Category: Personal Page 4 of 7

Redeemer had a sort of a welcoming party for the RUF students today–various Redeemer families brought sandwiches and sides and gave lunch to all the students. I stayed for free lunch (hey, you don’t get that all the time!) and got to meet a lot more people, both Redeemer families and several students. Including one English student getting ready to graduate with his PhD who I hadn’t met on-campus yet, so that was nice. The first few weeks I slipped in and out without meeting too many people (they don’t have a Paul Jaeggi!), but it was really great to be able to sit and eat and chat with people for longer. I’m just not good at conversation where I don’t have anything to do with my hands, or can’t listen in to other conversations as the other people at the table talk.

Now I’m getting ready to head out to a picnic for the English Graduate Students to get to know some of them better. Today is also the first football game of the year, but I didn’t go to it. All the freshmen were really excited about it, though. And when I get back, more reading! Whee. As far as schoolwork goes, I’m fluctuating day by day on whether I can do it all, whether I can do it well, whether I should even be doing this…I still feel uncertain and unprepared compared with all the other graduate students, so I’m just trying to take it one day at a time and do my best on the current task. I can’t think beyond that right now, and the coming weeks, which are going to be more and more filled with ongoing papers and research? Really can’t think about them at all.

The RUF here is pretty active! I had seen some chalkings on the ground (this is apparently the equivalent of a student activies bulletin board) about it and was planning to check it out, but one of the girls in my class who also goes to Redeemer invited me and made sure I knew where it was and when and everything, which was really nice because I would’ve procrastinated finding out the details and missed it. Anyway, she said that they usually had around 80 students or so, but there had to have been at least 120 people in the room last night. It was also 120 degrees, because the air conditioner was out, but everybody stuck it out and it was quite good. There’s something bonding about spending an hour next to someone in a room that’s boiling hot.

I guess 120 isn’t really that large a percentage of a school the size of Baylor, but everybody I met was very friendly and welcoming, and they had a bunch of other events throughout the week planned in addition to the weekly Wednesday night meeting…I was glad to find them. Told you my strategy of “let social situations come to me” works! Oh, the RUF minister is the guy who preached at Redeemer the first day I went. I’ve now also heard the senior pastor preach twice, and he’s very good as well.

I’m not much of a social person…I tend to just sort of sit back and wait for social connections to happen. This is not probably the best way to go about making friends and building community, but whatever.

This week at church, I found sitting in front of me my professor in the 19th-20th Century Brith Lit class. Apparently he’s been a member of Redeemer for about five years now. He wanted to tell me all about the way they worshipped, and answer questions I had, it was fun. He had assumed I was Baptist (coming from Missouri Baptist University to Baylor, that’s probably a fair assumption), and wouldn’t know the liturgical ins and outs. Very good to see him there…I always find working with professors easier when I know for sure what background and worldview they’re coming from. And while we were talking, two more girls I have classes with showed up, and we talked…both very nice and friendly, but not, you know, obnoxiously so. ;)

So already, within a week of school starting, there’s are connections being made between school and church. So great.

(Unrelated to church, but related to friendship connections, there’s a guy in one of my classes who’s as big a film buff as I am! We started chatting before class on Thursday, and briefly discussed David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia, Terrence Malick (he’s a fan, I haven’t actually seen Malick films yet), Hitchcock, Fellini, and Truffaut all in the space of about ten minutes. That was fun!)