From College to Seminary

I retired from my faculty position sixteen years ago.  Recently, I began teaching again.  I made acquaintance with a few first semester students and felt compelled to offer some unsolicited advice, based on my nine years on a college faculty and twenty-two years on a Seminary faculty: You are not going back to college.  You are now enrolled in Graduate School. More will be expected, and even demanded of you.  When something is due on a specific day and time, you will be graded down if you miss the deadline, no excuses nor apologies accepted.  When you say you will do something, you will be expected to do it. Your schedule will be full, so you will need to manage your time.  Just because you are involved in a ministry situation, is no excuse for missing a class or an assignment.  You will have professors who sincerely believe you belong to them – your time, your commitment, your assignments.  Some classes will seem more important and exciting than others, but they are all important, or they would not be in the curriculum.  You will like some professors more than others, but you will need to listen and learn from even the ones you don’t like.  You are entering some of the best years of your life.  Take it seriously.  Again, this is not college.  In Graduate School, you will need to “put on your big-person pants” so to speak, and take more seriously than ever before, the words of the Lord, “You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest regions, and said to you, you are My servant, I have chosen you . . .” (Isaiah 41:9).