My Final Fall Semester

It has been a very long time since I’ve posted an update of substance. For that I apologize. Between being busy and being sick I have not had the time or motivation to sit down and chronicle the first three weeks of the semester. But here we are, already staring at September 18, and I haven’t posted even one real update since classes started on August 29. It’s a shame, I know. I think the best way to do this, rather than try to reconstruct all the events in chronological order, is to sort events by type.

Classes: I did pretty good for myself this semester. All of my professors are good, if not a bit eccentric. The only really difficult class I’m taking is Spanish 3, but I’ve decided to take that pass/fail. The logic there is that even if somehow I manage a B+ my GPA will go down. My other classes include Christianity After The New Testament, Insurance & Risk Management, Public Speaking, and Career Development. My lone religion class is a winner. It’s with the same professor I took Christian Apologists from, which was also a winner. The insurance class isn’t too inspiring but it’s not hard either. And the professor is a goofy southern old man. So in other words he’s what I hope to be at that age. Public Speaking is split into a lecture and a lab. My lab t/a isn’t a good speaker himself (he talks too fast and too quietly). My professor, on the other hand, is amazing. Great speaker. Madly entertaining. Not afraid to voice his opinion, including on the authority of scripture (as it has to do with the place of women, he is on the side of historical document). I have three doctoral candidates teaching my career class. I’m not too sure why I’m taking this class. It isn’t hard, and it probably will be helpful, but I signed up for it mostly because my mom wanted me to.

Navigators: Our meetings have regressed to the way they were my first two years here. I’m mixed about this. I love hearing Dave teach the Word every week. But it means Bible study is on a different day, making my schedule even tighter. Speaking of which, I’m going to be leading a Power for Life Bible study, possibly with Ross Kozloski. Originally I was going to be leading a Romans study, which didn’t make sense to me because there wouldn’t be any freshmen in it. My whole ministry this year living in Kellum is with freshmen, so I’m glad the powers that be reconsidered. The worship team has had one practice and so far things are going well. We nailed five songs that first night and I’m confident that we’ll be ready to lead worship at the end of the month.

Kellum Hall: Life in smell ‘em Kellum has been good. Between the four of us guys who moved back in we’ve made a few relational connections. Sometimes I get jealous of Andy and Curtis because they seem to have a much more social floor than I do. My floor keeps to itself. It’s frustrating. I know a couple of guys but most of my new friends are from the third floor and not the fifth. I’m afraid of being desperate. I’m afraid of starting to treat sharing Christ like a product that just needs to be pushed because that’s my job. I’m dying for it to happen naturally in the course of conversation, and it has with some people this semester but not with any freshmen. Yesterday we had Big Breakfast in the third floor kitchen (there’s no kitchen on my floor). I spent a good bit of time organizing, going to Sam’s Club and buying what we needed. I woke up early on Saturday morning and cooked with Curtis and Mike. All in all we had ten people show up. Only one guy from my floor (from the other side of the fifth floor) who is more connected with Curtis because he’s Catholic than with me or Aaron. To sum up, I was dejected. I thought if anything could bring some people out from my floor a free, hot breakfast would be it. We’re going to have Big Breakfast every Saturday when FSU plays away or has a bye week, so next Saturday we’ll try it again.

Rafting Trip: I had a whole lot of fun on the white water rafting trip. It was over Labor Day weekend in Tennessee. We rafted the Ocoee River which was the river used for the Olympics back in 1996. The trip down and back was not something I’d like to do again. I was in a truck with David Whitfield, James Barr and this high school kid named Prince. Now I love David and James, and to be honest I don’t mind Prince either, but it’s the combination of the three that just drives me nuts. One of the highlights of the trip for me was being able to see Heather and Kate again. They both go to UF and this summer went to NCP. Friday night I spent probably an hour or more by the fire just talking with Heather, something I hadn’t taken the time to do all summer and now I find I wish I had. (I received no small measure of torment for this from Brandon, Matt, Andy and Kyle, all of whom seem desperate for me to find a woman.) I got a good sunburn and this sickness I’ve been fighting probably started there, but I have to say it was a great weekend.

Football: And that great weekend was capped off by a Monday night football game at Doak Campbell Stadium. We were opening our season against Miami, who we had lost our last six games to over the span of five years. I just wanted to see us beat them once in my time as a student. Just one time. So I got painted up (possibly for the last time) and took my seat in row 82 of 85. You might think this would be a bad thing but since the seats were so bad it wasn’t crowded with people who had moved to get a better seat. We played a terrible game. Our saving grace was the Miami did too. The score was 10-7 as the fourth quarter was winding down. When Miami bobbled the snap of what would have been the game tying field goal I didn’t believe what I saw. Everyone around me was hysterical. I was just staring at the field. It didn’t make sense. That’s not the way the script is written. That’s supposed to happen to FSU, not Miami. When the clock hit :00 I kept waiting for the announcer to say that, in addition to instant replay, the ACC also added a fifth quarter. I’m not ashamed to say it: I cried. I was just so happy.

We’ve played two games since then, against the Citadel and against BC. We were actually trailing the Citadel 10-3 at one point in the second quarter, but we ended up winning 62-10. Last night we played BC in what was at times a very scary game. They are going to be a very tough opponent for us each year. We jumped out to a 14-0 lead, then gave it all back. It seemed like the score was 17-14 BC forever before our offense finally woke up. We won 28-17 but it didn’t look as good as it sounds.

So that’s been my life for the past few weeks. I’m sure there are other random factoids that I’m forgetting, but that’s the meat and potatoes of it. This week promises to be another long one. Lots of homework. I find myself looking ahead to next semester when I’ll only be taking 12 hours and the material won’t be nearly as time consuming. Until then, please pray that I’ll manage my time well. There are a lot of people counting on me, and I owe a lot to myself as well. Pray that I’ll use the time I have wisely and that God will make up for all I lack.