... This is all irrelevant."
Evening classes are excruciatingly long during a time of day when I am less than my best, but at least my professors are entertaining. Dr. Bergsma has a fan club of undergraduate girls that form his own personal laugh track.
"The last time you could sleep in the woods safely was Eden. People do do it these days, but it is a foolish thing. They ought to be at home in their beds."
"God forbade them to eat meat from a pig. This was probably a good thing. Pig's meat is gross, if you ever put it under a microscope. Of course, they didn't have microscopes then... This is all irrelevant."
Evening classes are excruciatingly long during a time of day when I am less than my best, but at least my professors are entertaining. Dr. Bergsma has a fan club of undergraduate girls that form his own personal laugh track.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Settling In
In the mornings, fog covers the hills and a smell covers the ground. A particularly blunt grad student describes it in the same breath as urine and sulphur, but neither of these quite capture it. One of our orientation speakers explains that it comes across the river from a plant in West Virginia. The odor and the fog have burned off by nine or ten and (at least on weekdays) the campus has come alive.
Made-up girls in skirts and flip-flops and clean-cut guys in polo shirts amble to their destination, normally one of the two academic buildings or the two-floor library. They stop and chat with friends on the pathways, because on a campus this size, you can't help but run into someone you know. Some people wear their marks of loyalty in the form of t-shirts that claim Household allegiance: Greek life meets intentional community.
Inside the buildings, doorways and hallways catch and clog as students stop to mingle, buy drinks, and chat. Guys have a tendency to hold doors and send women through doorways first, a touching display of chivalry that doesn't help the traffic flow. A surprising minority of men carry a breviary or another prayer book, a material testimony to that morning's activities. An unsurprising number of wrists, necks, and fingers support scapulars, rosaries, and crucifixes. These tools of prayer apparently get good use : there is no place to pray hidden and alone here, where sacred places attract crowds at all hours of the day and into the night.
Religious habits speckle the ranks of students and faculty and Roman collars pop up more frequently than spaghetti straps, even when the temperature springs into the 90s. Those men and women who wear their order rarely walk or stand alone. They appear to be in constant conversation with students, conversations governed at times by gravity and at times by levity.
This is the place that somehow, someone has seem fit to drop me for the next two years. Part school, part Catholic Disneyland; a city on a hill in the middle of nowhere in depressed Ohio... The place in which I will learn and grow and discern God's dreams for me.
Made-up girls in skirts and flip-flops and clean-cut guys in polo shirts amble to their destination, normally one of the two academic buildings or the two-floor library. They stop and chat with friends on the pathways, because on a campus this size, you can't help but run into someone you know. Some people wear their marks of loyalty in the form of t-shirts that claim Household allegiance: Greek life meets intentional community.
Inside the buildings, doorways and hallways catch and clog as students stop to mingle, buy drinks, and chat. Guys have a tendency to hold doors and send women through doorways first, a touching display of chivalry that doesn't help the traffic flow. A surprising minority of men carry a breviary or another prayer book, a material testimony to that morning's activities. An unsurprising number of wrists, necks, and fingers support scapulars, rosaries, and crucifixes. These tools of prayer apparently get good use : there is no place to pray hidden and alone here, where sacred places attract crowds at all hours of the day and into the night.
Religious habits speckle the ranks of students and faculty and Roman collars pop up more frequently than spaghetti straps, even when the temperature springs into the 90s. Those men and women who wear their order rarely walk or stand alone. They appear to be in constant conversation with students, conversations governed at times by gravity and at times by levity.
This is the place that somehow, someone has seem fit to drop me for the next two years. Part school, part Catholic Disneyland; a city on a hill in the middle of nowhere in depressed Ohio... The place in which I will learn and grow and discern God's dreams for me.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Classes, Parts 1-3
Thus far I have begun work for 3 of my five courses. I sat in the second row in my 8am class and watched as it filled up ten minutes before class started. Lest you think this a first-day-of-class fluke -- the same thing happened today. The class fell to silent attention two minutes before 8, ready to begin.
That course (Sacraments) is taught by a Franciscan priest, who is hilarious, alive, and chipper at 8 in the morning, engaging us from the get-go. My next course (Christian Moral Principles) is taught by an adjunct professor who checked his cell phone for the time and told us to use his Gmail address. Judging by these facts and some dates he gave us, I figure he can't be much over 30, if at all. In another realm, he'd be my peer rather than professor. It was bizarre and gave me insight into Percy's experience teaching at a community college.
Both of these courses had priceless lines in the syllabi, including: "Computer use will not be baby-sat by the professor, since the student already bears the penalty of ineptitude in him or herself," and "Students should not leave the classroom unless they become seriously ill, or for some other good reason (e.g. incontinence)."
Finally, I have class with the one, the only Scott Hahn. Remember that time I stood outside his office? Now I sat in the second row and listened in unabashed admiration as he soliloquized about the course objectives. And referenced Princess Bride. His course, Biblical Foundations, is the only graduate level course I'm attempting this semester. The rest are undergrad prereqs. And the workload, difficulty of reading, and course expectations show it. In other words, his course will be amazing!
That course (Sacraments) is taught by a Franciscan priest, who is hilarious, alive, and chipper at 8 in the morning, engaging us from the get-go. My next course (Christian Moral Principles) is taught by an adjunct professor who checked his cell phone for the time and told us to use his Gmail address. Judging by these facts and some dates he gave us, I figure he can't be much over 30, if at all. In another realm, he'd be my peer rather than professor. It was bizarre and gave me insight into Percy's experience teaching at a community college.
Both of these courses had priceless lines in the syllabi, including: "Computer use will not be baby-sat by the professor, since the student already bears the penalty of ineptitude in him or herself," and "Students should not leave the classroom unless they become seriously ill, or for some other good reason (e.g. incontinence)."
Finally, I have class with the one, the only Scott Hahn. Remember that time I stood outside his office? Now I sat in the second row and listened in unabashed admiration as he soliloquized about the course objectives. And referenced Princess Bride. His course, Biblical Foundations, is the only graduate level course I'm attempting this semester. The rest are undergrad prereqs. And the workload, difficulty of reading, and course expectations show it. In other words, his course will be amazing!
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