Weekly post

January 14, 2008

Dear friends,

A new semester begins, and amazingly, my last at Wake Forest University Divinity School. Graduation is on Monday, May 19 -- mark your calendars! I'm also counting heads for lunch at the Village Tavern in Winston-Salem afterward.

On Saturday, I got my books and have been enjoying dipping into them. Six or seven for Readings in Liturgical Theology, and another four or five for the one-weekend Pastoral Preaching course. Gardner Taylor is simply too old and unwell to manage the travel and energy required to teach it, so an African American pastor from Charlotte will be in charge. I was very pleased to see the books already ordered and available in the bookstore, even though the course won't be until late February. (A Friday afternoon and evening and all day Saturday. Great fun.)

The holiday shipping at the bakery went well, and the owner reports no post-holiday complaints about mixed or missed shipments! Yay. Another yay: three days a week, the kitchen staff is present doing the baking, but on Mondays and Fridays they're not there. The owner has asked if I can be in the shop on Mondays and Fridays to handle the occasional walk-in customer and occasional phone order -- for most of the time, I'll be free to work on my senior project! It's akin to one of those work-study jobs where you person the check-in desk at a dorm... Very little work but a steady, if small, salary.

Speaking of my senior project, I have collected 78 of the 90 quotes I need and plan to finish the quote gathering by the end of this coming week. That will leave me open to write just two pages a day to finish on time. I've discovered that I can easily do two pages a day and sometimes up to four, so I'm on a good schedule to have all the writing done by the end of February -- six weeks ahead of deadline.

The folks at Southern have received my request for scholarship funds and I will be filling out the federal student loan papers in early February. They've also told me what I'll need to take and it looks very manageable, although I'll need to be sure to carry at least 12 hours to be eligible for financial aid. Certain courses are offered only in certain semesters, so I doubt I could compress everything into one.

"Beth,
Your MDiv was quite well balanced, so I don't think that we need tomake up for any gaps," the dean wrote. He said I would need the following: Fall Term: Parish Administration, Lutheranism in North America. Spring Term: Lutheran Confessions, Senior Worship Practicum (only a 1hour course). Will need to also take: 1 preaching course, 1 biblical course, and 1 theology course.

Some of the biblical courses require Greek or Hebrew as a prerequisite, but not all of them, and although Greek had me more than the other way around, I did pass the thing. I'll know more about my schedule in March.

Well!
Grace and peace,
Beth