end or beginning??

Every 3-4 months I am faced with the reality of another end…or is it a beginning? I liken it to the glass half full/half empty debate. The reality exists regardless of the perspective one holds. My perspective changes depending the hour and context in which you ask. If I’m motoring plastic cars around the floor with Luke, then it is definitely an end. If I am looking at the syllabus…yep, it is definetely the beginning, only the beginning too.

Another semester is lurking around the corner, just a few more days and it’s ugly time-consuming, brain mushifying face will pop out of thin air to the rhythm of my alarm clock early in the morning (right now it’s an end…an end to my no-studying-just-play-with-Luke evenings). Okay, it’s really not that bad. I am excited about my course selections and the progression of the degree. I figured I would give an update of my progress and how things lay out…so this would be a prime stopping point to avert boredom

bye bye greek…bye bye hebrew

and so it is, with utmost joy and celebration (and a bit-o-tiredness) that I turn in my last hebrew exegetical paper. this marks the end of my official foray into the languages, though I feel I was the one plundered and taken prisoner.

I offer tribute with this hebrew proverb:

An advantage of poverty: your relatives gain nothing by your death.

does not compute…

37 hours to know the ins-’n-outs of world religions…unfortunately the world religions have avoided the ins and found only the outs of my brain

 

God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather, he is creating a people among whom he can live and who in their life together will reproduce God’s life and character. (emphasis added)
– Gordon Fee

goals…plans…schedules…strategies…

I confess, I am a goal-oriented person. I love to set goals, mainly those that bring about the conclusion of something. And so I did not achieve that which I said I would do (or not do) in my previous post…I THOUGHT about school over the weekend (*gasp*).  I know, they seemed such simple statements to carry out, but I failed. I failed because, given a few moments to catch my breath and think about things more distant than the day’s immediate assignments, classes, and studies, I began scheduling out the rest of the semester and setting goals for this week, outlining all that I hope to accomplish. My mind was very busy this weekend

I chuckled at these statements concerning goal-oriented-ness:”a system, person, or organization that tends to achieve a goal and demonstrate it in subsequent actions.” I guess I tend to set and achieve goals! I think I do not really understand how a goal achieved is then demonstrated in subsequent actions. I like this one too: “Individuals continuously monitor whether goals have been achieved through a process called self-regulation.” Ahh, good ‘ole self-regulation…have you self-regulated lately?

This is the week during the semester where I feel rejuvenated (only in some partial sense, however) because I see the end drawing near…I see the possibility of achieving goals…now if all these pages to be read, research to be done, and papers to be written would just get out of my way to I can achieve goals and demonstrate this in subsequent actions! C’mon…they’re beginning to stress my self-regulation process!

Friday!!!

It is Friday before a 2 week break from classes.

I WILL NOT THINK ABOUT PAPERS, READING, OR TRANSLATIONS UNTIL NEXT WEEK!!!

If I just don’t wake up…

…then the semester will never begin. Isn’t that how it works?? Okay, okay. I know that’s not true, but it could be J

 

Well, we’re off to another semester! Here’s the lineup for this fall:

Tues/Thur – New Testament Intro & Hebrew 3

Wed/Fri – OT Prophets & Greek 5

Tuesday nights I am teaching a class on Angelology as part of my academic internship. I am VERY excited about this!

 

If you can believe it, today is the first day of class and I am already behind. Yiiipppeeeeeee! I have reading that should already be done and I have not finished it. Eh…that is how it goes. I’m not sure if 2 years behind me has bred comfortableness (is that a word??) with the workload and being behind, or if it is apathy…let’s go with comfortableness (I just like the word). I think it is actually true. I have finally recovered from 4 semesters of compounded syllabus shock and actually expect the workload to look overwhelming. Because you know what, it somehow gets done…and if some of it does not, no one dies (shhhh, don’t tell the other students…it’s a secret!)

 

So, I stole a few moments to consider that I am now a 3^rd year DTS student. Wow! These are the guys that I revered when I began studies here. And sure enough, it was overdone reverence…for the most part at least. Anyway, to my chagrin, I found that I fit my own paradigm for a 3^rd or 4^th year student. Let me share just a couple of characteristics that mark these students:

-         married

-         have a family; at least 1 young child

-         sports a goatee

-         the above probably because they are losing hair up top…yup, the noggin’s baldin’

 

*sigh*

Joining the Unemployed

Today is the day…Friday…the last day Mere has a job!!! (Note: notice I did NOT say this is the last day she will work)  Yesterday was the last day the kids were at school, and we transported all of her teacher stuff from the classroom to the attic (it’s a good thing I ate that 2nd PB&J yesterday! [~50 trips into attic(30(50lb boxes) + 10(10lb boxes) + ...well, a lot of sweat and grunting]). Today she is at the school for a “teacher work day.” They really should just call it a day that teachers are paid to pack up their rooms. When she leaves today at 2:30, she joins the ranks of the unemployed. Wooohoooo!! She has done a GREAT job making it through the end of the school year!

it comes to this…

the final week of class is finishing up…then finals week. my semester is reduced to 1 greek exegetical paper and 1 hebrew exam

wooohoooo!

“I tawt I taw a puddy tat”

No…no, it wasn’t a puddy tat. But I did catch it peaking around the corner at me. The semester, that is. I must say that I am excited about another semester! It is not a drag at all…however, I wouldn’t mind having the weekend without having to think much about it. Unfortunately, that just cannot be the case. My Hebrew prof sent out an email reminder that on the first day of class we will be having a “double quiz” over vocab and some verb paradigms. This is to “encourage” students to brush up on last semester’s Hebrew before class starts. The “double” part is so that you don’t want to blow it off…it counts too much. So, that is what I started yesterday. Today I felt that I should get rolling with some more semester prep, but I lacked the motivation. So I did stuff to appease my conscience but which was pretty useless: I sorted through the stack of graded papers and quizzes from last semester, shuffled some books around on the bookshelf, and shelved the books for this semester which have been arriving by mail. So I told my conscience that I have been productive towards school, yet didn’t really accomplish anything of significance. The problem with breaking out the books is that I really should get a jump on some of the reading…we will see what happens tomorrow…

On another note, I must agree with Jeremy…there seems to be a bad case of Blogger’s Block! Not sure why…new year, new things happening…I dunno. Ahh well, grab a cup o’ joe, get off your gluteus maximus, and poke a few keys!!!!! Hey, it doesn’t have to be an award winning essay…I mean look at what I just wrote!