The Life of a Confused Seminarian (1)

My life as a seminarian was a very interesting life. My first quarter went quite well because it was my first quarter and I was totally excited for it. I had two great profs who are quite nice and very understanding. However, I also found it hard to blend into the crowd. Everyone was nice when we meet in the class and during the mandated discussions because everyone was also seemed distant when it comes to their personal lives. No one really opened up to one another, it was as if they put a high wall in front of them. I began to question myself: Is this really the life that I wanted?

Despite my doubts, my first few quarters went by pretty fast because I did not have too much time to worry about it. I have to go back and forth to my Quiznos in SD. And the gravity of my Quiznos problems also forced me to push the seminary issues away as secondary or issues of lesser importance. But then, one day I decided that I have had enough with Quiznos and I sold it... From then on, I started to spend more times in class and tried to build genuine relationship with some friends but no luck at all. Some Korean friends were nice enough, but they were mostly sent by their churches and they have a large language barrier to overcome. There were not that many students who has other full time jobs. Even if they have full time jobs, they either worked for Christian organizations or churches. Having been attending Indonesian churches in America for a while, I was quite surprised by the number of full time positions their churches have (Indonesian churches usually only have one full time staff, the pastor himself). And I started to think that Indonesian churches in America are either too stingy because they do not want to spend their money to hire full times or too blessed because they have a large group of volunteer laymen and laywomen.

After few months, I finally met one person who worked full time outside churches sphere, his name was Mike. He repeatedly mentioned about the busy-ness of his works at his office, and later I found out that he was actually the boss of the company. He was pretty nice during class discussions but he seemed so distant outside the class. I once met him inside the Talbot lounge before evening class started, I sat by him and started to ask some questions. To my surprise, he was very cold. Well, he did answer me nicely, but his words and gestures seemed to send me a message, "Go away! Go away! I am busy," or something like that. Maybe he had to concentrate on his upcoming class but I still found it as odd. Do I really go to a seminary? Is the love shown by people here are merely camouflage? or is it a mere illusion?