The University Instructor
"You need a mantra," said Brandon, my colleague.I already had one. After waking up this morning at 5:00 and being unable to turn my brain back off, I opened to the Psalms and looked up one of Dr. C's favorite verses, one he recently sent me again. "With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall" (18:29).
It is hard not to view my students as the enemy army, one I must outmaneuver if I'm going to emerge from the fray alive. It was comforting to repeat this verse over and over to myself, knowing that if God can handle a troop, he can deal with 25 freshmen; if I can scale a wall, then I certainly can find Business 186.
My first class of 25 (12 girls) was very good, and though the second of 15 (4 girls) was not exactly worse, I sensed that it might be in the future. I don't want to believe that the gender ratio predicts the success of the class, but so far the pattern seems to hold. I managed to contact a student who had been dropped from the roll and help him get permission to overfill the first class by one. He seemed like someone worth having in class, but I plan to hold him to his Christian t-shirt.
I suppose you could call it a mantra, but I prefer to think of it as a soundtrack.
posted by Lynn @ 2:58 PM
4 Comments:
I dreamed about you last night. Apparently we went to church together, and we were an hour early...at 7am. And I went home and left you there because...I don't know, but I didn't wake up til 7:30pm, so I was gonna go back to meet you for the 8am service, then realized that it was evening already, and I couldn't find my car anywhere. I'm sorry about forgetting you. Heh.
Well, you missed out on some pretty good services. Hope you found your car.
beekie, nice BLOG! Was finding Business 186 like scaling a wall? I'm very proud of you. -- Joel
thanks for that verse ms. lynn... seems like there are a lot of walls to scale.
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