Before I came to Seminary: "Don't talk at People!"

Continuing my trek through college years before I came to seminary.

Philosophizing. Unknown to many a person, I was also a Philosophy major in college. It initially started as a minor, but since many of the BA degrees have overlapping general education requirements, I was able to change it to a major by adding only a few more classes to my workload. Much of my philosophizing took the form of reading, reading, and more reading. So much reading, which definitely prepared me for seminary! Many of the classes also taught me a lot about the logic of philosophy and how one forms a solid argument. I read many philosophers: Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, Hume, Smith, et al, and trust me when I say that I did not always agree with what these people philosophized about. As a matter of fact, in retrospect, it seems as though I disagreed far more than I ever agreed. Hmm, interesting.

BioMedical Ethics. Another class I had to take for my Philosophy major was ethics. I took BioMedical Ethics because I thought it would be really cool. Much of our class time was spent going over what the readings actually said and meant. Since I usually felt like I read and understood the readings, this means that much of my class time was spent not paying 100% attention. So what would someone like me do instead? Good question with an interesting answer: I kept a prayer journal. I still have my ethics notebook to this day, and it consists of about 20% ethics notes, 80% prayer.

Speech team. To this day I cannot tell you how I ever managed to fit speech team into my schedule. I have no idea. All I know is that is was a ridiculous amount of fun! I eventually had to give it up because my involvement at the clinic and at church was consuming all of my speech-practice time. While I did it though, I normally competed in Informative Speech, After Dinner Speech, Poetry, and Impromptu. My favorite was definitely Informative, but I was the best at Impromptu. I remember practicing Impromptu speeches down in our cave in the basement of main hall; after giving my two-minute prep, five-minute speech with perfect timing, my speech team advisor said something to me, "You did everything perfect. Perfect prep, perfect intro, perfect points, perfect conclusion, perfect timing... except I didn't hear a word you said. Don't talk at people; talk to people." And since then, I have been learning how to engage listeners when I speak. And now, especially, when I preach.

How this helps: Theology, Praying, Preaching.

Next Post: A Humble Job

Shalom, friends!