Week 2 at Summit Semester

I'm not sure where to begin. This week has been pretty tough. Living with the same thirty people for three months isn't as easy as it sounds, and thats saying something since it doesn't sound easy at all. I can't fully explain it to people who aren't here experiencing it with me.

I don't really have much blog worthy stuff to talk about... nothing exciting happened this week. So I guess I could talk about things I learned throughout the week:

1. That it takes 6 men to gut and pack out an Elk
2. That the most compelling argument for a fetus being a human and being independent from it's mother's body is “ your mom cannot have four eyes and a penis.”
3. Sanding a log wall for three hours is not good for your sinus passages.
4. Sanding a log wall for three hours is not good for your ears
5. Sanding a log wall for three hours is good for character building
6. “A pear is an L of a long way from a pearl”

Ok, so on to more serious and pressing matters, Clement of Rome. Clement was a Hellenistic Jew who lived around the same time as Paul. He wrote a letter to the church at Corinth, which was almost added to the Bible. However, it had a few problems. One of which was that he believed in an ancient Egyptian myth about Phoenixes. The story is that there is a Phoenix that lives for 500 years, and every time the 500^th year comes around the Phoenix goes to its nest and begins to die. After it is dead it's body juices leak onto a worm (which just happens to be there....). The worm then turns into a Phoenix and carries the nest and the bones of it's parents to an ancient Egyptian alter everyday on the 500^th year. Clement believes it's a symbolism of Jesus and the Resurrection. Far out right? The other interesting thing about Clement was that Hebrews ( the book of the Bible who no one knows who the author is) is written freakishly similarly to Clement's letter to Corinth. And there is a lot of proof for him being the author of Hebrews, but I won't bore you with that.

One of the questions Professor Bauman asked us today was especially tough. In fact our whole class argued for an hour and a half about it. If you were a guy and you and your wife were expecting, and then you got in a car accident and the doctor told you (the husband) that he could only save your child or your wife, who would you choose?

My first instinct was immediately that I'd save “my wife”. As we discussed it however, I could see why someone would save the baby. One guy in the class even went so far as to call anyone who would choose the wife over the baby, a “murderer”. I disagree of course, but I challenge you think about who you would choose, and why. I didn't change my mind after the whole discussion...but some people did.

Some more of the questions we've been asked have been:

“ What is a human being?”

“What is a good life, and what good is life?”

“What good is death, and what is a good death?”

“What is good love, and what good is love?”

“What is the purpose of living?”

“Are you a body with a soul, or a soul with a body?”

“Is your soul as fallen as your body?”

“What is the purpose of free speech? What is free speech? Is absolute freedom of speech beneficial or harmful?”

I've had to answer at least three of those questions in class... with no notice whatsoever. In front of a bunch of smart kids, and a super intelligent professor.

We discussed a lot of things that I learned in highschool, like Augustine's Just War Theory, the rise and fall of Rome, why Rome fell, Why Rome fell and Christianity survived, why were Christians persecuted, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, etc...

One of the students here is really into giving us all personality tests, to determine what our personality is. I took mine the other day and came out ESTJ. If you don't know what that is/means...shame on you! Go look it up. Although I am almost an F not a T... 

Also this week, I got a knot the size of a golfball in my neck, so for the past five days I havent been able to do much physical activity. But I should I have notified the authority figures at Semester before it had been five days... Anyway, I have to skip camping sunday night, and hiking on monday, because I have to go to the chiropractor...sadness. Other than that, I don't have much to complain about! I'll catch up with y'all next week!!!