For the moment I just thought I would give the blogging world a quick update. If you've talked to me at all you probably know that the past couple months have been filled with a lot of anxiety. I graduate from Saint Paul this May and have applied to 7 different PhD programs for the Fall. At the same time I have been running the maze that is the candidacy process in the UMC. As I have been waiting .... and waiting.... and waiting to hear back from the schools, the stress has only grown not knowing where I would be living or what I would be doing only months from now.
Anyways, I got into one program at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. GTU is a consortium of 9 different seminaries in the San Francisco area that does a joint PhD program with the University of California. Then on Friday I finally received their financial aid offer which pretty much covers all but a small portion of the tuition. It's not a perfect situation where I receive a full tuition grant and a living stipend, but such things are pretty hard to get in this economy, coming out of a small seminary like Saint Paul, and not being a whiz at standardized testing.
So now comes the decision: do I go for the PhD or do I work for a full-time appointment. I know I've been vocally in support of PhD work for a long time, but this really is something that I have been on the fence about. It's a tough call since each is a valuable ministry of the church. Also, being involved in both academia and church work here in KC, I have thoroughly enjoyed them both. Plus the thought of learning two new languages, writing some ridiculously long papers, and taking some pretty intense tests is kind of intimidating right now. Not going to lie on that one.
Right now I have to say it's looking like I'm going to go to GTU. It's still quite the choice to make (I really don't know if I'm old enough to be making these kind of life decisions, ha!), but am definitely leaning that direction pretty strongly. For a while there I was pretty pessimistic about my prospects for grad programs and started shutting down the academic part of my brain that had been driving me forward. However, once I got that acceptance and began to consider PhD work once again I really figured out what I had been missing.
These are exciting times. For once, I am looking toward the future with a hopeful mind and don't have the weight of the unknown bearing down on me. God is good!
