Why the Derek/Sandra breakup makes me sad, and why that probably means I still need to grow up

It was my junior year of college. I lived with three other Christian guys in an apartment somewhere north of where I sit right now. We spent many a late night over pancakes (during which we may or may not have felt like coffee), learning about how love is different than you'd think, and though none of us was expecting a postcard from anywhere, we were each ready to make a daring escape into the mistake of our lives.

We found significant consolation for the loneliness that we all felt in our inescapable fellowship and the brooding-yet-hopeful music that Derek Webb brought to us in our canon of Caedmon's Call albums. Derek, we felt in our hearts, understood us and reminded us of God's faithfulness. His lyrics, chords, and tempos taught us that it was okay to not feel okay, and that we can be okay with that.

Today, each of us is married (and, I suspect, would do so all over again), and I'm glad we learned in college to be okay with not being okay, because it's not okay to think that marriage makes everything okay. And when I need a reminder of that, I just turn my music player to my "Caedmon's Extended Call" playlist (including Caedmon's, Derek Webb solo, and The Normals).

Yesterday, Derek publicly announced his divorce, and I found myself feeling extremely sad. Perhaps it's the culmination of a heavy week semester pre-tenure run 27 years of academic progress, and this news finally prompted me to sit down and show some feels.

But also, perhaps this sadness is a sign that I still need to grow up a little.

I know I easily transition from finding comfort in music to living vicariously through it, and from identifying with music to letting it inform my identity. Maybe I still need to grow up and learn to make my own kind of music, and be okay with how it sounds.

Summertime

...and the bloggin is easy. Apparently not, since I haven't posted most of this month! I think I'll post sporadically over the summer. It's been a good year but my brain is tired...

A few personal updates:

• My five year anniversary with Amy Lane is this Friday!
• I started teaching Aviation Physics as a hybrid course last week. I've never taught (or seen) a hybrid introductory physics course. So far it's going well. (Of course, we haven't hit free-body diagrams yet...)
• I'm listening through Beethoven's Symphonies, as conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I'm halfway through #5, and find it sad that the second movement is so often upstaged by the first.
• I'm trying something very different in my Electromagnetic Theory I course in the Fall; more on that later...
• I'm re-reading Sire's Habits of the Mind. As always, when I re-read a book, I find myself wondering why I highlighted some of the things I did, and why I didn't highlight others. Sire & Newman are right: The mind is like a mountain climber...

See you around!

Undergraduate Corner: What have you learned?

At the end of each semester, I ask my students to write me one page of text describing the three most important things they've learned in my class. The things the learned can be about physics, math, engineering, science in general, life in general, etc.

I think it's important for them (and all of us) to reflect on what they've learned, instead of just rushing off to Summer Break to crash on Mom & Dad's couch.

(This question also benefits me, since I make copies of their answers to go in my yearly evaluation & tenure portfolio! I find they provide a nice complement to the course evaluations.)

So... what are the three most important things you've learned this semester?

Undergraduate Corner: Insightful Book

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

What's Wrong With University: And How to Make It Work For You Anyway looks to be an insightful book on undergraduate life. You can find a number of interesting excerpts on the site.

Undergraduate Corner: "Who Told You That?"

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

I think one of the most underutilized verses in the Bible is right at the beginning: "Who told you you were naked?"

I had a similar question arise last week in my Quantum Mechanics class.

One of my students was growing frustrated with his halting success and many intellectual roadblocks to completing the first round of homework problems. "How can I calculate this thing [the expectation value of x]?" he asked. "I've never even seen this kind of formula!"

I spent the better part of this week thinking over how to help him overcome his frustrations. It is, at first glance, an intimidating formula

but there was something odd about his frustration.

Then, I realized what it was: He was expecting to be able to complete this course using only concepts he already knew.

"Who told him that?" I asked myself. "Who told him he needed to know everything before taking a course?"

I realized, then, that this was a cognitive hurdle that many of my students were troubled by, at all levels of physics.

I brought this up with the student during class on Friday, as the students began to work another set of problems. "Somewhere along the way," I said, "someone told you---and many of your classmates---that you had to know everything before coming into a course. I don't know who did, or when or why, but that's what keeps you from succeeding."

His jaw hit the floor. He realized that it was true---and went on to best a rather lengthy Quantum Mechanics problem, involving many formulas more scary than that for <x> quoted above.

Where did these students get this idea? Who told them they did not---and could not ever---have what it takes?

The Real Academic Calendar

This was forwarded to me by a colleague. Very true!

