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.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays! Seeing all those kids [drinking-age college students] dressing up in those costumes and using their imaginations is one of the best experiences of the year.

But holy cow, do people try to ruin it. Don't you just love it when those intellectual, sensitive types try to suck all the fun out of the costumes? Those poor fools.

Halloween (of today) is the holiday celebrating imagination! This was really driven home to me yesterday, because it was WLC's Halloween in the Halls, where every year, the freshmen decorate their floors and turn them into Halloween fun and games for the kids of professors and alumni. The one floor that really showed me how important Halloween and imagination are was the Jurassic World floor: there were three "dinosaur exhibits" which included a visitor's desk, a T-Rex exhibit, a Raptor exhibit, a Brontosaurus exhibit, and a DNA lab. I lingered for a little bit by the Raptor exhibit, which was pretty much a plastic Raptor head sticking out of paper bushes with a guy behind puppeteering the head to make it move, and I watched the kids come up to the Raptor. I suppose if you asked, they would have known it was fake, but they wanted to play pretend, and these college freshmen were playing along with them. The kids were actually nervous about going near the moving Raptor head, and a guy dressed up as Owen was telling them to come closer, how to safely pet the head, and all that.

Halloween. It's the holiday of imagination.

Leaving for College

Later this morning I'll be leaving for Milwauke, Wisconsin, and my new college. I guess I should be scared or sad, because I'll be away from home for the longest time yet. But I'm not, because I can't stop thinking about Pahappahooey Island.

For those of you who don't know, which I'm sure is all of you, Pahappahooey Island is a kid's trilogy about a floating island being threatened by an ill wind. There is a lost and hidden Book somewhere on the island that can calm the storm and save the island, and a young girl called Ali sets out to find it. In the third movie, Ali is asked to seek out a special command hidden in the Book. She finds that the command is to tell everyone about the Book. Anyway, at the very end of that movie, she has this great quote:

"I can't wait to see what's next."

That's my state of mind right now. I know that my future is safe and sound in God's hands, and that He has a wonderful adventure in store for me. No looking back - there's a lifetime full of God's promise spread out in front of me. And I'm ready to follow it!

Next time I post, I will be posting from Milwauke, Wisconsin!