My thoughts of this class are pretty good so far. Dr. Homan, you seem like a pretty cool person and I like the different methods you use as you teach. I don’t know if you do this purposely or not but when you speak you say a lot of sarcastic comments and you might add in a joke or two. I like this because I’m a sarcastic person as well and as far as the jokes go, I’ll probably be laughing even if no one else is. You doing that is helpful to me because I don’t like to get lectured to….that is, just having facts getting thrown at me for the whole class period, and you don’t do that which is a plus. Also, the computer program that you use for our notes is pretty cool too because it brings our notes in a different way, it’s not your regular overhead that you would get. Many teachers don’t realize that little things like that can keep their students’ attention a lot longer. Blogging is something that I never heard of so it’s new and interesting to me, and when I first heard you say it I thought it sounded funny. I think that it’s good to have journals because it’s good to write your thoughts and feelings down and not keep them on the inside. The fact that everyone will be able to read them isn’t that exciting though, but I’m use to that because my journals have been invaded all of my life. Also, the fact that they have to be so long doesn’t exactly tickle my fancy either. 2000 words!?! What if we just don’t have that much to talk about Dr. Homan? Some topics I can go on and on about and then with others, after I state my point, I’m done. So would you rather us go and babble in order to get the 2000 words or should we just write as close as we can get with solid points. Hopefully, you’ll allow that to happen once or twice, as long as it’s not too short every time that we write. Please let me know those specifics Dr. Homan. There is one thing that scares me about this class. What scares me is the thought of you using our pictures in order to figure out who’s going to answer the questions that you ask. That scares me for two reasons. Reason one being that I HATE taking pictures and I am probably one of the most un-photogenic people that you will ever meet. I’m dreading to see what that picture is going to look like. Reason two is that when I am put on the spot, my mind tends to go blank and I freeze up. Oh well, I’ll see if I can get over that. I’ll have to…. My thoughts for the texts are that the Bible for Dummies book is pretty cool to read and understand but the other one, (Understanding the Bible is it?) is a pretty slow read to me.
The expectations that I have for this class are the same that I have for all of my other classes and that is to learn something that I will be able to use. There is a lot that I don’t know so I want to learn as much as I can about the bible and its history. I also want to learn more about the stories and characters that are within it. I hear them (the stories) so often when I go to church and it helps if you know the story and the people that the preacher is speaking about. Also, I want to be able to know if what someone is telling is true or not. Many people make references to the bible all the time and I want to be able to determine if what they are saying is actually in the Bible. Not just people that I meet out in the streets outside of the church, but those in the church as well. Many take it for granted that just because someone is in the church preaching that they know what they’re talking about and that what they’re saying is true. My pastor at home tells us all the time that he could get in the pulpit and say that Noah was in the belly of the whale and the congregation would sit, agree and yell “Amen Pastor!” at the top of their lungs. How would we know, if we don’t read for ourselves? I don’t want to be one of those people, so I hope that this class will help me get a better understanding. There were a few things that I did expect out of this class, but what I didn’t expect in this class was there to be so much reading and writing. I knew that there would be some, that’s a given, I just never had to do this much in a religion class. Since that is how the course is set up though, I now expect to become a better writer. Oh, and when I read, I want to be able to retain what I read just a little bit better because I have a problem with that.
Why did I take this course? I took this course not only because I needed a religion class, but for some of the same reasons that I listed in the paragraph above. I need to have a deeper understanding of the bible because that is a HUGE part of my religion and how can I say I believe in something that I don’t know anything about? That doesn’t make much sense now does it?
My thoughts about the bible and biblical studies are that contrary to popular belief, they are both very interesting. The bible is a book that I use to help me a lot when I need an answer to something or I need help. There are so many problems that we face everyday and there is something in the bible that will be able to help you, or lead you in the right direction with each of those problems. There are also many Jerry Springer-ish stories in the bible. That might surprise people, it sure surprised me! Many times in the bible you will find stories, of infidelity, homosexuality, incest, people plotting on others to get what they have, family members betraying one another, all of someone’s possessions taking away from them, prejudices, people who think they’re better than others just because they have more, murder, and the list goes on. Many people wouldn’t think that the bible, which was written so long ago, would have the same topics that we deal with today, but it does. When it comes to reading the Bible, that is definitely LAST on the “things to do” list for many young people my age. I think that it would help them if they got a bible that is more on their level, whichever level that is. There are so many different kinds of bibles out there and they don’t all use “thou”, “cometh” and “thee.” Having a Bible that you can identify with makes it a lot easier to read and it makes you WANT to read it more.
I have a decent bible background. It’s better than some people’s and worse than others. I’ll be the first to admit that it could and SHOULD be a lot better than what it is… People that know me figure that I should know the bible front to back and sideways because I’ve been around it for so long, and it’s still around me to this day. I’ve been in church for as long as I can remember. My Grandfather is my pastor at home (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). Some people wouldn’t be able to deal with this, a lot of pressure is put on you when you’re a “pk” (preachers kid), but I do fine. If that wasn’t bad enough, my mom is a minister, I have two aunts and both of them are ministers as well, and I have an older cousin that just preached her first sermon in May. I never think about all of the preachers in our family (and there are many more) until I write it down. I guess it is a lot! It doesn’t seem out of place to me or weird because that’s what I’ve been around for a long time. For this reason though, people think that all of their (my family members) knowledge is just automatically implanted in me, that my mom sits at home and drills me with bible trivia every night and if I answer wrong- I can’t eat dinner, and that I dream about Jesus. What people fail to realize is that although I am influenced greatly by them and the surroundings that I have been around all my life- that knowledge doesn’t come naturally and while I wish it could, it can’t come by association either. I still have to read study and learn for myself. I will be the first to admit (my mom coming in a close second) that I need to do better in that area. I have to starting reading the bible more outside of church, and I’m working on that. I also went to a Catholic school and 4 years of religion was a graduation requirement. Even though I did take a religion class every year, the majority of the things we learned had to do with the Catholic faith, which I’m not. So while I listened, a lot of those things didn’t stick with me, not because I wasn’t interested, but simply because I didn’t practice them like the Catholic people did….When it comes to me hearing people making references to the stories in the bible, both at school, or at church, some of them I know very well and some of them I need to be reminded of. I might know the moral of the story or remember little bits and pieces of the plot, but I need to be able to do better than that.
I think that I will be able to fulfill the expectations that you have for us as students Dr. Homan. I will be in attendance and I try to be on time as much as possible. If there is a time when I wasn’t on time, it had to be for a good reason. I am also usually well prepared for classes and once I get comfortable in the class, I participate as well. My cell phone is like an extension of my ear, but I will make sure that she is quiet in class. I always have respect for others and I try to have a positive attitude most of the time. Academic honesty isn’t a problem either because I’m too scared of getting caught! This keeps me away from doing that. Well, until next week, this is all that I have to say!

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