I know that not everyone reads the comments on blog posts, but I thought this one worthy of “upgrading” to post status, as it says something I wanted to say but didn’t. And better. Gunner writes, quoting TMC professor Greg Behle:

I’ve heard you say this before, and have adopted this method myself for a few years now, but it’s always good to hear. How I wish I had taken more extensive notes in college… and in life. I used to try to write down the things I thought were important. But Greg Behle killed any perceived logic behind THAT method when he said (paraphrase):

“One of the main reasons you’re even IN this class is that you don’t KNOW what’s important and what’s not! If you already knew what was essential and what was peripheral, you shouldn’t have signed up for the class. Rather, write down EVERYTHING, and decide later (once you’re more informed) what’s important and what’s not.”

I’d rather take extensive notes and later find out that they’re not important than NOT take notes and later realize that they would’ve been pure gold.

AMEN!

A second “sin” of the student that I’d like to suggest is less encompassing than the first (short-sightedness) and actually could be regarded as an example of it. The “sin” is not taking notes (or not taking good notes).

I’ve told my students that the greatest mistake I made in college was not taking good notes, and the best thing I did in grad school was to take good notes. So I speak from experience, both good and bad.

In college I was a youth ministry major and the classes were intensely practical. The teacher was excellent and I learned a lot from him. But his style did not foster taking notes. For instance, some days we would go sit outside “under the oaks” while he taught. He rarely gave exams, and if he did, they weren’t based on the “lecture” material. His style was also rather informal, and it provoked discussion. In other words, I “felt” like it wasn’t necessary to take notes. And I didn’t. What I regret now is that so much of that wisdom is forever lost to me. I heard it and I forgot it. If only I had written it down and I could go back. And yes, even though I’m not in “youth ministry” per se, much of it was just general wisdom that would be beneficial to me whatever I’m doing.

By the time I got to grad school (M.A. program in Israel), I had figured out how to take notes. One thing that helped was that the teaching method was largely lecture and a lecture-based exam. Sometimes the one exam determined your grade for the whole course! So I learned to take good notes. My method was/is simple: bring my computer because I can type about 5x faster than I can write (and if you can’t, take a typing class or buy a typing program and learn to type – it’s worth the investment of time and money!). Then I simply would type everything the teacher said. Or almost everything. I can’t always keep up, but I do as best as I can. Afterwards, I go back and organize and arrange the notes. This both makes the notes more accessible and understandable to me in the future, but it also helps me to review and learn the material.

This is still my method today. When I go to a lecture, I bring my computer and type everything. Students think I’m strange. But I want to learn it and I don’t want to forget it. And if I don’t take notes, I certainly will forget it. I know this because from time to time I go back to various notes that I have taken in the past and it reads like I’ve never heard it before :-). I hate the fact that my memory is so poor, but I use good notes to compensate for it. And I have 13 years (so far) of blessing from it.

I saw this billboard several times yesterday in Bethlehem. It expresses the desire to press forward with the “peace process” now that Gaza is “free.” A few thoughts:

1. This is a “victory” sign for the Palestinians. They “won” Gaza by terror, and if they aren’t given the West Bank (in its entirety), then they will “win” that too. This is not my prediction; this is what the chief of Israeli intelligence is saying. With what withdrawal will the Arabs be satisfied and stop clamoring for more?

2. Perpetuating the illusion that Jerusalem is a possibility for the Israelis to surrender to the Palestinians is foolish and counter-productive. How about changing the “road map” to include a provision that the Palestinians agree to release all claim to Jerusalem as the next step, before which the Israelis will take no steps.

3. Of all the things to make one sad, it is the person whom the Palestinians put on their posters. Arafat’s face is everywhere in Bethlehem. They know he is a crook who literally stole from his people. They know that he cost them far more than he ever gave them. They know that he is a terrorist who killed innocent women and children. Still they hold him forth as their hero. What does this portend for the “nation” of Palestine, when their “George Washington” is such a person. The damage is more than just internal; the world looks at Arafat and thinks that all Palestinians are like him. They are not. But you wouldn’t know it from their posters.

The answer to #1, if you are completely ignorant of all Arab history and rhetoric: Tel Aviv

A few years ago I distinctly remember returning from a “Jerusalem Approaches” field trip and thinking, That was the worst trip I’ve ever been on. It wasn’t because of the students – they were great (Sp01), but it was largely because we simply couldn’t go to all the good places, because of Palestinian terrorism. And the weather was lousy.

