I Got This

Maybe I'm too practical. I had my first class today and I forgot that it has a lot to do with philosophy...which I used to think I was interested in. It was definitely a little deeper than your average "if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it" question.

When I first got to SES (Southern Evangelical Seminary), I had to stop by the business office to pay for the class. This is the only one that's due up front since it's only a week long. $765 gone just like that. Ouch.

Then I made my way to a small classroom upstairs. I was the only girl until another one came in, followed by two female staff members that are also taking the class. A few people looked close to my age, but within five minutes three people sitting near me found out it was my first class and made comments about diving right into the deep end. Whoops.

When I got the syllabus, the only thing that stuck out to me was "20-25." The number of pages that one of my research papers has to be. There's another 4-5 page paper due, but that's not a big deal. I think the longest paper I've written to date was 15 pages or so, and I'm pretty sure that included a reference page. But what's five more pages, right?

The class itself was pretty interesting, but I think it should be against the law to make a brain think that much after dinner time. We talked about Aristotle and Plato so that we could form a foundation for talking about Aquinas, who, I found out, was a genius at a very early age, wrote a ton of books in a four-year span because the pope told him to and was overweight...which I didn't picture in my head. So basically it was evident that God was on his side or he never could have done half the things he did in such a short time. One guy in the class said he probably wouldn't have gotten any of it done if he had been married. Then another one asked how he was overweight because he chose to live in poverty and walked everywhere. Those are my kind of questions.

Then we talked about things like: "Can reason unite being with change and multiplicity?" "Either being or non-being is the reason for change, or being or non-being is the reason for many." On the other hand, maybe "non-being is an impossible principle of change or difference."

By the end of it, my vision was getting blurry and I hated the word "being." I just sat there and tried really hard to figure out how this is going to relate later on.

One exciting thing is that I actually heard terms that I learned in my rhetorical theory class a couple of years ago, which shocked me. I didn't think I'd ever use that class for anything. I also met Nora, the Dean of Women and she seems really nice. She said one of the professors is planning a trip to Israel this summer. I want to go!

Although the question "What was I thinking?" crossed my mind more than once during the class, in the end, I know this class will be helpful. When the professor was talking about everything Aquinas did, thought and wrote, I got excited and I'm anxious to see where it goes. I just hope I don't feel like I'm way behind everyone else. One guy who sat in front of me said it's been a long time since he's read Aristotle and the guy next to him said he's in the process of reading Plato again. I don't even have time to read my travel magazines.

But the 4 1/2 hours went by pretty fast, so that's always a plus.