Exit Interview

Oh my goodness ... I am done with my exit interview! As of Weds at 5:40, I passed!!!! Get so excited! For those of you who don't know, it was an interview in which I was held responsible for a reading list that I created my freshman year. Here is a list of the books that I had to be able to speak intelligently about:

• Aristotle, Politics
  
• St. Augustine, City of God
  
• Homer, Odyssey
  
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
  
• Aristophanes, Clouds
  
• Cicero, On the Republic
  
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
  
• Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
  
• Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict
  
• Luther, On Christian Liberty
  
• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
  
• Machiavelli, The Prince
  
• Thomas More, Utopia
  
• Cervantes, Don Quixote
  
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Othello, Tempest , and Macbeth
  
• Chesterton, Orthodoxy
  
• John Locke, Second Treatise on Government
  
• Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock
  
• Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
  
• Hamilton, Madison and Jay, The Federalist Papers
  
• Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  
• Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
  
• Eliot, The Wasteland and Other Poems
  
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
  
• Beckett, Waiting for Godot
  
• Kafka, Metamorphoses  
  

Ya, its a good thing Jesus had my back, because otherwise I would have failed. But God is good and faithful, and I survived the hour long interview. They mostly asked about the philosophy and theology on my list, but I ended up getting to just kind of wrestle with the texts along with one of the professors. This interview stirred up two thoughts in me: (1) I really would love to go to graduate school, and stay in academia ... I want to wrestle with these texts and others for a long time! (2) that I would never be able to do grad school in my own strength :)

It was an interesting interview because the two passions of my life kind of collided in the two professors that were interviewing me ... Dr. Miner representing my thinker side and Dr. Singletary representing my doer side. I am so excited to do youth ministry for the first few years post-college, and (as Dr. Miner wisely said) I have the privilege of working both in the trenches and in books ... my experiences speak profoundly about my academic learning, and vice versa. 

I am not sure if any of that was coherent ... it been a long couple of weeks. I had a midterm and a story due today, so I am finally getting to enjoy the freedom of being done with my exit interview. And as a special gift from the Lord, I got to hear Bethany Dillon tonight. Just her voice, an acoustic guitar and Jesus made for a special evening. And as she so beautifully sang, I want to throw a "Hallelujah!" up to the Lord for sustaining me, gifting me, humbling me, growing me and perfectly loving me.