01-31-03 - 8:06 p.m.

Well, I feel like I should update this with something, so I'll try to think of something. ...

I'll try to stop talking about Dr. Walton so much, but today I was reminded of why he's so great. We start our big assignments on Monday, and today he told us how to do them. He even took us through an example. Now, other professors give examples and instructions, too, but the difference is the level of detail they go into. Dr. Walton stood there with his Hebrew Bible and reference books and pretended he was doing the assignment. And he explained it so very clearly. So there is your pedagogical note for the day.

Hmm, what else? ... Last week I started reading Modern Psychotherapies by Jones and Butman, who are professors here at Wheaton. Actually, Jones is now the provost, but he was a professor. The book describes the major psychotherapies around today and evaluates them from an evangelical perspective. I'm reading it because I know basically nothing about psychotherapy, which is strange to me because I minored in psychology. But the classes I took were more research-oriented than applied. And I'm thinking of maybe becoming a therapist. I think it's the only thing I'm really made for. Teaching too, maybe, and definitely writing, but one of my very favorite things to do is to talk with people about their problems and try to help them, even though I almost never know how to help. I figure a degree in psychology should fix that problem, and then I can be a professional. Something like that. I only started thinking seriously about this two or three months ago, so we'll see what happens.

One of our student workers here at the library commented one day on the fact that there are people who specialize in studying enzymes. She thought that was very indicative of the fragmentation of our society. We're not very holistic. I agree. I told her I think somebody should specialize in integrating things. And after I said it, I realized that's what I want to do, specialize in being interdisciplinary. That's why I'm in a biblical studies masters program, hoping to end up in psychology.

Well, that's enough for today.