Letters home: July 2003

Hi all,

I just wanted to share with you all a HUGE sigh of relief. WHEW! 'Geschafft!' (that means basically 'I did it!!!' and refers to the oral exam I took today.) I have never been this scared of a test in my entire life. I have never before entertained the thought of actually failing. I have never before stayed up practically the whole night before a test, so nervous that my stomach wouldn't settle. (OK; I was up all night before I took the ACT's, but that was because it was Prom!) But, irregardless of all that, I knew that I knew the material (I have also probably never studied this much for a single test), and my friends helped me, and I went into that oral exam this morning and somehow my mouth was on autopilot and it just spouted stuff out. Good stuff. I was astonished to hear my very own mouth chatting away about Karl Barth's deductive method of homiletics and Frederich Schleiermacher's identical and individual communication and organizing and symbolizing interactions, and sounding like it knew what it was talking about, to boot. Crazy. Where did my mouth learn all that stuff? I thought I was only training my brain. But what do you know, they're connected. The professors gave me a 1,5 (that's an A or A-) and said that there was no gift or leniency involved: I had earned it. They said some very nice things that loaded up the old IALAC sign for a good few weeks ('IALAC': A thenth-grade Health term: it means 'I am Lovable and Capable'). Well, I was, shall we say, ecstatic. I earned some odd looks in the subway on the way home. I think I bounced.

You know, when I was little, maybe six years old, I remember being at a wedding (an aunt and uncle, perhaps?) and thinking, oh GROSS! I am never gettign up in front of all those people and kissing a BOY! It was my biggest fear about marriage in general. Well, times have changed, and I really wouldn't be at all against that idea any more, strangely enough. In an eerily similar fashion, I have always thought of oral exams as one of those off-putting, fear-of-the-unknown obstacles on the way to getting a PhD. But hey, if I can do it in German after a year, I should be able to come up with something to say in English. Which is not to say that PhD oral exams are anything like 'kissing the groom,' but one step at a time, eh?

Anyway, that was my little (or in some ways huge) triumph. I needed to share it with all of you. Thanks for listening. I would gladly hear about your little or big triumphs. :-)

Love,
Jess