The Real Academic Calendar



By Laurie Fendrich


I just learned from my very smart colleague, Neil Donahue, associate dean of Hofstra’s Honors College, that I’ve been stupidly following the wrong academic calendar in setting up my spring courses. I was structuring the content of my courses around our two-day spring break, our long spring vacation, our study days and the examination schedule. How foolish could I have been? Turns out the real academic calendar follows the successive philosophical stages through which all students necessarily progress.


For the reader’s benefit, I’ve added my own words of explanation to Neil’s academic calendar and have forwarded this to the provost’s office. I’m confident that by next spring our academic calendar will be organized the right way, and look like this:


Idealism


Early January. Because students don’t have very many claims on their attention, it’s good to send out reading assignments even before school begins.


Optimism


February. Students love all their courses, and are gung-ho about doing well. There’s no reason they can’t earn a grade of “A” in just about every course. This is the time when smart professors really pile on the work.


Realism


March. Students have come to terms with the fact that it’s going to be darn hard to get all those “A’s” they originally thought would just fall in their laps. The moment calls for triage: It’s time to figure out whether to drop calculus or the course in the history of mirrors. Also, students need more sleep than they’re getting, and the way to fix that is to sleep through the first half of the early morning class.


Pessimism


April. It’s too late. Whole lives are doomed. Students will never get into law school with the grades you, the vile, wretched, cruel-hearted professor, have been unfairly giving out.


Cynicism


May. The semester ends. Professors never gave students a chance, or considered how hard they tried. The world is stacked against them. What does it matter? There are no jobs out there anyway.


Sybaritism


June. Whatever happened in the past is over and done with. Time to forget everything and party like hell.


NOTE: Summer inevitably passes. With fall, the Sisyphean climb resumes.

Undergraduate Corner: Praying for First Impressions

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."


As you've probably guessed from the time of year and the lateness of this blog post, the Spring semester is about to begin! Mine begins tomorrow morning at 9:00 am.

And that means that I and other Christian professors get another chance to make a good first impression for the sake of the gospel. We know that a student's first impressions of a professor and the course largely determine his experience the rest of the semester. I often realize all too late into the term that I failed to show my students an honest representation of myself, and that my public witness has suffered because of it.

It's also a time, of course, for Christian students to make a successful first impression on their professors. It's very easy for a student to stand out at the beginning of the semester, simply by asking a question, visiting office hours the first day, e-mailing a question to the professor, or (as one of my students has already done) getting a head start on the first homework assignment.

So, let's pray for each other this week, as we all begin to learn new faces and names, as we forge new relationships that could serve as conduits for the gospel. Let's pray that we'll bear in mind that we don't want to ultimately be remembered as someone who got all the questions right, or spoke up every class, or wrote a killer term paper, but as people who are in love with a living savior, who respond eagerly to His call.

Undergraduate Corner: What do you want to be remembered for?

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

I managed to go all semester without referring to Tim Tebow on this blog, but here goes...

At the lunch before the Heisman trophy award ceremony, there was a friendly conversation between Florida's Tim Tebow and Texas' Colt McCoy. McCoy---whose team is off to the national championship game---said something to the effect of, "Even if I win the Heisman, and even if my team goes on to win the national championship, I still don't have a plaque at my stadium. How do you do that?"

The conversation led me to think of a question I often ask myself: "How do you want to be remembered?" I think it's a worthwhile question, especially for college students who are in their university culture for such an interesting length of time. It seems like four years is just long enough for someone else to be able to remember you for the rest of his life---for good or for bad.

So how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered as the person who won all the awards and received all the accolades? Or do you want to be remembered as someone who cared about others and brought out the best in them? Do you want to be remembered as the "religious" person who knew all the right verses? Or do you want to be remembered as someone who lived out the gospel is humility, love, and faithfulness?

McCoy's statement also led me to think of a similarly-structured statement made by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13: "If I speak the languages of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

It seems Paul didn't want to be remembered for his actions, his gifts, and his accomplishments, but for his love.

So what do you want to be remembered for?

Undergraduate Corner: Some Alternative Christmas Readings

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

If you're like me, one of the biggest challenges you face as you head into winter break is the familiarity of it. The familiarity can be very comforting---heading home, eating Mom's food, going to church with your parents, hanging your favorite ornament on the tree (if your younger brother hasn't already!)---but it can also be very detrimental.

I've written about this before, but the scenario goes like this: If you're a typical undergraduate who's grown up in the church, you've heard the Christmas story read to you upwards of 100 times now. The wording that Luke and Matthew use roll through your ears without really touching your brain or your heart like a song that was popular ten years ago, especially since your home church's pastor is probably reading from the same version he's read from those other 100 times you've heard it. Before you know it, the beginning of the Spring semester hits, and you haven't really felt spiritually refreshed.

So, here's a challenge both for you and for me: Let's try reading on our own some alternative Christmas-related texts from the Bible this month.

