School, Yet Again

It is that time of the year again. School is starting. Actually, for most people, it already has. The day after Labor Day is the beginning of the year for most schools (or earlier). For St. Thomas, the first day of school is 2 days after Labor Day. Gives more time for orientation and whatnot. So tomorrow, I start my first day at my new school, as a student in the Masters of Arts in Theology program. I have a full schedule, plus one. A full courseload for graduate students is 3 classes; I am taking 4. Of course, the 4th one is not for credit, I'm just auditing it because I have a lot of interest in the topic. It is John Paul II and Humanae Vitae, and if you know me at all you know that during the past year at St. Kate's I did an honors project on Catholic Sexual Ethics. Humanae Vitae is the major encyclical on contraception, and therefore pertinent to what I did on my project. In fact, I used that encyclical widely in my paper as well as secondary work, particularly by on author, Janet Smith, who in fact is the guest professor at St. Thomas this year and the professor for this course. That is the second major reason I am taking this course-I am very excited to have a class taught by a well-known author/professor whose books I used for my project. It should be a very interesting and enjoyable class. Unfortunately, that class has 37 students in it, mostly, I'm guessing, seminarians.

That class will normally be held on Tuesdays, so unfortunately I will not have it until next week, nor will I have one of my other courses, Theology of God. I'm hoping that one shouldn't be too bad, it's average sized and I took a course on the Quest for God in Contemporary Experience at St. Kate's so hopefully not all of the information will be new! Plus, when I purchased my books I realized that some are on christology, so that is not completely new terroritory for me.

The classes that I will actually have this week are the Eucharist, which somehow only has 2 students in it. Hopefully that means I will learn a lot since there will be more individual attention. Of course, it also means I better be well prepared since there will be fewer people to contribute! My 4th and last class is Christianity in the Middle Ages. It sounds very interesting; however, I could only purchase one of the more than 10 books for the course at the bookstore. The others I had to search for online, and even then I still couldn't find a few, and some of the others were over $100. I will not be buying those but instead will hopefully be finding them on course reserve at St. Thomas. Many are out of print and the professor himself could only suggest where to find them. To me, that is ridiculous. How are we supposed to do the required assignments if the professor cannot even guarantee we can find the books? Hopefully by the time I need them, I will have found all of them or have access to them at St. Thomas.

That is my course schedule for the year! 4 courses, all at night, Mon.-Thurs. During the days I will be working 2 part-time jobs, one at Allina, the other at Holy Rosary. It is going to be a busy year and I will be working hard but I expect to learn a lot and hopefully not explode by the end of the semester!

"You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded."