Light Reading Anyone?

The stack of books I'll be reading this semester.

If there is one word I could use to summarize grad. school, it would undoubtedly be: Reading.  I feel confident in saying a large majority (like 80%+) of my non-class time I spend reading.  I mean, I like to read and most of my readings are good, but there are a lot.  As much as I miss being at SLU, there is no way I could have accomplished this amount of work while there.  Having so many friends around and being embedded in the social scene would have taken its toll on my studies (don't worry I have friends here too and am not a recluse!).

My classes are great.  I'm only enrolled in four classes and other than one, they're only once a week.  So I'm really not in class all that much, which is good because it gives me time to read.  When I first arrived in Boston, I wanted to find a small, part time job to have some sort of income.  I mean, I'm not allowed to work more than ten hours a week to still qualify for my financial aid.  However, I don't even know where I'd find those ten hours to work!

On Mondays, I have a seminar on Gandhi.  It's great.  I've never really known much about Gandhi other than being identified with nonviolence, India, and you usually see a quote in people's e-mail signature or something of that nature.  It's been great reading his writings and writings about him and his satyagraha movement.

I'm also enrolled in a course on the early church fathers titled "Early Christian Thought: The Greek Tradition." It's going really well too.  We read lots of primary sources.  There is a lot of theology and philosophy in it, which I wanted because now that I'm solely focusing on theology (I was also a philosophy undergrad), I wanted to still have some philosophy.

Another class I'm taking is a course on paleography and medieval manuscripts.  Basically we learn about the history of paleography (study of manuscripts) and learn how to transcribe medieval documents.  Why is this of any importance? Well, just as languages have evolved overtime, so has our writing.  Imagine trying to read Latin that resembles Arabic or just scribbles on paper (not that I think Arabic is scribbles!) with no punctuation or spaces between words.  Yeah, it can be quite difficult.  The reason it is important is because there are thousands of manuscripts in libraries across the world that no one has any idea what they are.  Thus, many of these manuscripts will hold vital information and will at sometime need to be identified.  Most importantly, paleographers will determine documents' authenticity.

My last class is a History of Christian Architecture.  This course is at Boston College.  As BC and Harvard are members of the Boston Theological Institute, we can take courses at each other's schools.  I became interested in Christian architecture during my junior year at SLU when I wrote a paper on theological reflections in architecture.  Also, I saw many different churches and architectural styles when I went on Semester at Sea, so its cool learning about places I've been.  If only I had learned before I visited them! I guess I'll just have to go back.

Anyway, that is a short synopsis of my classes.  I'm learning a lot and am lucky I like all my classes!