Get in Groups of 4 and Define Grad School (for Nora)

It has been a long time, and once again it is procrastination, pure and simple, that brings me back here (also Nora. I am here for your entertainment. I want you to know that). I know, a month of grad school and already procrastinating? It's going to be a long year. But at least it's only a year (that's kind of why I chose this program).

Grad school started out just like any other camp/education experience: introductions! Who are you? Where are you from? Why did you decide to join this program? I was mildly interested in my fellow classmates' stories while also being concerned that at any moment I would be required to supply an adjective describing me that begins with the same letter as my name. And it is hard to decide how much information I feel comfortable sharing with people I have met in the last 5 minutes. Fortunately, being a graduate student is sufficiently grown up to not involve 'getting to know you games' like "I have never" or the one where you have to guess the name of the famous person stuck on your back. They did disguise one cheesy jump rope game as a "team-building exercise." Which leads me to another observation of Christian higher education. Community. Everyone wants to live "in community." Everyone wants to be "in community." We have discussed "community" in every class. Many of my fellow students live in "community." My community is me in a basement apartment with my spiders-the ones I have not drowned in dish soap yet...the faucet wouldn't spray water in the right direction...

But, for the most part, I do enjoy my classes. The first couple of weeks were slow as every professor was too lazy to memorize our bios and photos that we were required to send in before orientation (I barely got mine in before the due date...procrastination again!). And so every professor made us introduce ourselves again and tell "interesting" facts about ourselves. Unfortunately, most of my interesting facts are not appropriate to share with the class. During orientation, I did enjoy getting to know my cohort (my classmates and I are referred to as a "cohort." Apparently this is normal, but Benji brings up a good question: if there is just one of us is he/she a "hort"?), but after several introductions, I am not only bored with my own life which I already lived, but also with their lives which I might as well have lived too.

Besides endless introductions, professors must have their own community where they compare lesson plans and everyone agreed to have the class split up into groups and define a very vague concept. For example, in Leadership and Empowerment, we defined "leadership." In Economic Development, we defined "development." In Community Development, "community." And so on and so forth... And in this day and age, post-modernism has infused even the Christian academic world and no one has the wrong definition of these terms or maybe we're just all brilliant students...Yeah, that's it...

So now I am immersed in a deluge of reading and writing assignments while trying to keep up with my pregnant sisters and their various and sundry ailments and elations. It's a good life. For now. I'll probably change my mind around the end of November when I'm trying to finish 5 papers and 10 projects...