Only Five More Months

I'm back in Princeton after another trip home. Every time it gets harder to come back to school after being at home. And especially after this break, it has been even harder. I think most of the readers of my blog know this already, but just in case you hadn't heard, I am no longer single. My girlfriend is Cathy Hansen. We've been dating for almost four weeks now. We met about five years ago, and have been good friends for about four years. After being in denial about it for a long time, I finally admitted that I had feelings for her. And there you have it. :-) So it probably shouldn't take too much to guess why going back to school was little harder this time around.

Alas, I am back at school, ready to get started on my work so I can finish it quickly. I only have five months left until I am done with school, graduated, and on to the next great adventure of my life. What that adventure will be is up in the air once again. I have decided to put my Ph.D. aspirations on hold for the near future. The more I have thought about it, the more I feel getting "life experience" under my belt would be more useful for me at this point. That's not to say that school isn't a life experience in itself, but I want my learning to stop being theoretical for the time being. There were some other considerations in there as well, but that was a major influence on my decision.

So I am going to try to power through this semester and make the most of my last semester here at Princeton. It has been a struggle to fully appreciate my time here, but, as Simone Weil put it, the importance of education is not necessarily what you learn, but simply the fact that you challenged yourself to go beyond what you thought possible. And sometimes it has felt like pushing against a brick wall, but even if I moved that wall an inch, I'll consider these three years a success. I am slowly beginning to see the progress I've made even though I feel like I've hardly gone anywhere. I imagine that as I continue to process these last three years, I'll see that I've come a lot farther than I thought.

For those who are curious what I'm taking this year, here is my class schedule:

Exegesis of Ephesians - Shane Berg
Israel's Wisdom Literature - Choon-Leong Seow
Film, Faith, and Spiritual Formation in Young Adults - Kenda Dean
Word and Act: Service in the Lord's Day - Nancy Lamers-Gross

I'm still working on my Lesslie Newbigin research paper.

Now, it's late, I'm jet-lagged and I should sleep. So until next time...