The Good Doctor is Late

The new graduate school semester started today with a surprising call that my Tuesday class was actually a Monday class. After rushing home to get my books and laptop and to gulp down some lunch, I casually strolled onto campus 15 minutes early.

Since the professor for this Tuesday class that actually meets on Mondays is in Germany this week another professor was to stand in his stead and wax eloquently over the introductory issues and controversies of Acts.

There are five students in this seminar, only one of whom I knew very well. As we awaited the beginning of class I chatted with the three new to me, getting to know the stories of their lives. Time flew and we were all surprised when we noticed that we were 20 minutes past the start of class and had no professor.

Many students may have seen this as an opportunity to get away with something and, having given the standard 15 minute wait for the PhD, abandoned class with glee. At Harding University Graduate School of Religion, however, we are a different breed altogether.

Some students commute as much as 3-4 hours once a week to come to class, while others (like me) fit graduate school into a very tight time limit which allows more important things to have appropriate priority. And all of us really enjoy school and the subject matter at hand. These are just a few of the things that kept us hanging around class longer.

39 minutes into class time with still no professor in sight and having caught up on my emailing, I began to listen more intently to the conversation of my fellow-students which I had only peripherally engaged in since our first realization that the doctor was late.

The talk revolved around college football, a coach named Leech (sp?), and the fact that there is a golf course in Dubai named for Tiger Woods. This turned chit-chat to Tiger's current status and the rumors about where he is and who he's with.

The natural progression of the conversation led to various sports mega-stars, past and present, and whether they were jerks or should be applauded for their willingness to do whatever it took to get where they got. Finally, in response to a question posed by me, there was a 15 minute discussion of fantasy football and it's rules, regulations, and worthiness as a pursuit in life.

The banter described above perhaps illustrates one of the best reasons we all stuck around until our worthy professor graced us with his arrival 59 minutes after the official start of class: students at HUGSR are fun to be around.

Sure, we can be boring when bogged down in conversation better saved for when we write our commentaries. And we can be loud in our ardent expressions of personal views. We can even be, dare I say, obnoxious in our use of big words to say pretty simple things. But when you get right down to it, we're a decent group of folks who really do enjoy each other's company and the larger community offered by HUGSR, where our motto is (unofficially and quite tongue-in-cheek) Hugs-R-Us.

(By the way, one might well be impressed that our revered professor, who was late due to multi-level miscommunication, was nonetheless able to lecture intelligently for nearly two hours with no preparation time.)