patrick: in class
Among other things, I am a seminary student.
I’m a lover of knowledge. I like to study, I like test-taking, and I love to read. I got that from my mother. She’s a lifelong learner. In fact, we graduated from college within 2 years of each other.
You should see my library at my house. (yeah, I stopped calling it my office when I realized that my books take up 85% of the room.) I have 5 or 6 bookcases full of books. But that isn’t enough. Some shelves are stacked two books deep. I have a few shelves worth of books stacked on top of them as well. My basement has a few boxes full of books that I don’t need as easily accessible.
I’m 2 years into my 3 year M.A. program at Grace Theological Seminary. I’m working on an M.A. in Local Church Ministry. I’ll be graduating in May of 2009, which then qualifies me for…hmm…I’m not quite sure. But I will have learned a lot, I guess. I know I’ve learned a TON already, and I am eagerly anticipating the 5 classes I have left to take.
I’m not sure if I’m going to be going into full-time local church ministry at any point in my life. I am definitely open to the idea, but there are a lot of other things I’m interested in doing with my life that might work out first. My passion is equipping people for ministry and mentoring young adults. I could see that working out in a local church ministry, but I think it might actually fit better for me to work in student development in a Christian college or university.
Right now, what I’d just love to do is work as a college chaplain or resident director or student activities coordinator or something. Any job in which my primary responsibilities include encouraging college students to recklessly pursue loving Christ and loving others will be ok with me.
(pointless aside: i just realized that i forgot my allergy medicine at home, and my face and throat are closing up and swelling…my eyeballs are starting to ache…guh!)
So here I am sitting in a class called “Counseling in the Local Church.” I’m having a bit of a hard time paying attention 100%. The material is interesting. The professor, Dr. Ken Bickel, is a man I respect, admire, and look up to. My classmates are interesting. The setting is comfortable. But I’m having a hard time staying in the moment.
I’ve never been diagnosed officially, but all signs point to me having adult ADD. It doesn’t bother me that I probably have a disorder of this type. I’m really ok with having some disorders that make me quirky. There’s a bad side of being ADD, but the good sides are also wildly fun. 
What I’m enjoying about being in Seminary the most is that I am taking active steps to pursue my ideal future. I know a little bit about what I want to do with my life, and I am doing what I need to do to be thoroughly equipped for it.
Do any of you readers know what it feels like to see a future that you fall in love with? Are any of you honestly chasing after your dream? Or do you feel stuck doing something that’s just…meh? (M-E-H…meh…simpsons joke for those of you who don’t understand “meh”)
What is it that charges you? What kinds of days do you go to sleep thinking “man, today was freaking sweet. I can’t wait for another day like that!”? You were created to do…something…I don’t know what it is, but perhaps you do. What were you created to do? What are you doing to pursue it?
Are you unhappy? Start dreaming, and start chasing your dream.
patrick: copying Jason
I grew up with brothers. A lot of brothers. A whole boatload of’em.
Ok not that many, but I was the 2nd of 5 boys, which is a lot compared to the average family.
My older brother is Jason. He’s 14 months older than me. A year, a month, and 28 days, to be precise (oh and believe me, I was very precise in counting this out when I was a kid!) For one reason or another, my mom bumped me forward a grade when I was very young, so Jason and I got to be in the same class in school growing up. That made me the youngest in my class, which became an insecurity (feeling too young) that I’ve carried around ever since.
I looked up to Jason when we were kids. Not now, of course, because I’m an inch (and a half!) taller. But seriously, I watched Jason a lot when we were kids and learned to emulate him in my own ways to cope with feeling a bit out of league around the other kids. Jason is much more a born leader than I was. I was more of a quiet kid, albeit rather angry at times. So I didn’t exactly copy him in everything. It was more that I looked to him for clues about what’s appropriate behavior and what is not.
This got me in trouble more often than it helped…
Jason and I were a little rebellious when we were very young. I remember being in the 2nd grade and never wanting to go to bed. My parents at the time had a pretty large house in suburban Virginia, and Jason and I had our own rooms. When my parents put us to bed, we would sneak out of our rooms and hang out well past our bedtimes. Jason, realizing how impressionable I was, would send me downstairs to try and score us from tasty treats. I would often get caught and punished. Finally, my parents realized what was going on and I ratted on Jason and he got the whooping instead of me.
Good times.
Check out Jason’s blog entry about jalapeños if you want a good laugh. Then come back, cause I have a story like his, but mine is better (by which I mean hotter/more painful/worse spot).
I work at a group home for teenage boys. With a dozen or so 15 year-olds cooped up in a house all day, they get pretty bored and are usually looking for something exciting to break the monotony. One time my buddy and I brought in a bag of Habanero peppers. Habaneros are the hottest pepper on earth. Every time I say that to someone, they try to argue with me about some other pepper they heard about that is hotter. Usually, they are talking about the same pepper, but with a different name. But trust me, habaneros are as HOT as it gets. They will blow your mind.
So we brought the habaneros in and shared them with the boys with one caveat: they had to eat the whole pepper at once, and they had to chew it up and swallow it. No nibbling, because once they bit small piece off, there was no way they would finish, and we didn’t want any peppers to get wasted.
I’ve never been so afraid of losing my job in all my life as I was a few minutes later.
One kid named Nate wanted to make sure to look good in front of his friends, so he was the first to jump in and grab one. Not to be one-upped, Steve jumped in to and grabbed one. They both stuck them in their mouth and started chewing. The inevitable “this isn’t that bad” was tossed out by Nate within 2 seconds, before his body had time to realize what the hell he had just stuck into his mouth.
Three seconds later, Nate’s face turned a very deep red. He ran to a trashcan and threw up. His eyes started pouring, and he started to completely panic. He stuck his face under the faucet and drank gobs of water. Water, as it turns out, does nothing to alleviate habanero burn. What’s worse is that the water only facilitates in spreading the pepper oil (which is where the heat comes from), so now his entire throat was on fire.
Nate ran in circles trying to come up with something to do to make the burning stop. He ate anything he could find. It took him a good 10 minutes to totally calm down. We offered him another pepper. He declined.
Steve, meanwhile, was doing everything he could to look cool for as long as possible. His eyes were pouring, but he kept smiling and saying “it’s not that bad…” until he finally couldn’t hold it anymore and also started drinking water and eating bread and whatnot.
Steve ate 4 more peppers that day. God will either bless him tremendously for his bravery or punish him severely for his stupidity.
The jury is still out on that one.
I was smart enough to never stick a whole habanero in my mouth. All i did was hand the whole peppers, uncut, to the kids who asked for them.
A short time later, I used the restroom. Number 1.
I touched a freaking habanero pepper, and then touched…it.
It took two days for the burning to go away.
So that’s my pepper story.
patrick: has a lame blog
I just found all my college buddies have blogs now, and their’s are WAY cooler than mine. I’m jealous. I wish I could do all the cool computer stuff that they can.
The irony is that Mark’s blog is cooler than mine too, and when we were in college he sucked at computer stuff. I was a computer major at one point programming video games and writing webpages, and he would have to ask me and Dezago to show him how to open Word.
My how the times have changed.
Notably, all three of them are using macs. That whole “macs are easy to use” thing must be true.
