Weekly posts, eh?

And this one just to procrastinate work on my Exegesis Ordination Exam? Yikes. What AM I thinking?

Primarily, I'm thinking that one of the larger components of this exam is not normally a critical part of my exegetical process. It's called the "Faithful Interpretation," an essay on the meaning of the text, with only the barest nod to the context I'm writing for. Apparently, for some people, this is hugely helpful, allowing them to bask in their academic brilliance before getting down to the humdrum of making that degree work for anything meaningful.

If I sound bitter, maybe its just because I don't have any academic brilliance to bask in, which is why I am in the 8th year of a 3 year program.

I HATE this part of the exam. Some of my exegesis Professors strongly recommend this step of the process but it has never once been helpful for me. I live mainly in context... I read the text, find the bits that are speaking to me, and run with them. The rest amounts to pre-writing, which any of my High School English teachers will attest that I only ever did grudgingly.

Did you ever have to do that? Pre-writing? I despised it. All those word webs and pre-essay essays that my teachers assured me would improve the grades I got on my papers. But I always got A's on my papers. What was there to improve? I just didn't think that way, and their process slowed me down considerably, to the point where I started writing my pre-writing AFTER the main paper, which was much easier, and faster.

So do that now, you say? AHHHH, very clever of you. Already done. Except that this needs to be concise... it is essentially a de-contextualized version of the paper, they want about a thousand words, and I ran out of things to say around word 500. For the love of God, there are only 11 verses I have to work with here.

Of course, this Blog is already at least 500 words long. Maybe Anger fuels the beast...