Initial Impressions

It has been a pretty busy 2 weeks since moving to Vancouver. I have enjoyed myself and am really looking forward to these two years. It was somewhat of a bittersweet start to the year because I had to leave our family vacation early to start classes. It was also a difficulty leaving Khristine in Seattle. Seattle is only 2 hours away but can feel like a lifetime when you can’t get down there. At least there are other means of communication, but it just isn’t the same. Luckilly she is strong which definitely helps me out!

Regent college is quite an interesting place. I always have a ahrd time describing it to people – “Is it a seminary?” and things like that are always asked. So here is what it is “an internation graduate school of Christian studies.” How is that? Regent is one fairly small building on the University of British Columbia campus (which has a population similar to that of UW, but a little more spread out it seems). Because it is one building, it is pretty busy a lot of the time and you see a lot of the same people around. It will be somewhat interesting to find a balance of community and schooling. As one of my professors pointed out the goal of the school is to educate you, not to make you part of a community. Although because it is a small building and has students there for a similar goal, community is inevitable. I think it is a great place to study because it helps the balance of community and education. If one can stay focused reading and studying can occur while also giving time to “hanging out” and talking to people about this and that.

I am also very happy that I ended up with a notebook computer. It is so much easier and faster to take notes right on the computer during class rather than attempting to read my chickenscratch later on. Of course this doesn’t work quite as well in Greek, but thats ok. I am also looking forward to the many books I will be reading and writing about this term. I will probably discuss them later.

I guess this would be a good opporntunity to discuss the differences between my previous education and my current education. Since my undergraduate work was in physics and astronomy, writing is not my strong suit. The writing that I have have done has been largely technical. One of my biggest worries about Regent (along with Greek and Hebrew) is the papers that I will have to write. This is a scholarly school on par with Oxford and the like. I am going to have to get into a new mode of study where I will be reading 6 or 8 books as well as text books and learning a new language. These will all have to be combined into written short assignments as well as “term papers” of a sort. Not only are they just term papers, but they are scholarly papers that will have to be written with a certan degree of expertise. Research is something I can do having done it with the scientific background, now I will have to apply that to theological research. I suppose if anything, this blog has helped a bit in just getting back into the flow of writting and not just about science stuff. I will have to see how my first paper goes!

Shalom

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is from a previous blog so the original comments no longer exist.

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