A Fairly Productive Day

Today has been a fairly productive day for me. I only had 2 loads of laundry for the week (yay!) so that got done pretty quickly. I wrote my entire interview paper for Worldview class, but it was only 4 pages so it wasn't too difficult. I definitely want to look over it again before turning it in, plus after reading it through once more I'll send it to the interviewee to make sure I'm representing her correctly.

After finishing that, I wasn't sure what to do next. The Worldview reading assignment for this week isn't posted yet, and I really didn't feel like doing the reading for next week's Medieval and Reformation Spirituality class. So, I figured I should get a jump on one of the papers that's due toward the end of July... either the integration paper for Church in Mission, or the final paper for Medieval and Reformation Spirituality.

I looked at the Church in Mission one first, but then decided against it. It needs to be 12-15 pages (double spaced) about my missiological perspective (7-8 pages) and how I'd apply that to increase a congregation's members over 5 years (5-6 pages). Ummm... yeah. I have no idea where to even start on that one! I know I can write something on that, but I'm highly skeptical that I'll be able to fill 12-15 pages with it! For those currently in ministry I'm sure it'd be a lot easier, because they have a context to write it in. But for people like me who have no idea what path my life will take after seminary, that's a pretty tough assignment! Anyone have any advice on how to do this one??

So I decided to do some reasearch into my final paper for Medieval class. I chose Saint Teresa of Avila as my topic (it could be on a person or issue from medieval times). Know how I picked that? I opened up our anthology book for the course and looked through the table of contents, and I randomly stopped on Teresa. I read a little about her, and she had a pretty interesting life! Her "claim to fame" so to speak is the reformation of the Carmelite nuns, and it's a pretty unique story as to how she got there. So I went to the library and got 5 books on her, and I also downloaded a few articles as well. In a couple weeks I need to turn in a list of at least 6 sources plus my thesis statement for the paper. I'm a bit stuck on the thesis statement as of yet, since I haven't really gotten past the general topic and onto a specific argument so to speak.

The other thing I accomplished today is to pick out the book I'll use for my spiritual disciplines journal, also for Medieval class. We need to do some sort of spiritual discipline for 3 weeks to "get into the shoes" of medieval Christians. I chose this book, which I'm getting from the public library, and I'll observe one of the daily offices each day for the next 3 weeks. And then write a paper on the experience, of course.

Bill is still in Lima, so I'll probably keep doing homework for a while yet tonight.

Just as a side note, my apologies if you get bored with my ramblings about school assignments! I've realized that blogging about them helps me keep things straight in my head, and somehow it also helps me make sure I get things done too. If anyone out there is interested in reading any of these papers I'm writing (or have written in past terms), just let me know and I'll be happy to share them with you.