I know, I know, it's been awhile.  Everyone wants to know how my semester's going.  I guess if I had to summarize it in one phrase, it would be "harder than expected."  This semester's very different from last semester...the social dynamics have changed a lot.  My group of friends has tended to fragment.  Some people are in relationships; others are hanging out with different groups of friends more.  Not that that's necessarily bad; it just means that some things are more complicated, some are a bit more awkward, and overall people are hanging out less this semester.  I dunno, I guess I'm not helping any--my school schedule has been a lot more demanding than I had expected, and has left me doing homework even during open hours.  Shocking, I know.  I'm only taking 18 credits this semester, which is one less than last semester, and had therefore anticipated that my workload would be about the same or less than last semester.  It only took me about a week to realize how wrong I was in that assumption. 

Hebrew is around the same amount of work as last semester, only more difficult.  It was after receiving a D+ on the second quiz that I realized that I was going to have to study a lot harder for it this semester than last semester.  I had my first exam on Monday, and I think that went pretty well, but we'll see how it turns out.

Greek 202 is focusing on exegesis of the Greek text of the New Testament.  The first couple of weeks involved some preliminary reading in the book of Colossians, along with a crash course in textual history and criticism...we were covering roughly 90 pages per class.  After that introduction, we focused on individual exegesis projects in Colossians (mine was from 2:6-9), involving lexical studies, sentence structure analysis, passage outlining, verse-by-verse commentary, and examining the applicable textual variants.  I had a bit of fun with that...I turned in my sentence form-function diagram done entirely in crayon on posterboard, mainly because I can, since it's Dr. Watt. The rest of the semester will be focused on individual exegesis research projects...I'll be working on I Corinthians 15: 42-49.  That'll culminate in a 20-30 page paper by the end of the semester.  Greek remains my favorite class, I think. 

I'm taking Humanities 203 this semester, in the honors section.  I can't say it's my favorite class, but it's not as bad as it could be.  For the honors section, there is no midterm or final, only weekly quizzes, a 2 page paper due each week, and then a research paper at the end of the semester, so it's fairly easy for me.  It's essentially an overview of Western history and culture.  The material is marginally interesting, but lecture tends to feel rather long.

I'm taking a ministry elective as well, Discipline of the Pastoral Call.  It's interesting, because it's not really set up like a traditional class at all.  It's pass/fail, 2 credits, with a discussion on Monday afternoon.  Dr. Frazier has us assigned daily Bible readings and journaling, and various books to read throughout the week on pastoral ministry in general.  Later in the semester we'll be traveling to a few churches to hear some different preachers, and we'll have some various other exercises as well.

The class with the biggest workload for me is probably Gospel of John.  Dr. Shidemantle opened the semester explaining that his philosophy was that "Pre-med students have to work all night on their material, and I don't think it should be any different for Pre-ministry students."  I usually have to spend at least 3 hours working on the exegesis due each class.  Throughout the semester he has scheduled presentations for students involving a research topic, a paper of at least 7 pages, and a 20 minute in-class presentation complete with powerpoint.  Guess who got to be the lucky one to get the first one of the semester?    Needless to say, that was a bit stressful, considering that I ended up with essentially a weekend to work on what others are working on two months in advance.  It became even more stressful when I couldn't find any information on half of my research topic.  I ended up throwing together what I thought was the best explanation I could with the information I had, pulling an all-nighter and finishing the paper about 2 minutes before class last Tuesday.  The presentation was Thursday, and by Wednesday night I was pretty much a wreck with trying to figure out how I was gonna pull everything together to present in class, knowing that Dr. Shidemantle and the two assigned respondents would be analyzing my paper and questioning me on it.  So I was really stressed out about that, but then a friend reminded me of my December 3 xanga entry, and that was really encouraging and helped a lot.  I managed to finish putting the presentation together just before class on Thursday, and it went really well.  I got Dr. Shidemantle's comments on the paper and presentation yesterday...apparently I managed to get something right, cause he apparently liked it. :-p  So thanks to those of you who were praying for me on that.  (I called Ethan on his birthday, and he informed me that he had been praying about it for me, and that "God knows what we need but he waits for us to ask him."  It was really cute. )  That's pretty much the biggest thing I'll have in that class until the term paper, so I'm glad to have it out of the way.

My philosophy class, Postmodernism, is really interesting.  I'm learning a lot in it, but it will be a lot of work as the semester goes on.  Dr. Meek explained that the problem with philosophy classes was that the beginners who were taking it as an elective were always struggling to keep up while the philosophy majors weren't being challenged enough.  So she created two syllabi--one for the novice track, and one for the advanced track.  I, of course, being a philosophy minor, was placed on the advanced track, which means that I serve as a group discussion leader and facilitate the group presentation in April--except I won't get a grade for that.  I'll get a grade for the fifteen page thesis paper I present in conjunction with the group presentation, and the annotated bibliography to go along with it.  This is in addition to the term paper.  So, needless to say, that will take up the majority of my time after Spring break.

