Okay, so now I’ve had two weeks of classes.  I should know exactly what I’m doing, right?  Wrong.  Classes are going well, but it seems that there is something new around every corner and more work than I could have known!  It is hard to imagine keeping up this pace for the next three years.  Grad school is going to keep me moving!

Garrett-Evangelical is an amazing place to be, and I’m glad that I chose to live in the dorms.  I am only a minute from class and the meals are actually pretty good.  I can’t wait until the dining halls switch to a full schedule, though, once all of the Northwestern students get here.  Everyone tells me that the food selection is much better once the other dining halls open up!

The reading is intense.  Each day I’m going to try and journal about some of the things I am reading and learning, so stay tuned!  The biggest reading loads are in my Old Testament class with Mr. Lester and in United Methodist Worship with Dr. Anderson.  It has been a struggle to finish all of the reading each week.  The struggle is not with the amount of reading – it is with the type of reading.  It is hard for me to be motivated to read 80 pages of form criticism on the Old Testament, for example.  Do you blame me?

A surprising thing about seminary is the community.  I envisioned a community not unlike my undergrad dorm where everyone has classes at different times during the day and then hangout down in the lounge in the evening.  Not so, in seminary.  Everyone is in different situations.  Some people commute to campus, some live in the apartments, some live in dorms.  Among all of those people, some work full-time in another city or somewhere else in Chicago, some have a student appointment, some are phD students who are full-time clergy…   The list goes on-and-on!  With such big course loads, we find ourselves along Lake Michigan, in the Library, in the lounge or in our rooms READING, WRITING, and STUDYING in our “free time”.  It is much different than I imagined it, I guess…

That said, I have had a great time getting to know people.  Last Friday a group of us went down to Nevin’s to celebrate a friend’s birthday and each Thursday night we go to IHOP after class at 9:30p.  One of the guys from my dorm and I have started a spinning class at 6:00a on Tuesday and Thursdays (stationary bikes).  It has been refreshing to wake up and get my days started with exercise!  In October the Northwestern WTF Tae Kwon Do club will start up and I’m planning to join.  In fact, I’m planning to go down to the rec and exercise when I finish this blog entry.