Islands and Internships

Today was the first day of my fourth semester at Luther Seminary. It didn't seem all that exotic or exciting, but maybe that was just because it was sandwiched between so much exotic excitement.

Tracy and I, for whom genuine vacations are pretty rare, got back yesterday from a four-day Wisconsin waterpark getaway. It was just too much fun for a seminarian to have just before plowing back into studies. (One of the only lowlights, shown here, was spending our final complimentary arcade token at our Wisconsin Dells hotel on a shoot-the-clown's-teeth-out machine that didn't work. The clown saved face, but I made a face I didn't even know I could make.)

The other exciting and exotic bread slice of the first-day sandwich came within the last couple hours, as both of my favorite TV shows, "Survivor" and "Lost," aired back-to-back for the first time. It was absolutely great. Two uninterrupted hours of pure island intrigue (or, as Professor Paulson once alleged, of pure Gnostic escapism).

So, try as I might to build it up, my first day of spring 2008 classes just can't compare to the surrounding fun. It did, after all, consist of only one class and an internship orientation session. I can only blame myself. After severely swamping myself with a grueling full load of classes last semester (I likewise took on five courses at a time in each of my first two semesters, but those courses were apparently not as difficult), I decided to take my required course on Paul's letters last month, during J-Term. Thus I'm now sitting with only four classes at a time and some days each week that are pretty wide open for study or work in the Communication Office. Mundane as it might seem now, I'm pretty sure I made a good move.

That's largely because, even though classes are just getting started, I'm already bombarded with what's coming next. Well, technically, what's coming next is Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE)—the 400 hours of supervised clinical ministry required for the prospective pastors in the Master of Divinity program. I've got a CPE site lined up at a pair of hospitals north of the Twin Cities, and I just started my introductory Pastoral Care course today, so I'm as prepared as I can be for that. But after that, the next big step is internship, and that's what's bombarding me.

As I just explained to a Master of Arts student in class today, students in the Master of Divinity program must take three full years' worth of courses and are thus categorized as juniors, middlers (I am here) and seniors. But it's a four-year program. That's where the internship comes in. Master of Divinity (Or M.Div., as people say for short as if we were some breed of "Star Wars" droids) students generally take on this full year of internship at a parish between their middler and senior years.

Many students for one reason or another seek only to intern at parishes within the Twin Cities metro area. I'm doing that because Tracy has established a job here in the relatively unusual field of museum curating, and it would be really tough for her to find a job in Kalamazoo, Mich. (I'm just assuming I'd get an internship in Kalamazoo because it has the funniest name in America), for a year and then have to get another job back in the Twin Cities for my senior year.

So right now M.Div. middlers, especially for the ones vying for sites in the metro, are scrambling to line up interviews with internship supervisors who will be on campus beginning next week. And that is where the real exotic excitement is for me right now at Luther Seminary.

Doesn't sound that exotic and exciting to you? Maybe not now. But just you watch. When all these TV shows about life on an island lose their popularity, they'll be replaced by shows about life in pursuit of church internships. Don't believe me? Well, if that writer's strike doesn't end, it'll happen.