Academic Life at Seminary

Academic Life at Seminary

I am sure that many of you have noticed that my blogs have not discussed the academic life at Virginia Theological Seminary. This is by design. The first few months for VTS first year students are a bit unique. The school is on a quarters system. Following the intensive August term of Hebrew, the first quarter consisted of Old Testament, Research and Writing, Foundations of Theology, Liturgical Leadership and Art of Learning.

Foundations was the study of how philosophers influenced the development of Christian theology over the centuries. The review begins with Plato and ends with Descartes. It was fascinating to see the impact of these philosophers—particularly Plato and Aristotle who lived so long before the birth of Christ.

Liturgical Leadership was a more practical course focused on how to move and speak during Episcopal worship. Who knew that I needed to learn how to read aloud and walk to and fro. I’m confident you are all reassured that I now can read the Gospel with panache and walk around reverently.

Art of Learning is something of an experiment at VTS. It is part extended orientation, part work on developing good study habits using the results of recent research and part study of how to write theological papers well.

You can see that the first quarter is not what most people envision seminary will be. The second quarter began the more traditional seminary course of study. New Testament and Research and Writing continue. Foundations, Liturgy and Art of Learning were replaced by Old Testament and Church History.

Frequently I am asked how seminary compares to law school. The differences are significant. The time commitment at VTS is at least as great as law school and, in fact, is as large as the practice of law. (Darla likes to tell folks that I am doing “a pretty good job of imitating a lawyer.”) The type of nature of the commitments, however, are quite different. Those of you who went to law school will recall that time was allocated almost exclusively to attending class and studying. There were few writing requirements and no quizzes. Most courses had only a single exam at the end of the semester.

Seminary puts many different demands on a students’ time. There are 12 to 15 hours of class each week. The amount of reading required by all of the classes is enormous with the exception of Research and Writing. In addition to the reading assignments, all courses require students to submit at least three papers that include significant research. Finally, every week there are multiple commitments unrelated to courses. By way of example, every student is assigned to a “chapel team” to plan services for designated seasons. (Remember, there are 15 services per week at the school.) My chapel team had the task of planning services for Advent. (We are in the second week of Advent now.) We met during each of the four weeks leading up to Advent and spent time between the meetings drafting prayers and choosing between liturgical options for each service. I will not burden you with additional examples, but the point is that virtually every day study and writing time is interrupted with committee and worship requirements.

If it sounds like seminary is stressful, it is. But, here’s the good news……it is incredibly fun! This is the ultimate difference between law school and seminary. The classes, study, papers and other commitments are all energizing. The professors are brilliant, inspiring and concerned about their students. The reading is fascinating. With every course and task, it is easy to see how the experience will be useful as a parish priest. (On the other hand, knowing I wanted to be a trial lawyer, how excited do you think I was during my tax courses?)

The bottom line is this:  I am having a great experience.

         Darla and I miss you all and we pray that each of you will have a Blessed Holiday Season.  May the Peace of God be with you.

Randy

The Rhythm of Virginia Theological Seminary

The flow of studies at VTS is much different than what I experienced in college or law school.  (Admittedly, that was 1974-1981, so things may have changed significantly in that time.)  During the normal seminary calendar, instead of the Mon-Wed-Fri and Tues-Thurs schedule, classes meet once a week.  Some courses also have one hour “section meetings” during the week.  But that is not the “flow” that has my attention.  Rather, what is quite new, and very uplifting, is the flow of community life that revolves around worship and prayer. 

Every class begins with a prayer led by the professor. While that may seem like a “duh” thing since this is a seminary, it really is a new and wonderful experience.  Think about it for a moment—we’ve all been to Sunday School or similar situations and opened with prayer, but that never happens in an academic setting.  Seminary is nothing like Sunday School.  Every class is in a college-like classroom and the students are all busy taking notes in preparation for an upcoming quiz or exam.  So the scene is familiar, the prayer is a new and welcomed variation.

Most important to the flow of life at VTS is how intertwined worship is on a daily basis.  Every student is required to attend at least one worship service per day Monday through Friday.  (It is an honor system, no one signs in and no one is taking roll.)  There are a number of opportunities each day.  Morning Prayer takes place at 8:15 each day except Thursday.  Each Thursday, the day begins with a Formation Group meeting where I meet with the same group of six classmates and a professor at the professor’s home.  The Formation group opens with a prayer service led by one of the students on a rotating basis.  On Wednesday at noon, there is a full Eucharist (the Episcopal equivalent of the Sunday service) with a full choir, a sermon, etc.  It is the centerpiece of worship at VTS and almost everyone makes it to that service.  Every other day of the week there is a shorter worship service at noon and a prayer service at 5:15.

While I always attend the Wednesday Eucharist and occasionally attend other noon services and evening prayer, my personal worship discipline is to attend the morning prayer service (and Formation Group) every day.  So far, I have been able to be faithful to that commitment and it has proven to be a great blessing.  It may surprise some, but I have found that beginning each day in corporate prayer is more spiritually uplifting than sitting down at a desk to check the email that arrived overnight.

The Morning Prayer sets a tone that helps keep me mindful throughout the day about why I am at this seminary.  It reminds me that while I want to do well scholastically and while there are stressors to be faced, the ability to study the Word of God and Christian Theology is a privilege and blessing. 

I hope and pray that each of you are well and wish you God’s Peace.

Randy

Hebrew (Part II)

Hebrew (Part II)

When we left off, my study group and I were congratulating ourselves over our ability to pronounce lengthy groups of Hebrew words, but with the recognition that we had absolutely no idea what the sentences meant or—in fact—whether the sentences made any sense at all.

The following day we were introduced to vocabulary.  For the next two weeks each day was spent creating flash cards for new vocabulary, ranging from 15 to 25 words per day.

Right now you are thinking:  What?!  Flash cards?!!  Isn’t that what my son/daughter used to make in the third grade?  The answer is “yes!”  Over the course of those two weeks, I made flash cards; reviewed them; shuffled them; reviewed them again…… 

While my practice of law required that I remember events, names, dates medical jargon, deposition testimony, etc., it was not required that I keep any of that information in my head past the trial.  Also, there was no prohibition against looking back at my notes during a deposition, during a trial or at any other time during the pendency of a case.  You can imagine my chagrin when I learned the Hebrew professor frowned upon the practice of reviewing notes and lists of translated words while taking the exam.  As a consequence, I was forced to actually memorize words. 

Then, I learned that the Hebrews had the audacity to attach stuff to the front or back of words that make them plural, past tense, past present perfect, feminine, etc.  (I learned that these things are called “prefixes” and “suffixes.”)  “But wait, there’s more”—I found out that the Hebrews, not content with these changes in number and gender and tense, decided they didn’t want to use separate words for prepositions such as:  “to”, “from”, “with” and so on.  Nope, they decided:  “Hey, let’s not waste the space on our tablet (or papyrus, or whatever they were using to chisel or write upon), let’s just add a couple more of these squiggly things on the front of these other squiggly things.”

All of that seemed okay, but then some other Hebrew decided:  “Wow, we can save even more room if we just drop off some of these squiggly things when we add those other squiggles.  But, to make it really fun, let’s just do it randomly!”  Obviously the response was:  “Great idea, but if we want to make it wicked cool fun, we just add some squiggly stuff here and there as well!”

And that’s what they did.

I asked my Hebrew professor “why” those fun-loving Hebrews came up with this game and his response was:  “To confound the wicked!”  While the answer was not exactly satisfying, what really stuck with me was the look he gave me when the word “wicked” came out of his mouth. 

All of this memorization and pondering about why those Hebrews had it in for some guy from Alabama took place as my first exam in over 35 years was approaching.  There was some concern on my part about whether my resurrected study skills would work after the moth balls had been removed.

Exam day came last Monday, August 29 and, yes, I did have some unpleasant dream about the exam in the nights leading up to it.  I am happy to report that the results are in and I passed—no doubt to displeasure of those Hebrews who never wanted their language spoken with an Alabama accent.

The rest of the week was taken up with Multi-Cultural training.  (It was much more interesting than anticipated and may be the subject of a later post.)  Next week we start the regular academic schedule and while I will still be taking Hebrew, it will be much less intense.  Better still, my other courses look favorably upon reading and writing in English.