A New Semester, The Beginning of the End

It's officially the beginning of the end, at least for this part of my school career anyway. I have 15 more credits to work through before I finish out my M.Div. and fly back to CA to begin my post-Masters life. It's not as scary as I was anticipating, though there is still that fear of uncertainty, walking into the unknown. Thankfully I have three more months before I really have to take that leap of faith, and hopefully things will work out so I will have a clear idea of where I'm headed and what my job will look like.

As is my custom (unintentionally), my last semester ended up being one of my most intense. I'm not really sure why it ends up that way. I'm taking seven classes, though three of them are only one unit, leaving four that are full 3-credit classes. Two of them are language translation classes, one in Greek and the other in Hebrew. I am taking a couple of the classes pass-fail, which will make the work load a little more bearable so that I can experiment and try some new things I wouldn't necessarily do otherwise. So I'm in for a bit of a crazy semester, but I'm excited about all of my classes. There aren't any of them that I'm particularly dreading or nervous about. It should work out to be a pretty great semester to end out my time at Princeton.

Michael Bruner told me when I left for Princeton in 2007 that my time would go by quickly and that I would walk away from Princeton wishing there was more that I had taken advantage of. When I met with him again over Christmas break, we both sat in wonder and shock at how quickly that time had gone by. It has been an intense, trying, surprising, uplifting, and encouraging three years. So many things about Princeton fell short of my expectations yet so many met them and even exceeded them. It has been very easy to knock on Princeton during my time here (often for different reasons than others might expect) but when it is all said and done, I have come away from this place with a pretty stellar education. I can't say that lightly or flippantly either. There were many points when I wished I had gone to Fuller instead, that I should transfer, even just putting my M.Div on the shelf and pursuing something else. But the perseverance and struggling and wrestling has paid off in ways that I can't really describe. I hope when I have had time to debrief from my time here that I will be able to put my experience into words more clearly. I'm not sure I would want to go through this particular experience again, but I'm grateful that I went through it and came out standing on the other side.

Of course, this talk is all premature. I still have three tough months ahead of me, probably the three toughest months of my entire educational career. I still have a research paper to finish, two books to translate and exegete, 11 films to watch and critique theologically, an entire genre of Biblical literature (Israelite wisdom) that I have to try to comprehend, and a workshop on worship leading to complete. And in case you want to know what classes those correspond to, here is my class schedule for this semester:

Greek Exegesis of Ephesians
Hebrew Exegesis of Samuel
Israel's Wisdom Literature
Faith, Film, and Spiritual Formation in Young Adults
Word and Act: Service in the Lord's Day
Field Education: Teaching Ministry

I am also attending a forum on youth ministry in April (through Princeton's Institute for Youth Ministry), and while that's a class, it's not until April and after I have completed the work for my other classes.

So there is plenty to do and much left to learn (that process never ends) but I'm excited to begin thinking about life after seminary, and all that that entails.

More to come in the coming weeks...