New Semester Overview

Well, last week (the week of August 22) marked the beginning of the school semester for Lindenwood. This semester, I'm taking some interesting courses, which I thought I'd put some initial thoughts about here.

• Victorian Lit — Probably of the classes I signed up for, this was the one I was least looking forward to. That doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to it at all, but this period just doesn't usually get me that excited. I'm a classical kinda guy.
• Modern Drama — Contrary to what my pastor though, who got all excited, this is not a course wherein I will be trying my hand at acting. It is actually simply a lit class on modern dramatical works. To provide perspective, I guess in case some in the class weren't familiar with classical drama, we took an immediate detour to Oedipus Rex (I like Oedipus, although I was disappointed we didn't do something from Aeschylus instead of Sophocles).
• Economics and the Environment — This course does absolutely nothing for me, so I'm doing it as my sixth class (for a total of 18 credit hours). I'm taking the class because the professor is a friend, he invited me to take it and I find economics thoroughly interesting. We're going to be looking at how to apply economic principles to regulation of the environment, a really important topic. This also reaches into topical areas such as oil prices. As the class is small (11 students) and mostly by invitation, it is going to be a seminar style setting.
• Old Testament — This course applies the historical/critical method to the Old Testament. So far, application of the Wellhausen (JEDP) Documentary Hypothesis has raised the ire of Christian Ministries Studies students taking the class, but that — admittedly — makes the class even more interesting, since debates always help tease out details. We'll be reading most, but not all the Old Testament in the process.
• New Testament Greek II — This course is interesting because I am the only student in it. The rest of the students from Greek I decided not to pursue the work any further. Because of this, we are not meeting at LU; instead we are meeting at my instructor's old place of work, Covenant Theological Seminary. CTS has kindly granted the use of one of their rooms, since my instructor is an alum as well as a former employee.
• Modern Moral Theory — This course is an independent study I added so that I could take the econ class without falling behind schedule. The professor designed the syllabus for my interests. We're going to look at utilitarian, Kantian, Aristotelean/Thomist and Protestant ethical theories. So far, I'm digging into the ever controversial utilitarian Peter Singer, of Princeton University; if you have not actually read his work, you ought to. I don't agree with it, but behind his inflaming opinions, he is essentially only applying the logical conclusions of a secularist world view.

At the urging of a friend, I almost opted to try Chinese, but as interesting as it sounded, I decided “for fun,” economics was a better choice.