Just Keep Swimming

The Yo-Yo Effect

Life has been downright wacky for me lately.  I fell a little behind schedule in class. Then I got ahead of schedule. Now it looks like I'm going to fall a little behind again in the coming weeks.  Things do happen and there is no sense getting flipped over by the things you can't control.  So when life gets you down ... Just Keep Swimming...

What's My Vector, Victor?

Actually, I'm in good shape at the moment.  By Saturday night I completed all my activities except for the last learning assignment for Module 2.  And as of this morning, I pretty much wrapped that up as well.  Overall, I'm about a week ahead again and I've got some time to burn before my next assignments become available.

Learning Activity #3 was very interesting.  It is the third assignment focused on observation which alone should inform the student of the importance of this step in inductive Bible study.  While the first two assignements focused on exhaustive observations from one singular verse, this assignment opens up to cover a couple of paragraphs. 

It took me a little while though to adjust to the wider context.  After squeezing a single verse for all its observational riches, I now needed to be a little more selective in observation over a broader text.  There is nothing wrong with extracting observations at the deepest gramatical level, you just need to watch that you don't miss the forest by focusing on one specific tree.

While I didn't have any problems with completing the assignment, I may hang on to it for a little while longer.  I want to keep reading through it to make sure I captured the most significant observations and didn't miss anything.  I know I'll arrive at the point where I'm tired of looking at it and that will be the best time to turn it in.

Spanning the Bible

One thing I keep hearing over and over from the faculty and staff at Dallas Theological Seminary is the importance of getting saturated with the Bible over the course of a degree program.  In fact, all the programs are built around making sure students get a handle on and are exposed to all 66 books.  That is an exciting prospect.  Let's track it and see how well they do!

I think what I'll do is track how many books of the Bible I cover in the MBTS program and track how many chapters I touch.  I'll record any texts that are studied specifically for my courses and I'll also count texts studied during the chapel services.  Passing references will not be recorded.

I'll work on an infographic for this, but for now here are the raw numbers:

Books of the Bible: 6/66
Chapters of the Bible: 7/1198

Another Tool for the Toolbox

As I continue to hone my observation skills, I came across another very helpful website http://www.englishpage.com/index.html .  Very easy to navigate layout and I like the way the grammar information is presented.  It's not frilly, but it's very functional!

Coming Up

On Friday, I'll just post a regular weekly update on my time distribution and perhaps a lesson learned or two.  I may have a few more words about my learning assignments and even another grade or two.  We'll just have to wait and see.