Welcome to seminary...

In approximately two weeks, I will begin what has become one of the most enjoyable activities in my life. I will be serving as a teaching assistant in an intensive first-year Greek course at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana. In five weeks, students from the seminary and the undergraduate school will study a year's worth of Koine Greek. I took the course as a seminary student in 2008 and served as teaching assistant last summer after completing my second year of Greek, also in intensive study format.

Students often call this course "suicide Greek." I can certainly understand why. The class meets every day for four hours and generally covers one chapter every day, working through J. Gresham Machen's text, New Testament Greek for Beginners. The text is an old one and would not be my choice if I planned a Greek course from the start. It is, however, one of several textbooks which is available in braille; and this was advantageous to me as well as to another blind student who took our course last summer. This allowed me to learn a lot about teaching and about how different people learn--every person who is blind does not learn the way that I do.

Back to the concept of "suicide Greek..." Taking an intensive language course has its advantages and disadvantages. It allows a person to focus solely on learning the language, which can be useful if distraction is a problem. For some people, drawing learning out too slowly is as much of a problem as doing it too quickly. The intensive method forces them to stick with the process and build on what they have already learned, not allowing time for forgetting things. They move directly into second-year study, and by this time they have built a habit of reading in Greek to some degree and are more likely to pick it up several times throughout the week even when the class doesn't meet so often. Of course, not all students stay with Greek; but I didn't hear as much complaining from the group who went on to second year Greek as I thought I might in light of the things I had read from people on the B-Greek list.

For some students, the intensive Greek course is the first course they take upon starting seminary. I have heard some people say they are glad they did this. I began my seminary experience with a regular fall semester. For me, this was necessary. Since I am blind, my language studies required some special arrangements. I don't know whether intensive language study would have been daunting to me. Looking back on my early experiences, I suspect that starting with such an intensive study would have been unwise for me. I will discuss the reasons why in my next post and will also address the possibility of a middle ground in intensive language study...

To wind up this post, since it is the first post here, I want to address the purposes of this blog. It serves as a resource for seminary students, staff, and faculty alike. Using my own life experiences as background, I hope to accomplish three purposes:

1. to provide a starting point for reflection on the interaction of subjects in seminary education and spiritual formation;
2. to provoke discussion of factors that influence learning and spiritual formation of seminary students;
3. to encourage seminary faculty and staff to take steps to increase access to facilities and programs for people with special needs through recruitment, accommodations, and financial assistance.

I will link to resources I have found useful throughout my seminary journey, sites that may assist current students, etc. I welcome your comments and discussion threads. In fact, those are an integral part of this blog project. Please do not be silent. In sharing my experiences, I will inadvertently bring up things that will prompt you to ask questions that may make you wonder whether I will be offended. That is the nature of living with disability. Please take the risk of asking the questions. If the question is too personal, I will handle it with grace. That is the nature of relationships.

> Welcome to the journey that is seminary! It is a good journey to take!