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Werrrlll....

It's summer time. Yes. I believe so. There was a fire today over in by the light house, so that about marks the time as summer time. The time of things catching on fire. And since it's summer time and things are catching on fire, that means I'll have a lot less to do. Specifically in the first month or so since my real job doesn't begin until June. And since I'll have a lot less to do, I've decided to step up and begin posting more regularly on my blog.

Or playing an obscene amount of video games.

Or reading a butt* load of books. (Approx. 126 gallons.)

Or doing any number of stupid things that I always find time to do other than posting. So maybe the amount of posts I throw out there will increase and maybe it won't. Who can say? I mean, surely I could say definitively whether or not the number of posts per annum will increase, but I'm not going to. Primarily because I, like most males, struggle with commitment.

Today the good ship Bounty came into the little salt run that separates Anastasia Island from the rest of St. Augustine. It was the same ship used in the film Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando back in 1962. Needless to say, this caused something of an uproar in town since nothing particularly interesting was going on anywhere else. Also because the vast majority of tourists in this town were old enough to appreciate the film back in '62. Most of them were old enough to appreciate leopard skin loin cloths and flint-tipped arrows, too, but I digress. I had a horrible time trying to ride my bike over to the office of the registrar at Flagler College on the main land because the side walk over the bridge was loaded with tourists trying to take pictures of this big, old boat that wasn't really doing anything.

Admittedly, she was pretty. And certainly more interesting than that bogus pirate ship they putter around the inter-coastal that doesn't even have working rigging and is as ugly as sin and is usually filled with half-drunk, middle-aged partiers who thought it'd make them feel young again to go carousing on a pirate-themed floating bar. I try to point out to people that St. Augustine never really had much of a pirate presence since our forts were never sacked, but no one listens. It's enough that the city was around at the same time pirates were and you don't have to leave the states to get here. Curse you Johnny Depp. You've ruined my city.

Anyway, I got over the bridge which was swamped with Brando fans and while I was at the registrar's office I managed to get an official transcript request form submitted that will send a copy of my grades from this last year at Flagler College in St. Augustine to Covenant, where I hope to return next semester. It's so strange, seeing how long and how hard I've held on to the hope that I will graduate from Covenant and seeing that, although I've done just about everything I can to screw it up, it looks like I'm going to make it. Astonishing, really.

I've noticed some things about the two different colleges, Flagler and Covenant, that strike me as very interesting. See, they're both private schools, they're both dry campuses, they both have dorms segregated by gender, and they're both respectable colleges with a highly trained faculty. However, Flagler is definitely not a Christian institution whereas Covenant definitely is. I remember in the first few weeks I spent at Covenant I could feel how God was present. The place was thrumming with spiritual energy. By that I don't mean, like, feng shui or anything. I mean that the student body was charged with a desire to know about Jesus and to be like him. It was awesome. I loved every second of it.

Flagler is a spiritual wasteland. I never once felt that I was going to be ridiculed for my beliefs, but I knew right away when I first opened my mouth about being a Christian that I was pretty much alone. Being a Christian is not trendy. It hasn't been since the 1950's, in my opinion, and even then what was trendy wasn't really true Christianity and it was only in America. If I had been a buddhist or said I ascribed to Hindu beliefs, I would have been welcomed with open arms as some kind of theological Fonzie. Karma and zen are so totally in right now. Heck, if I'd told people I was Muslim they would have loved me. Muslim faith is super cool right now because it's, like, so anti-establishment, you know? There are Christian groups on Flagler's campus, but even the Christians I met were really tight-lipped about their faith and I think it was because they didn't want anyone to think they weren't cool.

Donald Miller wrote about this kind of trendy faith in his book Blue Like Jazz. He knows what I'm talking about. It's truly miserable to watch these kids talk about faith and belief as if it were an accessory to accentuate their own personal brand of cool. Even so, though, a lot of the people I met were wonderful, beautiful people.

Something I noticed when I went to Flagler was that the popular kids in my classes knew my name by the end of the first week. I couldn't believe it. I don't wanna say that popular people at Covenant are stuck up, but... well, they're kinda stuck up. At least in comparison to Flagler they are. A lot. I remember when I was rooming with Alex a lot of the kids he hung out with were considered popular and they would stop by the room during open dorms to see him every now and then. If you asked any of them what their friend Alex's roommate's name was, I doubt they could give you an answer. They couldn't care less about who I was because I wasn't popular. So it was nice to have the popular kids noticing me even though I had nothing to offer them in the way of popularity. My favorite people that I met were in my Theater course, which is hardly a surprise. I sincerely adored each and every one of them, all for various reasons, and a more fun group of kids I haven't met in a long time.

Suffice it to say that while these schools have a lot in common, I was struck by how different the students were. As for the faculty, well, I've got some pretty serious reasons to come back to Covenant. Flagler has some great professors, but the way they teach, and the respect they show for their students, is nothing I'm willing to subject myself to again. In one class particularly I learned plenty, but it was entirely thanks to my own work and no thanks at all to the professor who would spend all the class time allotted to him by droning on and on about his own papers and interpretations of the texts without asking a single student what their opinion on the topic was. His tests were all essays on the things he believed the texts showed, never asking us to use an original thought. I was shocked that he was teaching at all, but apparently he's a very well-respected authority on his subject so filling young minds with his dogma is considered acceptable by the institution. Also, he didn't give us a student evaluation sheet at the end of the class. He must have tenure or something. If I had gotten the chance to let him know what I really thought, I would have let him have it.

In addition to that, two of my three professors this semester swore like sailors in class. I thought it was rude and extremely unprofessional, but I certainly wasn't going to say so out loud since the rest of the students usually laughed and goaded the professor on, telling him to swear even more. The one professor I had who refused to swear and also warned students that swearing would not be tolerated in his class was either a Christian, Mormon or Jehova's Witness, judging by his constant references to the bible. It figures that one professor who dares to teach his class in a professional manner would ascribe to a Christian-based faith. I can't wait to return to Covenant.

That's about all I feel like writing about today.