andave's place

Hiya!

I'm disgustingly sick, sniffing and honking and looking generally shabby. I sound like Darth Vader. But anyways, I'm happy because:

*drum roll*

My scholarship to PHC is going to be increased, just a little bit. AND my GPA is 3.3, with a good chance, I think, of increasing next semester. I had to keep my GPA above 3.2 to get more scholarships, and entirely by God's grace, I did!!!

Incidentally, there's no other way that happened but by God's grace. I could NOT have done that on my own. Throughout all four months God has sustained me and blessed me and let me have lots of fun! .

I ordered most of my books for next semester and I am SO EXCITED. Over twenty books - and maybe three of them are textbooks. The rest are genuine BOOKS. Thankfully, I already owned a couple of them. Here's the list:

1."On Christian Liberty," a treatise by Martin Luther (which I had already read last semester).
2. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, edited by William Riordan
3. The New Deal by Keith Conkin
4. Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell
5. History through the Eyes of Faith by Robert G. Wells. We started reading this book in Western Civ last semester and honestly, it's mind-numbing and dreary. I have my doubts that the author is a Christian too. Some of his stuff just sounds weird.
6. Pensees by Blaise Pascal. I doubt we'd be reading all of most of these books, but I will, eventually .
7. Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
8. The Communist Manifesto and other Revolutions, edited by Blaisdell.
9. All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque.
10. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. I read this when I was probably 14 or 15.
11. Aeneid by Virgil. I read this in its entirety last year.
12. The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis. Lewis is on nearly everybody's favorites list at the college. I was awarded the C.S. Lewis Literature scholarship when I got my scholarship packet .
13. Divine Comedy I: Inferno by Dante.Dr. Hake isn't picky about translations as long as they're good, solid, and unabridged. I have Dorothy L. Sayers' translation - do you think that's a good one to get started on Dante with?
14. As You Like it by Shakespeare
15. King Lear by Shakespeare
16. Paradise Lost by Milton (excited!!)
17. Don Quixote by Cervantes. I read this in its entirety when we were in Lebanon a year and a half ago.
18. The Clouds by Aristophanes
19. "Preface to Paradise Lost" by C.S. Lewis
20. Odyssey by Homer. I read all of it three or four years ago.
21. Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Plus a few history textbooks.

So I can't stop praising God for His goodness to me. His love is written in everything around me. How privileged I am! I don't think life can get much better than this (though I admit to being bored without schoolwork threatening me.).

This isn't to say that PHC isn't tough. It is hard!! But it's just another way God has shown His grace to me. I don't think I've ever been under as much pressure as I was during my first semester. I missed my family, my church family, my friends, my cats, my home, my books, my room. There was a loooong stretch where I was sick with a cough, the flu, and a bad ear infection that made me rather hard of hearing. It climaxed at the flu - which was smack dab in the middle of midterms week .

So, let me tell you about my professors.

1. Dr. Rob Spinney, my US History professor. He wasn't quite my favorite professor, but certainly the one I admire and respect the most. His class was intense, but there was something special about really learning what made history move. Yes, America's history is short-but it's so very varied. From the Federalist/Anti-Federalist split to Jacksonian Democracy to the Emancipation Proclamation - there's quiddities, ingenuity, bravery, patriotism, and an irritatingly large influence from the all-powerful dollar. I'm a little shocked (and saddened) that such a prosaic thing as money can actually inspire people.
Back to Spinney. He's a great professor; a disciplined Christian and passionate historian. But tough. Strictly speaking, we didn't have to do much homework for the class. Read the lectures outside class, discuss them in class, three books, two papers, and three exams and a final. However, I think I worked harder on studying US History than any other class, and I still got a B. I've made it a major goal of next semester to get at least one A in his class, for either a paper or a test. Just to say it's do-able .
Incidentally, my sister played a massively successful prank on me, regarding Spinney.
It was over Thanksgiving break. I had stayed on campus because frankly, it's not worth spending all that money on flights for such a short while. So one night, when I got back from hanging out and playing games with some of the other people who'd stayed behind, I checked my email. It was around 11 PM.
I got a message saying: YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED. I was this close to deleting it, but out of curiosity, I clicked it. Here's what I read:

Hey, Mary!

Want your deepest, darkest secrets to be made known to your esteemable, respectable fellow students and honorary professors at you beloved PHC?

Yes? No?

