Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Proof That Nothing is Treated as Special Anymore

In the past, I've written about teenagers and young adults who have done impressive things. I enjoy writing those posts, but this is not going to be one of those.

According to The Guardian, someone took the time to "translate," edit, and publish... an Emoji Bible. I really wish I were making that up, but sadly, I think it's true.

Notice that the author gave himself an emoji for his name. 

So many things frustrate me about this, but I'm going to go with the one that I sort of picked up from my on-campus job.

For three years at WLC, I was the webmaster for a website called Fourth Century Christianity, which lists and sometimes translates writings from the fourth century. (If you want some convenient framing events, most of it happens between when Constantine made Christianity a legal religion to when Theodosius made Christianity the only legal religion. See the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Cunctos Populos on February 28, 380.) I also got a theology minor in my last year there. If there is one thing I noticed while doing both, it was how much effort went in to understanding exactly what God says. People struggled over the tiniest distinctions in wording. More importantly, Bible translations were treated with care and respect. Jerome wrote multiple translations of some books. 

And now we have... this. Emojis. 

I'll probably have more to say when I get back to Seattle (right now I'm in Phoenix) and am reunited with my text books.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

The Next Step - Graduate School

I guess technically I'm still at the graduation step, but I figured now was as good a time as any to talk about grad school. Since I'm planning to be a teacher, I have to go to extra schooling to get the teaching license. I was originally planning to go to University of Alaska-Fairbanks, but I applied to a bunch of places, and somewhat to my surprise, I got into Seattle Pacific University. They've been around for a while, and they're pretty famous for turning out good teachers who can get jobs pretty quickly. So - in the fall, I'll be going back to Seattle for grad school.

It honestly didn't feel real until I heard my name and grad school program announced at the Honors Convocation this afternoon. When I was in high school, and someone asked me what schools I knew about, were not forbidden, but I would never consider going to, I think SPU would have been at the top of the list. I've known about SPU longer than WLC - the first time I visited the campus, I was in fifth grade and there for Musicale with the Seattle Christian elementary school band - but I would never have considered going there. For one thing, I wanted to go somewhere pretty far away. Somewhere knew, exciting, and preferably off the beaten path.

But, long story short, things changed. Now I'm heading back home. I don't know if that's where I'll end up teaching, and once I graduate from there, I'll still have to take some extra classes if I want to teach in a school affiliated with my church synod, but really anything could happen at this point.

I'm excited. I'll miss WLC really badly, and all the friends I've made here, but SPU could be a really exciting place to be.