“Are You Almost Finished With Grad School?”

I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I have been entirely consumed with papers, research, reading assignments and tests for school, in addition to my regular list of work-related duties and responsibilities.

During the times when I’m slammed with school work (and other people tend to become aware of it), I’m invariably asked a question like, “Are you almost finished with school?” or “When do you finish? Next year? Two years?”

Sadly, the short answer to that question is, “No.” From Wikipedia:

“The M.Div. is a significantly more extensive program than most master’s degrees. In the United States the degree usually consists on average of 90 semester hours, as opposed to the usual 36 or 48.”

At my particular school, the M.Div. program is “only” 84 hours, which means that full-time students traditionally finish the program in 4 years. It’s going to take me somewhat longer than that since I am a part-time student who lives over 300 miles from campus and am trying to balance graduate school with full-time ministry. Considering that and the fact that I just started the program last spring, I have a long way to go.

All of that might sound somewhat discouraging (and at times it can be), but for the most part it’s not too bad: it might be cliché, but I’m learning a lot from the journey of balancing grad school and ministry, and am currently focusing more on that than the destination of receiving a diploma.

But, in case you were wondering, no, I’m not almost finished with grad school. :)