Getting it done

OK, I have one final down and 2 papers to go. I hope to hit it hard and be done by tomorrow (maybe?). Then I've got stuff for my internship to do, and stuff for the prof for whom I TA, and I'm trying to write an essay to submit to a book proposal (that's a bit of a stretch, but who knows?). Actually, I would like to pull something from the blog. Does anybody remember anything great I've written? :)

The first final went OK, but I make one huge embarassing mistake, confusing two major issues from the period (trinitarian vs. dual-nature of Christ). But I wrote a really lovely essay on the wrong thing, which showed boy did I know that topic. So I think I'll be fine. Obviously if you go from the wrong starting point, there's only so much that can affect things. I mean, I guess some profs would just throw the whole thing out, but I know this prof is generous and besides, he should be awfully impressed with my encyclopedic knowledge of the wrong thing! ha ha ha

I was quite happy with how I did with quote identification, which is always just a nasty thing to throw at people. I hadn't even studied several of them but I think I figured them out. I didn't do as well on identifying terms (that's where I made my big boo boo), mostly because somehow he managed not to pick the ones I studied. Isn't that always the way.

But the best part was the final essay. The question I chose was so great! It asked the question: Is the baptism by the hands of a schismatic bishop valid, from the point of view of both Augustine and Cyprian, and then asked us to consider how their opinion revealed their vision of church and ministry. But THEN he asked us to relate it to the contemporary question of ordination and ministry of gay and lesbian priests! Which is exactly what I had already done on this very blog!! So I was super excited because I'd already thought it through, made the connection, and could almost even give quotations from memory (I decided that might be a bit obnoxious, though). It's such a great way to help people see how very important this quarter was, even for our ministries today. As the prof mentioned, he sends people out of his classes knowing they won't retain much of it, but hopefully at some point in their ministry they'll recognize something that has been dealt with before, and they'll have a better idea how to deal with it.

And really, what could be better than that?