Jen’s Journal

Tomorrow (or I guess later today since it\’s after midnight) is the big day! Fr. Rick gets installed as the 7th President of AI!

There will an academic convocation along with morning prayer at 10am at St. Pius, followed by lunch at AI. And then there will be the installation Mass at 7pm at St. Pius, followed by refreshments at AI. I have to work at the events at AI, but I think it will be a really great celebration. I am happy for Fr. Rick and wish him all the best as president! He’s a good man.

Sometimes in life, we have to make difficult decisions. And that’s just what I had to do in the last week or so. After a crazy week of school where I had something due in every single class, I realized about a week ago that I just couldn’t keep up with this semester and maintain my sanity at the same time. There was just too much to do (with class and work and life) and not enough time to do it. The most obvious solution to this dilemma would be to drop a class. But dropping a class would bring with it some consequences that I wasn’t sure I was ready to accept. Most importantly, dropping a class and limiting myself to 12-13 credits a semester instead of 14+ would mean that I definitely could not finish my degree in only 3 years like I had planned. It may not seem like a big deal to take some extra time to finish a degree - I mean, people take 5 years for college all the time these days, right? - but the fact that the school technically considers their M.Div. program to be a 3 year thing really cut into my pride. What would it say about me and my academic abilities if I had to take “extra” time to finish my degree?  Was I just not good enough?

Fortunately, God allowed good sense to win out over my pride. I figured, what good would it be for me to drive myself crazy racing through this program just to get a piece of paper when I could take a little extra time, save my sanity, and really enjoy and get something out of my classes? I’m not in this program just because I need some letters behind my name in order to get a job. I’m in this program to learn and to be formed as a minister in the Church. That takes time. And it requires all of me, not a stressed out, overwhelmed shadow of me.

So, I made the difficult decision and dropped one of my classes. It was still difficult to actually go through with it, especially since I really like the professor and the topic is one that I would still like to study at some point. But, I know that I made a good decision. It was such a relief to know that my life would be more manageable. And it felt great to have all of that pressure of getting this done in 3 years off of me. I definitely feel at peace and am glad that God made it clear to me what path I should follow.

Well, it’s February already and the spring semester at AI is in full-swing! The profs aren’t wasting time in assigning the papers and projects for the semester, but hopefully that will mean less stress at the end of the semester.

Right now, my life is pretty much filled up with reading and writing and researching and then reading and writing some more! Fortunately, most of the stuff that I have to read is really interesting. For example, I just learned this evening that the Feast of Epiphany really celebrates not just the visit of the Magi, but the baptism of Jesus and the wedding at Cana too. Apparently, in the old days Epiphany was celebrated as an octave just like Christmas and Easter, and the baptism of the Lord would signify the end of the octave.

Nowadays, the shifting of the baptism celebration to make it fall on a Sunday has kind of messed up the whole octave idea (although, if you look at the USCCB website, they still refer to the weekdays after the Epiphany as “the Monday after Epiphany” and so forth). But, this year, both feasts were able to fall on a Sunday so there was a full octave. Also, they apparently focus on the baptism of Jesus in the Epiphany in the Eastern Church.

Returning to the matter at hand, however, all kinds of interesting and enlightening information is being brought up in my classes this semester, which is really cool. Several classes are also overlapping well in terms of subject matter, which always makes me excited!

Well, I better get back to homework for now. Wisdom Literature is calling. Catch ya next time!

This is my first post as a blogger for Aquinas Institute of Theology! Check out the Profile and About pages to find out a little more about who I am and what this blog is all about.