Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Thank you, Hope.

It was good to visit Hope. I needed to visit people. I needed to goof around with Ross. I needed to meet with Dr. Randel. I needed to have her answer some questions for me. I needed to see the campus. I needed to laugh at the shuttle bus. Yes, Hope College now has a bus (for real). I'm still in shock. I needed to take care of some business and have a little closure on some things. And as usual, I needed to have someone be rude to me so the whole thing wouldn't be a bed of thornless roses. And to make the whole experience complete, I needed to get rained on.

But there's definitely a sense of... the place has moved on. Hope College and Holland, Michigan, while they are special to me, aren't my home anymore. Unless I were to move there for a job, or for Western Theological Seminary, or back to Hope for another baccalaureate degree (umm, no?), I know that those places aren't home anymore. It just ISN'T. It's another place, where I marked out a valuable four years of my life and I've now closed the book and opened a new chapter somewhere else.

I think Dr. Randel made it a bit clearer to me where my path lies, though. "Can we talk about graduate school, please?" And the thought that kept sticking in my mind is what she said about what her life is like now. "My life now as a professor isn't all that different. It focuses more now on teaching, but I still do my research when I'm not doing things related to teaching. It's not that different from graduate school."

Music education, while it is something that I will always advocate for, and value, has slowly changed for me. That sounds, more and more, like something that I want. In fact, I think that's probably more what I've always wanted all along. I've wanted to teach at a higher level. And in fact, I think the preparation in the music education program at Hope may come back to be the most helpful thing for teaching if I do in fact want to teach at the collegiate level. I remember ranting about professors who have no teaching ability because they have no idea how teaching works or qualities of a teacher. I know if I want to be a professor, I don't want to be one of them.

The question is now... where to begin? Where would I like to go? What do I want to study? And... how do I reach Dr. Randel's elusive goal that she laid for me: NOT PAYING FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL? Is this the next step? Or does God have something else for me first?

Comments(1)

Just keep following God's lead! sounds like an interesting visit to hope!

Buhcaw