The last class I have is the honors book discussion on calling, which just started up a couple weeks ago.  Dr. Opitz is a pretty cool guy, so the discussion is thought-provoking.  I have to admit, though, so far it's going on the back burner in terms of my class priorities.  There'll be a couple short papers and a presentation later on in the semester, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there as we kill those two birds with one stone after leaving the kitchen because we can't stand the heat, because a penny saved is worth two in the bush.  Or something like that. 

Anyways...the past few days have mainly been recuperating from last week.  The weekend was fairly relaxing.  Sunday especially was nice...after church and lunch, we came back here and hung out for a while, and ended up singing some praise songs with the piano and guitar before going to dinner and then evening church.  Like I said, I had my first Hebrew exam on Monday, but it was hard to get stressed about that after coming off of last week, lol.

Today I took part in the quartet DD organized to sing Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" to his girlfriend.  It was going to be a quintet, but we lost our Baritone at the last minute (haha...sounds like he died or something...), and as a result they switched me from Tenor II, which mainly followed the melody, to Baritone, which had a bunch of weird sharps and such in it.  I'm pretty sure that when we actually sang it, I was only hitting my notes about half the time, and the other half was going along with the tenor or bass.  I don't think it sounded horrible, though, so that's a plus.

I dunno, there's not too much else going on.  I applied for Discipleship Coordinator for next year.  It's a student leadership position...I'll mention more about it if I get selected. :-p

Also I'm going to the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh this weekend.  I get my way paid as a sophomore honors student.  Plus it's required.  So, yeah, that means I won't be able to come home to visit this weekend, for those of you who were asking.

Apparently I was also tagged in my absence to say 6 things about myself people won't know.  That's kinda difficult, because things some people won't know will be known by others.  I'll give it a shot, though.

1) I'll be TA-ing Greek starting in the Fall, since Dr. Watt accepted my offer to do so.  I offered mainly because I thought my schedule wasn't busy enough already.  Actually, I do think it'll be fun, and it'll give me a chance to brush up on some of the fine grammar rules and such.  A lot of people I know are considering taking Greek, so it could be very interesting.

2) My music tastes are very eclectic, especially since coming to college.  I'll listen to pretty much anything except rap and screamo.

3) Very few people have actually seen me really angry.  I have a very high tolerance level, and will avoid conflict whenever possible.  The angrier I get, the cooler, quieter, and tenser I get.  It doesn't happen often.  You've probably seen me frustrated, yes, annoyed, yes, but not truly and deeply angry.  One thing that does make me angry: people taking advantage of other people, especially those weaker than them.  Be forewarned.

4) Going along with that one, I guess you could say that I'm extremely cautious about committing to things, because I care deeply about the things I commit to.  My dad told me once, probably about ten years ago, never to start a fight that I wasn't willing to see through to the end...I've never forgotten that.   As I mentioned above, I don't get angry easily at all, but in the rare case that I do, I get really angry.  When I care about something, I really care about it.  In terms of friendship, I don't make friends easily.  I tend to keep people at arms length...I have a lot of acquaintances, but there are very few that I would put in the inner category of "friends."  The very few people that I do consider in the inner circle of my friends, however, I would do almost anything for.  I hurt when they hurt; just knowing they're struggling or having a rough time can throw off my entire day.  I don't trust people as friends easily, but when I do, I'm completely committed.  As far as relationships go, the same rule applies.  I refuse to start something I'm not going to finish.  I think that's part of why the superficiality of the dating game angers me so much.  I've never been able to understand how people can take relationships so casually.  Maybe that's just my personality.  I don't know.

5) I've never been in a serious fist-fight, or anything remotely similar.  See number four, sentence two above.  Sure, I've sparred with friends, but I avoid actual fights at all cost... there are very few circumstances in which I would enter a fight, and pretty much all of them would involve me being willing to kill if necessary.

6) Umm...I dunno, I'm running out of things to say.  I'd say I have a weird sense of humor, but I'm pretty sure you all know that.  So we're going to go with saying that I have a scar on my arm from falling off my bike when I was ten years old.  So there. 

Happy, everyone?  The post you requested.  I think it's long because I'm procrastinating on homework.  For those of you who skipped to the end because it was long, I'll summarize it for you: 1) Many things this semester are more difficult than I anticipated, both in and out of classes; 2) Don't make me angry.  That's about it in a nutshell.