Jul 12, 2008

B for Becoming better

When I graduated from Petra, I clearly understood that I was an incomplete graduate, that I lacked so many things which any true Patrafied graduate should have had. Since then, I have been concerned how to become more sophisticated.

I was thinking about it again yesterday night, and suddenly realized one stunning fact: I have learned almost nothing from Mr. V’s Bible Interpretation class! I remember I have tried to ask several questions about Christianity, but they were all off-topic, so Mr. V denied to answer them, and Richard’s responses to my questions weren’t really efficient since I couldn’t understand much what he said back then. As a matter of fact, the only thing I think I’ve learned in that class was merely knowing “what’s going on” in the books Esther, Ruth, and the Gospels. I did not understand the “points” or any innate lesson from them, and I didn’t have any idea what the book Philippians was talking about. How crazy it truly was!

Surely, I am not going to criticize Mr. V at all, especially after watching “true” graduates making their speeches, any single one of them expressed how challenging Mr. V’s classes were, and how many things they have learned from him. However, I truly don’t think it was my fault neither (bad me.) I did try in that class and I got an A for the final, and a high B for the class. The only thing bothers me is that somehow I’ve missed a chance to be a better interpreter, and if only I could go back and attained his class again, I might have been appreciate the class much more (and maybe I would have mentioned Mr. V in my speech also.)

Back then when I received my final grades, I kept thinking that if only I have got an A in my Bible class, I would get straight A’s and become… another Richard (never mind about this.) As now I am thinking back, I am actually glad that it was not an A, or else things would have become really ridiculous.

The thought leads me to wonder if I really deserve all the A’s in the other classes. I realized the difference was that in those classes, I really learned things and my knowledge in those fields have improved a lot. Because of that, I was given A’s even though I was still so far behind my classmates. An A was not showing what level I was at, but how big the improvement I got. Realizing these, I am extremely thankful.

“Hey Anh, how're your grades in college?”

“Are you asking about the official grades or the real ones?”

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I wrote this post last night, after I went to bed about two hours.

5 comments:

Richard Gianforte said...

:) Yea, I got a lot of "sure"s while trying to give answers to some of the really hard questions you asked in Mr. V's class. I think English was a substantial barrier, especially early on. It's OK, keep working to grow in knowledge and wisdom.

I am far from perfect. One thing I found in Africa is that I felt sufficient to answer almost any challenge to the gospel, but that I was afraid to begin a conversation with someone. I need to work on the initiation of talks with non-Christians.

Anonymous said...

If you must know, you were not the only one. And English is my native language! I was confused and frustrated 99.9% of the time in Valeriano's classes. I love Mr. Valeriano, but it was his style of teaching that didn't suit me particularly.
And philosophy confuses me (well, actually it bores me in most cases, which leads to confusion and lack of interest).
Just read poetry instead.

Anh said...

You should only Maria. :)

the real Juniper said...

I guess I could say I learned a lot from him...about how much I actually don't know! And probably a lot about how much he doesn't know either. That's the annoying thing about philosophy, it just seems to be a pooling of questions with no answers. And studying the Bible can be a bit like that as well. Especially with Mr V!

Maria Tusken said...

I like nutella.