Myth #1: Seminary is Easy

If this is true, I want to know what seminary it is so I can see what's so different about it than what happens here at Yale.  My inclination is that it wasn't a priest who started this nasty rumor.  Having just survived my first midterms, I can vouch for the fact that not only is seminary challenging on a personal and spiritual level, but it is academically difficult too.  I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard in my life, and I worked pretty hard to get here. 

I have taken two midterm exams, one for Old Testament Interpretation [sample midterm question: "The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is mine; you are but strangers resident with me." Yeah, that was the question!], and one for Transitional Moments in Western Christian History [where I had to write an essay contrasting Augustine's and the Abitinian Martyr's conceptions of authority].  I also wrote twenty pages about Origen's views of freewill, his Christology, the trinity, the Holy Spirit, the soul, and apokatastasis (have you ever even heard this word before?!?!), which I eventually crafted into an eight-and-a-half page paper titled, "Origen, Freewill, and the Holy Spirit."  This paper was simultaneously the most exciting and most frustrating paper I have ever written.  On the one hand, I'm ready to sell the farm and dedicate myself to studying Origen, but on the other hand, I feel like I wrote circles around my thesis before finally arriving at it, which involved writing many pages of work that I couldn't even use in the end.  I hope that was just part of the learning curve of getting used to writing papers again, because I cannot continue to write that way in the future...I just don't have the time to write my papers three times over.

Nevertheless, I survived relatively unscathed.  Of course, I haven't received grades for any of my work yet, so I hope I'm not speaking out of turn by saying I think it went well.  In the end, I can definitely say that I did my best.  I truly worked as hard as I could, which I think is all God is really asking of me.  After all, God isn't waiting for me at the end of the term expecting to see my report card, but rather, God is walking alongside me while I struggle through these difficult tasks.  Tonight I read in Joshua 22:5, "Take good care to observe the commandment and instruction that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul."  In Micah 6:8 we are told, "What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."  Amazing!  What an amazing God we have, that all He requires of us is to walk in His ways no matter what we undertake. 

This is not to say that we have no part in our successes or failures, because God will always provide for us.  Certainly, I can't expect to ace my tests if I don't prepare for them by going to class and taking notes, studying all of my readings, and dedicating ample time to understanding the material.  But it's the attendance, the reading, and the dedication that God requires, not the 'A'.  Furthermore, as a wife and mother, in addition to a student, God doesn't require me only to study and write papers.  God has given me a family to care for and enjoy as well!  So, this past Saturday I spent 9 hours curled up on a couch in front of a cozy fireplace on campus reading, making review cards, and studying for the midterm I took on Monday; and on Sunday I took the whole day off.  We rented a car and drove up the coast to see the leaves changing color and to eat at a little clam shack in Mystic Seaport.  It was a wonderful, rejuvenating day, and I didn't study the whole time.  I put the work in for my class by attending all the lectures, keeping abreast of all the readings, and spending a good amount of time studying (not cramming), and it was time to put in some work elsewhere.  I think in the end I was all the better for it come test time, too!