Class, Class, Class!

Class, class, class! That feels like all I'm doing from Monday - Thursday. And in a sense, it's true. I am taking five classes and two Growth In Faith activities. Growth in Faith are not classes, per se. They are more like workshops or book clubs or community-building activities. We have to do five of them throughout our seminary career. Just going to my required classes and events takes almost 20 hours of my week (4 of those are GIF). Then, the 'rule of thumb' is that we spend 1-2 hours outside of class for each one hour we spend in class. Sometimes it's more than that, sometimes it is less.

Greek: Coming into seminary, I was afraid of Greek. I mean - come on! It's Greek. Who wouldn't be scared of 'αβγδἕ'? I am pleased to say that I got an 87% on my first assignment. Hopefully that trend will continue.

Pentateuch & Wisdom Literature: We're learning about the first five books of the Bible, Job, Ecclesiastes and part of Proverbs.

Intro to Pastoral Care: Pretty self-explanatory what we're going to learn there.

Church History I: This class will cover the history of the Christian Church through the Reformation.

Christian Social Thought: This is the 'extra' class I am taking. Most people take four classes, I'm taking five. Which...there is a reason and a logic to my madness! We who are in the M.Div ELCA ordained track have to do a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Most people do their CPE full-time during the summer after their first year. Chicago has a great program here called the Urban CPE Consortium. 14 agencies participate and we can do CPE through it. There's a variety of agencies, ranging from church social ministries to retirement homes to ministries dealing with the homeless, poor, or those living with HIV/AIDS and their loved ones. I want to do my CPE through this Consortium, but I do not want to stay in Chicago over the summer. I want to be home during the summer. So there is an option to do CPE during the January term and Spring semester. I'm going to try for that. However, if you do that, you cannot take a full load of classes. Thus, the extra one now to make up for the one I can't take next semester. See....it's logical!! I am also taking all of my classes Pass/Fail instead of a letter grade. That will help reduce the stress!

Some of my classes are graded on a Pass/Fail anyway. One of those is Intro to Pastoral Care. She is grading it on a P/F basis in the hopes that in doing so, we will be more open to 'risks' and sharing with her and our classmates. Today was one of those 'sharing' days. We had to draw pictures of our call story and then get in pairs and tell our story. The exercise was in how it felt to really listen (we were not allowed to ask questions) and how it felt to be the only one speaking. Even though 1) I can't draw and 2) I'm still not entirely comfortable talking about my call story to people outside of the 'need to know' circle (I'm still nervous about reactions), I rather enjoyed the exercise.

By the way...the Greek 'word' isn't a word at all...just the first letters of the Greek alphabet.