SchneiderWeb

The last time I was a college student, Bill Clinton had just begun his first term in office, Grunge was all the rage (literally), and the Internet was a closely kept secret available only to a few select nerds (which makes me think of The Simpsons episode where Homer goes back to college: "Hey, get a load of the nerd. Nerrrrrrd!"). To my surprise, things haven't changed that much, even if the definition of a notebook has expanded a bit since I sat behind a one-sided desk. Seriously, I did harbor a small fear that my preference for those black composition notebooks with the saddle-stitch binding might date me, but I saw one of my preceptors, whom I would guess is a good 10 years younger than I, using one as well.

I had a passing familiarity with literary deconstruction as an undergrad, enough to understand that it paved the road to relativism. So I was not surprised that some of my conservative church friends expressed concern for me attending a "liberal" seminary like PTS, which would deconstruct the Bible just like any other text and thereby rob it of its spiritual essence. I must say, PTS is very serious about deconstruction. That's the view across the street from my apartment. The seminary is in the process of simultaneously demolishing and rebuilding the Charlotte Rachel Wilson (CRW) housing complex where we live. Our apartment should meet the same fate a year from now, which takes away some of the guilt of having scratched the floors the day we moved in.

Orientation lasted two full days last Thursday and Friday and was replete with seminars, lectures, affinity groups, small groups, lunches, dinners, chapel service, too many new names and faces to remember, and lots and lots of handouts to peruse. (Aside: until recently, I thought that "peruse" meant to read casually, when it in fact means the exact opposite.) I told my affinity group, which comprised second-career students, that since I had left work only the prior Friday, and since classes had not yet started, that I felt as though I were merely on vacation and not embarking on some crazy--albeit inspired--midlife U-turn. Conversely, knowing that come Monday morning I would not be taking an 8:30 bus into New York to get to my office, but rather an 8:30 class (Systematic Theology--ack!), I also felt a bit like the coyote in the Warner Brothers cartoons, who after chasing the road runner off a cliff, finds himself momentarily hovering in mid air before plummeting to the grou...