Here are a few suggestions; please add your own in the comments section, and we'll build a list to last us all Christmas!

Isaiah 11

Philippians 2:1-11 (You might even just read the entire chapter!)

1 John 1:1-5 (You might even just read the entire letter!)

Revelation 12

Exodus 29:45-46, Leviticus 26:11-13, Ezekiel 37:24-28, Revelation 21 (Note the similar theme with John 1:14.)

Undergraduate Corner: Surviving Winter Break

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

The end of the semester is not that far away. In just a few weeks, undergrads all over the country will be packing up their bags, selling back their textbooks, making sure they have that cute lab partner's cell number, and heading home. They'll finally get to sleep (for about 1.5 days straight) in their own bed, eat their favorite meal that their mother prepares (we call ours "Good Chicken"--does that name even need a description?), and spend a few glorious weeks not having to think about Salinger, free-body diagrams, or inelastic demand.

But Christian students may also find it difficult to spend time thinking about God.

Here's the scenario: The Christian college student returns home, and either 1. skips church (understandable given their dire need of sleep) or 2. goes back to their "old church" (is six months ago really that old?) and it simply isn't the same as it used to be (especially if half of their friends from high school aren't there) AND they're hearing the Christmas story which, although powerful, sounds familiar to them and they begin to zone out.

After a very short time, their few weeks of rest have passed, and they return to campus with bellies that are full but souls that are still deflated. And beginning the spring semester (which doesn't even offer the release of football, unless your team is headed to the national championship...) with a deflated soul makes it very long indeed.

So, I'd offer the following advice to Christian students who are just 1.5 months away from winter break:

1. Pick up a Christian book to read over break. I know you don't think that you'll want to read anything, but you might actually find it restful to use your brain on something other than schoolwork. Might I recommend Knowing God by Packer, which has simple language and self-contained chapters, or The Call by Guinness, which just might stir up your motivation to enter the spring semester with a renewed vigor?
2. Stay in touch with Christian friends from school. (Besides your cute lab partner...) Spend some time praying together. Share about what you're reading.
3. Reflect on what you've learned. The end of a college semester is such a rushed time---for students and faculty---such that we rarely have time to think back on what we've learned, how it all relates, how God is showing us His glory in all of it, and how He's using it all to prepare us for a life of service.

What are some suggestions you have for Christian undergrads on their way home?

Undergraduate Corner: Don't Make Jesus a Stranger

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

You probably saw the title to this blog posting and thought, "Yeah, I know; make sure I keep up my relationship with Jesus while I'm in college." Chances are, if you're reading this post, you are making an effort to keep up your relationship with Jesus while you're in college.

But I mean something else.

I'm referring to the tendency of Christian college students who have a near-insatiable craving to understand their faith better, and who dive deeply into even the most difficult writings of Scripture to better understand what it teaches, and to craft a seamless, clean-cut, unshakable personal statement of faith that summarizes what they believe the Bible says.


Okay, perhaps that last sentence was a little hyperbolic (that's the adjective of "hyperbole," not the mathematical curve), but you get the idea: Christian college students--the ones who grow in their faith during their college years--tend to dive into Scripture more than they ever have before. And it seems like they spend 99% of their Bible study time in Paul's letters.


Again, the 99% figure is a little hyperbolic. But when we're seeking to fine-tune our personal doctrine, we (college student or otherwise) do tend to spend a lot of time in Paul's writings. But that makes sense, right? Paul is certainly the biblical author who speaks most about doctrine and the need for doctrinal correctness. He's also one of the most straightforward authors, keeping his points pretty well-separated and usually saving his application points for when he knows you understand his doctrine; he's even got a few arguments that can stand up against that big scary atheistic professor you've got in class tomorrow.


Except here is the problem: I think that sometimes, we spend so much time and energy reading and understanding Paul, that when we return to the Jesus depicted in the Gospels (who didn't always speak about the need for doctrinal correctness; who didn't always keep His points well-separated; who wove doctrine and application together seamlessly; who spoke in stories instead of sophisticated arguments), He seems like a stranger to us.


Think of it this way: If your church's leadership announced they wanted to hire a new pastor, and invited their top candidate to give a guest sermon, with whom would you be more comfortable? A pastor whose sermon sounds like Paul, or a pastor whose sermon sounds like Jesus?


So, as we dive into Scripture to understand the Christian faith, let's not make Jesus a stranger.


When have you experienced this estrangement from Jesus of Nazereth, the Messiah depicted in the Gospels? How did you overcome it?

What about other authors of Scripture? Whose writings do you feel most uncomfortable reading?


Have you found a balanced way to read the Bible, where every author and every genre seems natural to you?

Undergraduate Corner: For a limited time only...

