Almost Done

I know that I have been remiss in posting and for that I apologize. It has been a very hectic few weeks here in Halifax. The music course that I was involved with over the last couple of weeks was more intense than I expected and so took up a lot of my time and when I did have some time away from class and homework, I slept. One of the struggles in the course was around the music theory part of the learning, but I did not come away without learning anything. I can now understand the timing designation found at the beginning of the hymn. I also now understand what the metrical index is in our hymnal and how it is to be used. Now when I hear we are singing these words to this piece of music, I know why. The course was good, but as I said it was challenging especially for those of us who did not read music. There were times throughout the course where a number of us were completely lost in the conversation and it tended to confuse us more than illuminate anything that might be useful in our contexts. That is not to say these conversations were not helpful to others, as we had a number of individuals in the class who were trained musicians and singers and so for them it would have been a worthwhile conversation.

We are not into our last classes of this summer session and there seems to be a consensus that whoever did the scheduling this summer needs to think about the way in which they plan that courses. It seems that all of the classes that have been scheduled in the last slot are all classes that are very intense and the workload for all of them is very large. Generally these are the courses that one would have taken either in the first or middle slot of the summer session, not at the end when everyone is tired, missing home, and some have already checked out. Be that as it may, we will all work as best we can to do what we can to learn as much as possible.

The last class I am taking is a class that has been designated as either a Christian Ethics class or a Systematic Theology class. We are studying the concept of Virtue Ethics so the 4 cardinal virtues of; prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, and the 3 theological virtues of; faith, hope and love. The instructor is amazing, I had him my first year here, but I will be honest my brain hurts after each lecture. There is so much information and he is so passionate about what he teaches and therefore has so much energy that it is sometimes difficult to keep up. That being said our entire mark for this course is going to be based on 1 10 to 12 page essay and that is it. This essay is due the last day of class. There are no other marks and so many in the class are feeling just a bit of pressure. It is daunting to realize that we have one chance to explain what we learned and how it might impact a specific decision or situation. So I know that the next week and a bit will be a lot of work, a lot of thinking, and a lot of reflection. I hope that you all will keep me in your prayers this next week and a half.

I will see you all soon, it still amazes me that I am almost done for another year. It will be 3 down and only 2 to go.

Peace,

Patrick