Yesterday was different. We could go back and do almost the same trip we did before 2000. In the last year and a half we started going back to Bethlehem and Herodium. Yesterday I added Tekoa, the wilderness route to En Gedi, and Solomon’s Pools back to the list. (Though I’m not confident that they will stay because of the likelihood of increased terrorism in the West Bank now that the Gaza withdrawal is complete.)

Here’s a photo of the border wall that the Israelis have built to seal off the West Bank. This opening allows passage through on the ancient “Road of the Patriarchs” (or Watershed Ridge). If only Abraham knew what the results would be of his taking of Hagar. The land that God gave him is now being walled off in sections. And that meant we missed one of the things I liked to do – walk from Bethany to Jerusalem. Now the wall cuts off Bethany from Bethphage and so the walk is no longer possible.

Growing up, my parents never let us miss school. I’m of another mind, and yesterday Luke skipped. Instead of the usual first-grade fare, he got to climb over the Mt. of Olives, learn about the last week of Christ’s life, visit the traditional birthplace of Jesus, and see the massive reservoirs of Herod (aka Solomon’s Pools). And climb around in the Bar Kochba tunnels of the Herodium. All of that with the best college prof that lives at his house :-).

Earlier this week I began a series of posts on the “sins of the student,” starting with the folly of short-sightedness. I want to give a second example of short-sightedness that I see all too frequently: in the selection of classes (or assignments).

One example I heard recently was of a student who was “undecided” for their major, but took the “Federalist Papers” as a freshman. I don’t merely measure bad choices by the immediate cause (i.e., I didn’t learn anything), but also by the opportunity lost (e.g., a chance to take a course on the “Life of Christ” or a course in writing). I also don’t blame the adviser. Students take note: advisers are busy and for many of them, you’re just one on a list. They are not responsible for getting you the best education; you are. My wife had this very problem in college: taking the right classes but at the wrong time (a combination of poor advising and closed classes). I happen to believe that course selection (and timing!) is extremely important. Too many students view it as a “shopping experience” (yes, unfortunately with “cart” and all these days), with not much to be lost. Oh but there is! You should not take Minor Prophets before you take OT Survey, and you should not take Theological Systems before you take Theology I. (I also think it should be forbidden to take NT before OT, but that’s a separate subject.) You should never take a senior level course as a freshman, and rarely as a sophmore. Decisions matter. If you have a lame adviser, find someone who can give you the right counsel and then take your list back to your adviser for approval. Better to repeat three times than to waste your semester. (Hey, I could write a book: “Don’t Waste Your Semester” :-)).

I also have witnessed students who choose a course based on its degree of difficulty (or rather, lack thereof). I’m not one to suggest taking a course solely because it is hard, but it is clearly short-sighted to skip a good course because 1) the assignments are hard; 2) the teacher gives lower grades than are deserved. This is particularly true where #1 is something that is clearly needed in order for the student to grow mentally. At my college, it is often the dreaded “paper” that causes students to flee. Because many other courses don’t require papers (shamefully so), the student need not even be very skillful to avoid them throughout his college years. The result: a college graduate who cannot write. The worst situation for a teacher is to have a graduating student who fails the course (and thus doesn’t graduate) because he cannot write a minimally proficient paper. Many are the schools in which the large majority of courses require at least one research paper. Given that I believe that learning to write is one of the two major goals of a college education, I think that this is the right approach.

The point for the student then is to make choices that are best for him/her in the long run. That would include taking courses where skills that the student is weak in are stressed and effectively graded.

The student who chooses the easier class so that he has a better chance of keeping his academic scholarship ironically forfeits the very education the scholarship is intended to give him.

It is quite possible to spend $100,000 on an education and learn very little. And it happens too often because of short-sighted decisions.

A friend recently started a blog for TMS Alumni (that being alumni of The Master’s Seminary). I would be one of them, having graduated with an M.Div. in 1996 (and nearly finished with a Th.M.). Instead of posting here today, I decided to contribute to that blog. My comments are why I like A Biblical History of Israel, by Provan, Long and Longman (2003). You can read it here. The blog is too young for me to know how profitable it will be, but I know there’s at least one post there that I completely agree with!