If your answer is yes, then, by all means, ignore this email. Press the evil little spam button that will forever confine me to an eternity of Popcornopolis and Hip Implant Alerts. But be warned - perhaps Spinney would like to read an email describing your infatuation with his "considerable biceps"? [NB: Spinney, by the bye, is a slight man in his late 40s. Yet his strength is legendary amongst the guys who use the gym. I'm a little weirded out; a muscular history professor defies every sense of stereotype I'd been looking forward to ]

If you answer is - the highly desirable - NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO, open another tab, look for the best price on an airline ticket, and start packing! I promise Spinney won't miss you THAT much.
BTW, might I suggest Hotwire, Priceline, etc.

Just a suggestion.

I was FREAKED OUT. I was about to find something vaguely weapon-ish and creep to my closet, fling the door open, and whack whoever (whatever?) popped out of me. I was going to sleep with my roommate's knife on my nightstand. I was going to call security!...

Then a thought occurred to me. It sounded like my sister...especially considering that this hacker hadn't told me where TO go. I called my mom and she had this strangled sound when she answered my question: "MOM DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MY EMAIL GETTING HACKED?"

And, well, whaddaya know, my sister had my password and decided to play a prank on her older, supposedly more sophisticated sister living clear across the States.

The joke was on me .

So, next professor: Dr. William VanDoodewaard, who taught History of Western Civilization. Dr. Doode is my favorite professor. Last semester was his first semester teaching at PHC. After our first class we all gave a collective groan, thinking that this dusty-looking, vaguely mismatched young thing with a droning voice would be our dullest professor yet. Especially considering how he much info he stuffed into the hour and a half he had with us twice a week.
But as the weeks passed, he loosened up. He started to make gestures. They started to widen till he was making great, excited flourishes with his hands. He started smiling more often, even giving a dry chuckle when a student cracked a joke, even at his expense. He began cracking intellectual jibs occasionally- on our final we were supposed to circle the name of somebody famous (I forget who). One of the choices was "Hilary of Clintonus." Even his voice started to dip and rise and flow as he told us of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Sparta and Byzantium and the Celts all spilled their secrets - but never more did his voice shake with passion except when he was talking about Christian principles and church history. I'm really excited about next semester with him. Incidentally, I got my highest grade of the semester with him.

Professor number 3 is Dr. Roberts, who's really young. He can't be more than mid-thirties, but he has his doctorate in philosophy and who knows what else. I took Logic from him (and despite getting D's on all tests that weren't curved, I got a B- in the class. I'm not really sure how that happened ). He was a really nice, understanding guy, and was even willing to let me postpone my midterm till I was feeling better. Three times during the semester, he invited students over to his family's house for dessert. I got to go, and he has a splendid family. I'm fairly sure his wife's older than he is, and they have two adorable children; a hugely extroverted little girl and a very shy little boy. And a beagle . One of the things I really liked about Dr. Roberts is his patience. He taught three logic classes three times a week, and in the first part of the semester especially, he had to go round and round with the students as we debated informal logic with him in an effort to score extra points on the homework. As there are a number of accomplished formal debaters at the school, that takes a massive amount of patience.

Fourth: Dr. Cox, my theology professor. Here's a strange individual. A more down-to-earth, kind, Christian man would be hard to find, but! I had no idea how to take notes. (and I got an A- in his class. I was expecting a C+ at best. God's hand was once again clearly at work.) He would give us a general outline of his lectures as well as assigned reading for each class. I filled in the blanks as best I could manage, but I always seemed to miss the important things on the tests - because he never seemed to dwell long on them. Two of the three short answer essay questions on the final were on the topic of food and of clothing begun as themes in Genesis. Thankfully there was a third option I was moderately more comfortable with.
His method of teaching was more anecdotal - and he joked and teased the male students mercilessly. Girls were off limits, unless they started it, and even then it wasn't more than gentle digs. But I rarely could ever figure out if the dig he have someone had some sort of educational implication or if he was bonkers. On top of that, he homesteads. He's a short, solid man who hunts (he has fierce looking pictures of himself with a deer hanging from a hook on his facebook.) Once, he trapped a fox that had been worrying his chickens. He killed it and tanned it and brought it to the final for us to see . Theology II next semester should be...interesting...

Fifth and finally - Professor Stump, my Research and Writing professor. However I've dealt with him in a previous blog, and I shall not be thinking of him again. The man gave me a writing complex. Prof. Stump - I got an 89 on a Spinney paper. THERE.