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

College is only temporary. This is a big relief, since even the most seasoned student feels dogged by exams and term paper due dates and miscellaneous grade requirements that he read about in the syllabus on the first day but the professor never mentioned them again so he forgot about them. It means that "real life" will, one day, begin.

But the temporariness of college life is also something of a challenge. It means that you only have four five a limited number of years to take advantage of all of the resources available to you. When will you ever again have access to a college library, or to full-length electronic journal articles? When will you ever again be able to to waltz into a laboratory and experiment with the equipment? When will you ever again be able to sit down over coffee with the most studied minds in the world? When will you ever again be encouraged to pursue the connections between the different fields of study? Most importantly, when will you ever again have the free time to investigate the questions of the universe, and receive credit in return?


Don't waste your learning. Don't let your college years pass by without digging into the questions that raise your curiosity. Don't miss the opportunity to network with other interested individuals. Don't turn down the chance to develop novel answers in your field of interest and impact your corner of the academic world for Christ. And don't let these years pass by without contemplating how all these pursuits ultimately point you to the glorious God who holds all the answers and loves to see us ask, seek, and knock for them.

"Doubly Marginalized" returns on Thursday. Many thanks to the Emerging Scholars Blog for listing it in last week's Week in Review!

Undergraduate Corner: Take your rest

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

If I could give one piece of practical advice to undergraduate students, it would be this: Take your rest.

When God was leading the recently freed Jewish people across the desert and fed them with miraculous bread, He required that they spend six days going out and gathering the bread, but that one out of every seven days they not gather any bread. The idea (at least partly) was to remind them that everything they had was from God, and that they needed to spend time thinking about Him and loving Him so that they trusted Him with the other six days of the week. He also reminded them that even God Himself took a rest after creating the universe.

When Jesus came on the scene, this idea of rest had been turned into a legal requirement so wrought with details and stipulations that one had to do more work to understand & obey the rules than one did the other six days of the week. Jesus tore down this stricture with the statement that humans weren't created for the practice of rest, but that the practice of rest was created for humans. In other words, rest belongs to humans, like so many others of God's gifts.

And so, if f I could give one piece of practical advice to undergraduate students, it would be this: Take your rest. It's your rest that God wants to give to you. When we don't take time to rest, we're not just disobeying God; we're also shortchanging and hurting ourselves.

But it's hard to do that in college! You always have more on the list of things that have to be done, right up until the end of the semester, when you're whisked back home as soon as your last exam is over. Wouldn't it make more sense to get as much done as possible every day so that you can have some peace of mind when you do take a break? What if you set aside a day to rest but on that very day you figure out how to solve that circuits problem that's been daunting you all week?

Figuring out when to rest and when to plow through the work is tricky, and I think the answer is different for each person. Some students may need one day a week completely free from work responsibilities and some may need three sets of 8 hours of rest dispersed throughout the week. But here are a few practical ways that I try to ensure that I'm pursuing a healthy amount of rest; perhaps you'll find them a helpful starting point.

1. When I was in graduate school, I decided not to do any more school work after 9:00 pm---regardless of where I was in the assignment, or how much energy I felt I had, or if I had just entered "the zone" at 8:55 pm. At 9:00 pm, I put the books down and got ready for bed. And do you know what I found out? By getting enough sleep, I was able to actually follow the professor the next day in class, such that I was more effective at the next homework assignment, which meant that I got more sleep, which meant I was able to pay attention better... It's a lovely cycle.
2. I take my "day of rest" from approximately 7:00 pm on Saturday to approximately 7:00 pm on Sunday. I find that worship is so much more meaningful on Sunday morning if I've already had some time of rest beforehand, instead of arriving at church and saying, "Oh, I'm supposed to rest today. Right. I'll get right on that." Also, ending my rest at some point Sunday evening means I have a couple hours to get ready to return to work the next morning.
   
3. While I'm at church, I always have some means of writing down important thoughts (a notepad, the memo app on my phone). It's the nature of academic work that new research ideas or innovative solutions to a problem come in waves and flashes that can't be summoned or put on hold. So, if I have such a wave or flash at church, I quickly write down the thought, and (time permitting) I reason it out for a few minutes to make sure I understand the idea. Then, satisfied, I turn back to worship and rest. (If I don't write down such a thought, it tends to bug me all day.)
4. When I need to skip church, I skip church. I know this sounds horrible, but sometimes on my day of rest I need to, well, rest, such that going to church that day may be more stress than I (or my wife) can handle. Don't get me wrong; I think we need to perceive public worship as a time of rest (and church leaders need to make sure it's structured to be restful), but we also need to understand that public worship each and every week is not a requisite for rest.

What do you think? What have you found to be effective ways to take your rest? How has God met you while you've rested?