Tutoring

Before the start of the Fall quarter, I offered to serve as a tutor through the Student Services office! It's an awfully good thing that I didn't know how busy the quarter was going to be: I thought that tutoring was a volunteer activity (it is not) and I figured I would have ample time to work with a fellow student or two (that was debatable)!

As I just pointed out, it turns out that tutoring is a student worker position, which was nice. Of course, I'm not going to accumulate a fortune working as few hours as I did this past quarter.

Early in the quarter, the Director of Student Services, Rev. Dr. Wally Becker, asked if I would be willing to work with a Hebrew student. I agreed. Before I'd even met with my first student, he gave me an opportunity to work with a second Hebrew student. I agreed. (Like I said: it was a good thing I didn't realize how busy the quarter would be.)

Tutoring is excellent! I get to be of help to other students who are working through the challenge of a new language, and I get to sharpen my own language skills through continued synthesis and re-presentation. And did I mention I get paid to do this?

In the coming quarter, I'll have the opportunity to continue with the two classmates who are taking Hebrew. (Basic Hebrew runs for three weeks into the Winter quarter, and then converts into the Hebrew Readings class for the last seven.) Moreover, Dr. Becker asked if I'd be willing to work with a student in Greek.

This last opportunity came as a pleasant surprise. Although I have a decent command of Biblical Greek (for a novice, that is), I did not score well on the qualifier. I had thought of retaking the qualifier to open up the possibility of tutoring Greek. But when the Fall quarter bogged down, I decided I was better off just sticking letting things ride as they were.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to working in the languages again during the Winter quarter. I hope it continues to be valuable for the poor guys stuck with me as their tutor!

"I am sure that he who is to preach and expound the Scripture and has no help from the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages but is to do his work solely with his mother tongue will certainly make many a pretty mistake. St. Augustine felt that too and held that there ought to be men in the church - especially those who are expected to deal with the Word - who are conversant with Greek and Hebrew, since the Holy Spirit has written the Old and the New Testament in these two languages. - Martin Luther, "To the Bohemian Brethren (1523)"