A couple of weeks ago I was walking through the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem when I saw the flag of the Israel Antiquities Authority waving from a rooftop. I thought it odd and so snapped a couple of pictures. I guessed that one of the ultra-religious/nationalistic groups owned some property there and was having an excavation done before renovations and construction. But I knew nothing else and didn’t have time to investigate. Now Haaretz has a story about it. In short, they excavated about 40 feet (12 m) down and 65 feet (20 m) across, including underneath some people’s houses. Those people aren’t too thrilled with it. Will they find anything of interest? My guess is that they won’t, because the earlier material is way below the surface, especially in this area which is in the Central Valley.

In the photo you can see the blue flag of the Antiquities Authority and the tarp which keeps the sun off of the workers. The street below is el-Wad (the Valley) Street, just north of the Western Wall prayer plaza.

In a comment to a previous post, I mentioned that it’s a sin for a teacher to be boring. That prompted a friend to ask me to share my thoughts on the “sins of a student.” Thus this post is the first of a few on that subject. I think that many of the readers of this blog are former students of mine, which means they may not benefit from this (because – 1, I’ve already knocked them over the head each way about these things, and 2, they’re no longer students). In any case, the first “sin of the student” is that they are short-sighted.

I actually wrote a mental sermon related to this a few months back, but it was never written or preached. But I find it to be true every semester. It’s probably more characteristic of the nature of youth than intrinsic to those studying, but since most of my students are young, this distinction for me is not great.

By short-sighted, I mean simply that students do not look ahead in making their daily decisions. Their choices are based on the immediate rather than the lasting. I see this manifested in a variety of ways, but I have time only to mention one today.

Extra-curricular activities. Students go to college to learn, but too often they make decisions that directly and significantly hamper their chief objective. They choose to take a job (or two), take a school leadership position, and have a ministry role at church. If they have time to do the best (reasonable) job on their assignments, then I have no quibble with their extra activities. Unfortunately, that never seems to be the case. Those extra things crowd out the main thing. A classic example is the student who has to work 20 hours/week so that he/she can go to school. But they don’t have enough time to do the course reading, do the careful preparation for the research paper, or study thoroughly for the exam. So do the math. In making $160/week at their job, they are forfeiting a $900/week education. Seems silly to me. Better, if you have to, to sit out a semester and work two jobs, and then come back for the semester and not work at all. You earn more and you learn more. Remember too that education is not only about assignments. What a shame it is to have access to some great minds (yep, by that I mean the teachers), and to never ask them questions. But if you’re just barely keeping up with the assignments, you don’t have time to formulate the questions, let alone ask them. But college is the time for that; you won’t do it later (and you won’t have the expensive access you’re paying for now later either).

I don’t actually believe that it’s impossible to work a job while gaining an excellent education (I believe that I did that). But I do believe that it is impossible to work a job, serve in a school position, and devote significant time to ministry and to get an excellent education. So, the long-sighted approach would be to say: I simply must work this job 20 hours/week now, and therefore my ministry involvement is going to be limited. I know that sounds “unChristian”, but I think the opposite approach of “do it all” is terribly poor stewardship. If you don’t work, you can (and I hope you will) pour more of yourself into ministry. The needs are great. But if there simply is no other way than a job, cut something besides your education.

In about a minute, a large group of students leave for a night on the shore of the Dead Sea and a hike around the En Gedi area tomorrow. I’m quite certain that they’ll have a miserable time, but because they’re creating their own misery, they’ll think it’s the best trip of the semester.

I spent the afternoon in/around the Old City today with Mark. While sitting outside the Damascus Gate and eating a shwarma, I pulled out the telephoto and shot a few. Here’s one of them: the teaman waiting for his next sale. He did quite a brisk business on this hot day. Notice too the Herodian stones in the background (albeit in secondary usage).

If I were living in the US, I’m sure I’d be dealing with different issues than I deal with here. Simply because of access (or lack thereof), many in the biblical studies world in the States are largely concerned with issues of language and theology. But not me. My game is historical geography. Thus, you can imagine my horror when the Sunday School teacher keeps calling my daughter by the wrong name. Her name is Bethany, not Bethsaida! There is a big difference!

Here’s Bethsaida:

Here’s Bethany: