Week 10 in Greek

I’m going to do things a little out of order this week for obvious reasons. So here is the rundown of the material we covered the final week.

Chapter 38: The Optative Mood of the Verb

Chapter 39: Contrary to Fact Conditional Sentences and Conspectus of Conditional Sentences

Chapter 40: Reflexive and Reciprocal Pronouns, and Further Uses of autos

Chapter 41: Voelz’s Fundamental Greek Grammar in 9 weeks.

The last week for me centered around my review of parsing verbs/nouns.  Review of the subjunctive, participles, imperatives, and principal parts. Add in homework for every night made for some long days. Although, I did do a good job of stopping at a decent hour so as to not overstudy and wear myself down. I spent the night before the qualifier relaxing with Linda watching Cougartown. Mindless show to distract me from worrying about the qualifier. After the third episode I got up and went to sleep. Linda thought I was studying, but I felt the need to get a good nights rest.

Woke up around 5:30am. Got dressed and went for a walk around campus. Came home and then got ready and I was out of the door by 6:30am. Armed with only the principal parts flash cards that still was giving me issues to review.  I attempted to get into Wartburg Hall, but evidently it doesn’t open to until 7am.  So, I wound up going to the classroom and reviewed there. Started to feel un-easy so I got up for a walk and by that time Wartburg was open.  I walked in to get a Java update (Greek class joke). Did the head nod to my fellow Greek classmates who were congregating getting that last meal before Go time.

I was one of the guys who took his exam at 7:30a as I thought I would need all the time in the world. I was methodical about taking the exam. I didn’t second guess any answers I selected. I didn’t feel great about the exam, but I felt I passed. Took me roughly 2 hours to complete the exam. I missed chapel and then later found out I didn’t pass the main qualifier. I did score high enough that I was eligible enough to take the re-take written by Dr. Gibbs.

Crushed spirit and physically drained … I really had lost hope.  Like always Pastor Gibbs put his arm around the two of us who would be doing the re-take. Letting us know we were still baptized. 🙂  He also pointed out where we went wrong on the exam. Go figure I had been struggling with participles and I got those correct. It was the subjunctives that killed me along with imperatives and minor things here and there. Gibbs suggested I go for a walk around campus to clear my mind and focus on the material that tripped me up.

I did have Gibbs call Linda to explain. I just wasn’t in a place mentally or emotionally to say to her honey, I may have added on another year to our time at seminary.  Along with the fact the more I talked the more I felt material was slipping out of my head.  I basically had from 11-12:3o to compose myself, put the first qualifier aside, and take care of business.  It is no secret I absolutely fear Gibbs exams. So, my outlook wasn’t good in my mind.

Needless to say, the time had come for the re-take. Much thanks to my classmates for letting me be during the time after finding out I hadn’t passed until the re-take to let me re-focus.  Even bigger thanks goes out to the prayers that went up on my behalf and my fellow Greek student. Couple of guys even walked through the classroom saying, “you’ve got this. Parse parse and Parse somemore.” Time pretty much time stood still during the second exam.  I finished and felt very confident.  As I walked with Gibbs for him to grade our exams. We sat in the Registrar’s office like nervous school girls. Gibbs came out made us smile and handed us our exams. We PASSED.  Almost in tears I shook Gibbs hands. 

There has been a common theme/motto on campus about Life Together and Community this year. Never in my life have I seen it in action than on the day of the qualifier. The support and prayers were so powerful. The collective togetherness of being their for a fellow brother struggling is more than anyone can ask for…

As I appeared in the quad to my anxiously waiting classmates to reveal the wonderful news.  Before I left the Registrar’s office I called my lovely and supportive wife. She was relieved and happy. I began to check my phone and for the classmates that were alreadyon the road home for the break… Surprising enough they never forgot their fellow brothers either checking in via txt messages or phone calls. Life Together at its best.  We’ve all been told those that go through Greek together form a bond that lasts throughout our times at seminary and through our ministries in the parishes.  After experience this myself, I now understand it.

Summary: I PASSED.

What is Next? Greek Readings and Hebrew…

Elementary Hebrew 12 credits: The essentials of Hebrew morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.

Greek Readings:2 credits: Practice in the “art of translation” by appliying fundamental skills in Greek to basic interpretation of biblical texts. Readings selected will lay the foundation for hermeneutics and subsequent courses.

I will attend to keep up the weekly blog. Maybe try and get them out on a weekly basis and not do 3-4 weeks in a night. Thank goodness for a good memory. We have two week break starting on Monday and we return for the Winter quarter the Monday after Thanksgiving.

 

Week 9 of Greek

1 Week to Go

We are all slowing down now. We see the end is in site, but we still have at least 3-4 days worth of material to get through before the we get the qualifier.

 

Material Covered this Week

Chapter 33: Active Forms of the Verbs didomi and tithemi (English spelling since WordPress doesn’t have Greek fonts for me)

Chapter 34: Middle and Passive Forms of the Verbs (see Chapter 33)

Chapter 35: The Verb istemi

Chapter 36: Irregular Adjectives, and Comparative and Superlative Adjectives and Adverbs

Chapter 37: Case Usages

Side Note: We spent Saturday on the road heading to Bloomington, IN. I was very distracted during class on Friday morning as we were awaiting the birth of our first nephew. He was a stinker and put his momma (Danielle) through 21 hours of labor. Well, Danielle has always been there for us above and beyond during all of our children’s births. Our Greek class prayed for the Hulsmans before class and shortly after Chapel was over Jaxson Hulsman finally decided to join the world. It was wonderful meeting my our new nephew. Linda drove while I worked on vocabulary and then slowly worked through the Sell Workbook.  After spending time in Bloomington, IN we drove back and arrived back in STL around 1am.

On Sunday, we (the seminarian fieldworkers) were finally introduced to Faith-Oakville and the multi-sites in Edwardsville and Columbia… At all 3 services. It was fun and painful all at the same time. Mainly because I was tired from the normal Greek wear down and then the trip to Bloomington.

Week 8 in Greek

This week has been somewhat of a break through in Greek even if it didn’t exactly show in exams. There has been a number of changes in my test taking. Use headphones to cancel out distractions around me. Move to a different room. Start earlier so not to feel rushed. Relaxation techniques to reduce the anxiety before the tests. Now the latest change. Move into a different room by myself so that I can talk things through verbally. This seems to be working after a quick test with Dr. Gibbs.  Huge thank you goes out to Rev. Gibbs and his wife Renee for recognizing this based on in class performance/participation.  I hadn’t given up, but I was feeling very defeated just before.

Two weeks to go and the realization that all the long hours studying, memorizing, and waking up in the morning thinking about paradigms will all be summed up in one exam. More material this week along with our cruising speed of 80 mph.  It is round 8 and Greek has definitely gotten the better of me.  I must be Rocky Balboa as I just keep coming back for more.

Here is the material covered this week…

Chapter 29: The Subjunctive Mood of the Verb, part 2

Chapter 30: Contracted (Contract) Verbs in -aw

Chapter  31: Contracted (Contract) Verbs in -ow

Chapter 32: The Imperative Mood of the Verb

Week 7 in Greek

Wow, things are really picking up speed. There is three weeks left in the quarter and the stress is starting to mount.  I feel somewhat comfortable with the material. Well, I feel comfortable with parsing just about everything. At this point it is getting the vocabulary to stick and translating. I’ve finally turned the corner on homework taking 2-3 hours to complete. Now, I can get it done in around 1.5 hours or less. It still takes me a few days to grasp the material.  Other than that another week of Greek slapping me in the face on a exam. Yet, I’m doing well on the quizzes.  Still sticking to studying as much as possible to make it work in my head. The studying has got to pay off with retention at some point. My hope is it will be during the qualifier and Greek Readings.

 

Material covered this week.

Chapter 24: Miscellanea 3

Chapter 25: Focus upon Result/”Perfect” Tense Verb Forms

Chapter 26: Pluperfect Verb Forms, Principal Parts, and Indirect Discourse.

Chapter 27: Liquid Verbs, and the Third Principal Part of Baivw and yivwskw

Chapter 28: The Subjunctive Mood of the Verb, Part 1

We’ve been hearing our classmates who have taken Greek before bring up pluperfect. I have come to dislike the term Pluperfect now. So, it is weird to have finally covered the material. Notice that was Chapter 27, there is 42 chapters in our textbook.

Week 6 in Greek

We are officially past the half way point.  We’ve been informed that evidently we’ve been going at around 35 mph up until this point. Now, we are going to speed up to 75 mph and maintain it until the end. Dr. Gibbs was at a Pastor Conference. So we had Dr. Lewis instructing us for the day. I think many of us had forgotten how different instructors potentially can be in regards to how they approach their classes. This may have come at the right time to prepare us for post Greek. Post Fundamental Greek Grammar means Fundamental Hebrew is next up along with Greek Readings.  Dr. Gibbs wasn’t kidding as things really did speed up this week.  Funny thing is the material presented this week didn’t faze me, but actually solidified most of the material leading up to this point. So, this was a good week for me learning and putting all the pieces together. While my test aren’t exactly demonstrating that which is really bringing me down, I actually get the how to read and parse.

I officially attended my first Student Association meeting on Wednesday. Funny, how I’m up every morning early to review before class, but my body knows class isn’t until noon on Wednesdays. So, scheduling a Student Association meeting for 7:30 on a sleep in day makes for an unhappy body. Needless to say I learned a lot from the meeting and how things work from that side of campus.  I look forward to helping out and given feedback that represents our first years feelings. BTW, Dr. Meyer has somehow figured out how to be hilarious and scary at the same time. I don’t think anyone notices it, but the students.

Oktoberfest was last night and even though it was cold outside, there was a huge turnout.  We even had some folks dressing the part of Oktoberfest. Oddly, enough I didn’t know any of the songs. Then again what do you expect from a guy who grew up in the city who is like 1/8 German. LOL  Quite the experience and like all things here at seminary, I’m better person for experiencing it.  Afterwards, we had some of my classmates over with their wives. Which brings to mind a few things…

We don’t know how to talk about anything, but Greek, the future of the church, doctrine, and theology.  Our wives get annoyed with us when we do the aforementioned in their presence. We can speak quite loudly during these discussions even when we are agreeing with each other. Finally, that our wives are truly patient, loving, understanding, and beautiful women.  Thank goodness we married them before they knew what they knew better. LOL

Almost forgot, I finally met Rev. Poulson in person yesterday and we talked for a bit.  Nice putting a face with emails. He also told me when he was going through his formation he had to take Greek and Hebrew at the same time. I believe he attended the seminary in St. Catherines. That in revelation may cause me to never complain about Greek again. Literally.

As usually here is the material covered this week in Greek:

Chapter 20: Focus upon Connection/”Present” Tense Participles

Chapter 21: Focus on the Action/”Aorist” Active and Middle Participles

Chapter 22: Genitive Absolute, and Focus on the Action/”Aorist” Passive Participles

Chapter 23: Miscellanea 2

Sorry

I am so sorry for not updating the past couple of weeks. Take that as a hint to just how stressed and busy with Greek that past couple of weeks. Hopefully, I will get some none Greek work done today.

Week 5 of Greek

This week started out much like the week before. Linda was gone for a Seminary Wives Association (SWA) retreat.  The kids and I spent some much needed time together. Hannah and Jonathan had soccer practice in the morning so that is where we were bright and early. From there we spent the day in the house either studying or sleeping.  Sunday is review the vocabulary day for me before the quiz on Monday.  We had quite a few number of prepositions that could mean different things based on the case (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative). Fun times this week. I wasn’t as tired and I felt I grasped the material better than the week before. However, I’m still a little bit behind due to the lack of energy and comprehension the previous week.  Just means I will continue to put in extra work to catch up.

On a side note as far as I know, I’ve been approved by my peers along with 3 other seminarians to become first year reps.  So, I will 1 of 2 representatives for the 1st yr married students. More to come on this as my first meeting is next week.

Here is the information we covered this week:

Chapter 15: Relative Pronouns and Three-Case Prepositions

Chapter 16: The Infinitive of the Verb, Part 1

Chapter 17: The Infinitive of the Verb, Part 2

Chapter 18: Third Declension Consonantal Stem Nouns

Chapter 19: Third Declension Vowel and Sigma Stem Nouns, and Third Declension Adjectives

Also, on Friday night Linda and I participated in the Contemplate event via the Discussion Panel. Oddly enough, we are this event one year ago and couple of days. It truly was a pleasure to participate and talk with some of the seminarians we will see in a year from now. I remember how we felt at the event and we tried to speak from the heart about preparing yourself for the move and life change itself.

Got a quick conversationw ith Rev. Nunez earlier this week as he was on campus speaking at the Hostel event.  I haven’t actually seen him in person since either 1996 or 1997 on Concordia Ann Arbor campus when he was a guest pastor for one of the chapels.

Week 4 of Greek

I’ve just finished another week of Greek. One more week and I’ll be at the halfway point. This week was not a good week and Greek was not nice to me at all. The week started off with Linda being gone for latter part of the weekend to travel to Michigan for President Hoesman’s retirement party. Then on Monday night I went on pager duty and wound up with one of the worst outages in my time at Verizon Business. The initial page came through at 8:15p CST and I didn’t get down with the outage until 6:15a CST on Tuesday.  Needless, to say that set the tone for a bad week. Exhaustion played a large part in this being a bad week. Due to being so tired I just couldn’t retain the knowledge that was being taught. I honestly felt like there was a cloud around me all week long.  Needless, to say my test grade reflected it as well. Just means I have to work harder to catch back up and get back on track.

Greek is indeed a thinking man’s language. I think a better description would be a 1000 piece puzzle that you have to take little parts and put them together to see the picture. Keeping with the boxing as a description for Greek in the 10 round exhibition. Well, let’s just say the hits just came from everywhere. Lesson taken away from this week is, sleep is your friend.  Another thought taking away from this week is even though I felt defeated, I survived, got back up, and ask for more.

Here is the material covered in Week 4 of Greek.

Chapter 10: Personal Pronouns

Chapter 11: Passive Voice Verb Forms

Chapter 12: The Verb “To Be” and Further Uses of the Article

Chapter 13: Miscellanea 1

Chapter 14: Contracted (Contract) Verbs in -ew

ELCE – New Testament and Content -part 3

Well, first and foremost I want to thank God and all who lifted up prayers for my brain to be a sponge throughout these past couple of weeks.  We took our exams today. The first time I took the ELCE online I couldn’t finish the test due to internet issues. Second time I took it I missed passing by a few questions. That really bummed me out.  However, it provided me the opportunity to spend time with family and our church before we all departed for seminary.

I know you’re thinking, Eric get to it. Well, we got the exam and I flew through the exam. 100 questions on the exam and I finished in 17 minutes or so.  I sat there and reviewed my answers to verify I didn’t miss any pages. Thought about reviewing my answers and realized last time I did that I didn’t pass as I doubted my answers. So,  I got up and turned it in. At which time I immediately became one of those people. You know the folks that are quick test takers and freaks the rest of the class out as to how fast I completed the test. LOL

After turning it in I went to the bathroom while it was being checked.  Wandered in the hallway for a while. Messed around with a piano in a different room. Now you’re reading this thinking, “stop stalling and you’re crazy” and “what are the results”. Okay, I kept you in suspense long enough.

I walked back in the class and Rev. Matt Hoehner was grading another test.  He handed my exam to me so that I could review the ones I had gotten wrong. Now, I’m freaking out since he handed it to me upside down. As I reached the door to walk up and review the wrong answers… I turned over the exam revealing a 92%. Meaning I missed a total of 8 questions. Yes, now onto the next class: Greek.

Someone remind me to kick Matt when I see him next and then thank him for a job well done. His teaching on the New Testament, Overall view of the Big Picture of the Bible, and especially the practical application.  I suspect most of the instructors focus on just the material without giving hints on how this applies to us in the ministry.

I pretty much came home and scared Linda into thinking I hadn’t passed and then informed her how well I had done.  Well, maybe we can celebrate our 11th anniversary now. LOL

I PASSED !!!

I know I know….

I’ve been slacking as of late. Well, not really.  I’ve been taking a two week intensive course on the New Testament: Overview and Content.  Roughly, 3hrs from August 10-21 (Monday through Friday).

New Testament Content and History This course is designed to assist the student in gaining the basic understanding of the content and history of the New Testament which is prerequisite for the study of theology at the Seminary level.

Source: http://www.csl.edu/Img/academics/sscatalog2009_REV032009.pdf

Here is a run down on the material covered.

Aug 10: Overview of the Bible

Aug 11:  Matthew, Mark

Aug 12: Luke, Acts

Aug 13: Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians, James

Aug 14: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Practice Test

Aug 17: 1&2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon

Aug 18: Hebrews, 1&2 Peter, Jude

Aug 19: John, Epistles of John (1,2, & 3 John)

Aug 20: Revelation, Review

Aug 21: Exam

Needless to say, I’ve been reading and doing a ton of review.

We’ve been using the ESV translation primarily with some comparisons from the NIV.