Academic Life

It Wasn't Greek to Me

Although college life can be a fun life, you soon find out that you are supposed to attend class.  As a matter of fact that’s what you pay for, and if you cut class, you’re cheating yourself.   If you know anything at all about today’s education costs, you will be shocked when you find out what I actually paid.   The tuition was $160 a semester.  No, I’m not talking about a semester hour – I’m talking about 18 semester hours.

During our first semester were required to take a class that introduced us to the college experience.   It was basically a psychology class, taught by Max Leach.   He was a remarkable person, and an incredible communicator. However some of his advice proved to be poor advice in my case.   I don’t blame him for it.  I blame my own immaturity.

He was trying to help “high school hotshots” accept some of the realities of college studies.  He said, “I know that many of you made straight A’s in high school.   You probably expect to do the same thing here, but this is a different discipline and it may not happen.  The average student makes a C.   For a long time I was content just to be a C student.   I didn’t apply myself as well as I might have.   I was really too immature to either understand the demands of a college education or to put forth the necessary discipline to reach excellence.   It was not until my senior year that I began to realize I could do better.  I made my first A that year.   I finished with a 2.4 GPA. I went into graduate school on academic probation and managed to earn a 3.7 GPA.

I think I could have done better than that, had I been willing to study Greek as an undergraduate.   A deacon in the church at Clyde urged me not to enroll in Greek.  The school had a ministry preparation track that did not require Greek.  He thought Greek would be too demanding for me, and that I would not do well in the classroom.   I think he must have thought that dumb and poor are the same thing.  I was not dumb.  I would never have become a Rhodes scholar no matter how well I applied myself, but I was certainly capable of better performance.  Besides that I’ve always risen to a challenge.  I’ve made good grades in “hard” classes, and my poorest grades have been in the ones that  were supposed to be easy. I have taught myself a certain amount of Greek since then, and I came to realize that the secret to the study of Greek is learning the grammatical rules and the vocabulary.   I’ve always excelled in grammar.  When I reached grad school, I was asked to do scripture exegesis and I always felt my lack of Greek skill knocked me down to a B in the exegetical courses.  I don’t want to leave the impression that I’ve mastered Greek through independent study.  I know enough to know how much I don’t know.  A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing when it comes to the study of Greek.

Part of my academic shortcomings can be laid on to immaturity, which in turn led to poor study habits.   Another part of it involved my social life.  I loved being in college, and hanging around college students.  I enjoyed sharing lunch with my fellow students in the Grill and solving the world’s problem.  I also stayed socially connected at Clyde.  From an academic standpoint, I would have been much better off had I gone away to school.  However, I eventually found out where the library was located, and I began spending a lot more time in it.