week 15
945 words by gonayiga
First and foremost, I would like to thank you Dr. Homan for making me write these blogs. While writing these blogs trying to catch up with the class, I learned a lot about myself. I have to admit that the thought of writing one thousand word blogs every week was intimidating. I feel more than confident that when I’m given another writing assignment that I can complete it with ease and have well thought out ideas instead of just trying to focus on whether my paper is long enough. The more I wrote these blogs, the easier it was for me to complete them.
1. Give students a level of expertise in the discipline of biblical studies.
I strongly believe that this course has provided the opportunity for me to expand my knowledge on the Bible. I came into the class very eager to learn more about Christian faith and all of its aspects. All I knew before taking this class is what I learned from Confirmation Class and what I was told throughout my whole which was not a lot. I now feel a lot more comfortable with debating certain topics with different people in regards to biblical studies. This new found desire to be more critical of what I’m reading has allowed me be more critical in other areas as well such as history.
2. Provide the tools to read the Bible in an academic and critical manner.
As I said before, the tools that I learned from taking this course will help me exponentially in the future. At first, I thought that all we were going to do is read and write blogs explaining what we read. While some of this is true, I have learned to be a lot more critical and think outside the box more often than I used to. For example, when we read the different translations of old scriptures I learned that not everything that was translated is exactly how it was. The Textual Criticism really helped in the class. For example,
redaction criticism and feminist criticism. The redaction criticism, the study of editorial activity, helped make a lot of sense of the exaggerations and things being left out of the biblical stories. Truthfully, feminist Criticism also helped me have a better idea of the role of women back in biblical times. Before learing about this, I did not think that women played any important roles in the Bible besides Mary. Women seemed to be portrayed as seductive beings and weaker than men. I feel that I have learned more about the intricate roles that women played in biblical stories.
3. Improve student’s ability to effectively communicate and to write clearly matters involving critical thinking.
After completing this course, I believe that my ablilty to communicate what I have learned clearly and effectively. The
“Bible for Dummies” book was extremely helpful in this course because it broke down a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have picked up if I had read straight from the text that they came from. Before reading this book, I used to have a hard to getting myself to sit down and read the Bible just because of the fact that the way it was written was hard to understand at times. The infamous blogs also helped me too. I was forced to read to comprehend rather than skim through readings.
4. Improve the world.
I strongly feel that this course improved the world because everybody had their own project with goals to make the world a better place. From reading the blogs about the implementations of the projects, it appeared that everyone was successful in accomplishing their goals. I know I did because I was able to work one on one with students that are in the position I used to be in when I was their age. I was able to basically give them a map on how to make it in school and how to deal with the detours and road bumps that life creates.
The best part of the class was being able to make up a project and put it into motion to make the world a better place. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to volunteer for Men on the Move and it is something that I will always look forward to participating in. The worst part of the class would be the difficulty of taking notes during class. I found it difficult and discouraging when I would only be able to record a small portion of the lecture notes. I still feel the same way about theology being a required course for the core curriculum. Xavier is a private institution that promotes spirituality. I feel it’s necessary to learn as much about your faith as you possibly can because you can’t blindly follow something such as Christianity. When I look at the field of study that I’m in, I do see some correlation between it and theology. The connection that I was able to make was being able to think more critically of what I’m reading. Being a science major, I have a lot of reading that is required and this course has made it easier for me to break down the material that I’m reading. If I had to do this all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing except getting these blogs done on time. After writing 12,082 words in this blog, I now believe that writing long papers will be a breeze in the future. Thanks Dr. Homan for helping me realize that I can actually sit down and write all this.