A Look Back at the Academic Year
Now that my first semester of seminary at St. Vlad’s is behind me, it feels like a good time to briefly reflect on each of my classes and whether or not my planning and execution was successful.
Liturgical Skills LS101
This class was an interesting combination of two hours of music theory, singing, and chanting from Harrison Russin, the SVOTS director of music mixed with one hour of liturgics from Dr. Vitaliy Permiakov. I’ve been singing and chanting in Orthodox Churches for a long time, so much of the material there was not new for me. At first, I wasn’t happy with the class because of this, but I quickly came to the realization that I will most likely need to know how to train singers and readers one day, and Harrison’s method for teaching both was great to see firsthand to give me a great example for future use. The liturgics section was likewise basic, learning the outlines of services, names of vestments/liturgical items, and memorizing a few texts such as Psalm 50. The final exam for Harrison was performing a Prokeimenon-Epistle-Alleluia sequence and singing a small group (2-3) prepared song. My two partners and I sang ‘O Pure Virgin’ a lovely hymn I’ll link below.
Introduction to the Scriptures OT100
This is the Old Testament survey class taught by Fr. Bogdan Bucur. From my understanding, Fr. Bogdan—the SVS Patristics Professor—taught this class as a one-off until a permanent professor is found for it next year. Fr. Bogdan is a gifted lecturer who mixes a traditional mindset with being open to using modern interpretative lenses without being consumed by them, a large dose of Socratic interlocution, and the ability to use pop culture references to illustrate difficult concepts within theology. Needless to say, this was my favorite class this semester and I’m taking two classes with Fr. Bogdan next semester. The exam consisted of five short (1,000-word) essays on various topics relating to the Old Testament.
Biblical Languages (Greek) BL100
The standard first semester Greek class. I had absolutely no background in Greek and hadn’t taken a languages class since high school French, so this was my most challenging class. I emerged with a good grade, but only after wrestling with the Greek like Jacob wrestled with the angel—I did not let go until I was able to pull out a B! There were two exams, a three page written exam translating and parsing various Greek sentences and an oral exam reciting the prologue of John’s Gospel in Greek.
Church History 110 - Church History until the Fall of Byzantium
This was another highly-rewarding class, taught by Dr. Alexandru Tudorie, the Academic Dean of SVOTS. Each weekly session went through 200-300 pages of material from various texts from scholars such as John Meyendorff, John McGuckin, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Valerie Hotchkiss. In addition to the class sessions, we each chose a well-regarded history text from a list of 30 books and wrote a critical review, the type which would normally be found in an academic journal. My book was Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Peter Brown which has been the gold-standard biography of Augustine since it was published in the 60s. I ended up writing a crazy 25-page review which was well-received. The examination for the class consisted of an oral exam where we talked about my report and then I pulled a random envelope that contained a historical text (usually a statement from a council, a famous letter, etc.) and a map and was prompted to identify and give contextual information on both the text and the map.
My Overall Progress
I worked hard all semester. I have a lesser educational background than many of the other students and at 42 I am one of the older students, so I made sure I was highly organized and devoted many hours of reading and study each week. In the end my efforts were rewarded with a spot on the Dean’s List, but going forward I think it will be better to reduce the intensity of my studying by 10% and apply that time and effort toward my relationship with my wife and children. I won’t say that I was neglectful toward them, but I could have definitely spent more time prioritizing evenings together as a family. I will adjust for next semester and see how that works.