I am done with seminary! It’s all over but the shoutin’ … or more precisely, the commencement exercises. (Assuming I don’t flunk any of my classes, but I won’t even mention that for fear that … uh … oh, no. Aarrgh!)

I spent the past week reading about a zillion books and then churning out end-of-term papers for all my classes. One was technically a take-home exam, and one was a “group project” (i.e., I had a partner), but the other two were the usual 15-page doozies.

Old Testament Narrative was the “take home exam” and was also the shortest essay: 227 lines, 2214 words.

Barth and Hodge (actual title: Theology in Service of the Church) was the “group project.” It was the longest paper, with 579 lines and 6018 words.

Augustine was the third paper I finished. Of the three I wrote myself, it was the longest, at 417 lines and 4012 words.

Science and Creation was 400 lines, 4077 words. It was the final paper I wrote this term. As is often the case, the last thing I wrote was the conclusion. Then I went back and reread the introduction to see if they matched. When I came back to the conclusion I decided the end was a little abrupt:

Anthropic principles propose that this universe is generally conducive to the evolution of intelligent life. If that has happened more than once, it would tend to confirm the idea that God’s providence is built into the structure of the universe.
If intelligent life is limited to earth, that would suggest the universe is more hostile and that human evolution required more interventionist providential action by God.

So I went back into Word and added the last sentence of my seminary writing career:

I suspect that the latter is the case, but if Iam wrong, then I for one will certainly welcome our new insect overlords.

Then I decided that I should probably explain myself rather than risk the “F”, so I added the footnote:

This is a pop-culture reference to The Simpsons (episode 1F13 “Deep Space Homer“). The news anchor Kent Brockman, during a science experiment involving ants on the space shuttle, misinterprets the video feed and quickly declares that he, for one, welcomes earth’s new insect overlords.

(Posted a day late because after all that typing all my RSI’s were acting up.)