great admirations

I just got home from one of my last classes of this semester, and I feel so loved. My professor adjourned class by reading us students a prayer of Thanksgiving...appropriate as we approach the holiday. She prefaced her reading by saying that she searched long and hard (OK, googled...but still) for a Thanksgiving wish from a professor to a student...but couldn't find one. Most were letters of thanks or sentiments from students to teachers. What she read instead was a Bible passage from Eugene Peterson's translation "The Message." I go to a Christian University...we can do that there:

Philippians 1

3-6 Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God's Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

9-11 So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God."

Like I said, this really warmed my heart...not only the passage, but the way my professor read it to us. She is one of the kindest individuals I've ever met. I might gush right now...but I don't think it'll be purely sentimental. So here I go.

While my time in grad school and in this field has been trying, I have had the pleasure of learning from and being amongst some of the most intelligent, admirable, integritous (you know, full of integrity...is there a word for that?), and just plain cool professors and clinicians on the face of the earth. It's true. My internship professor always lectures for the first half hour of class on topics like "containing our clients' emotions", "grieving defenses", and my favorite "evil, the view of self, and Christian thought." Then we have a few moments of silence to reflect on it and ourselves. At times, I think I can hear my soul. No lie. My favorite professor sometimes joins me and my peers for beers after class (we call it Peers, Beers, and Professor Jeers...actually, we don't. I just made that up) where he regales us with stories about old clients and quips about his own personality style. And then there's my research professor (who is Chinese) who constantly talks about Kung Foo Panda and Dutch Apple Pie. You got me why he does, but that's what makes him great and why I keep taking classes with him.

Some might not realize the importance of these moments, but I see them (and my professors) as a gift. They care about us and for us so that we can care for others. It's like the gift that keeps on giving, really.

While I'm incredibly nervous to graduate and give up this culture I've grown to appreciate and love, I kind of expect that I'll get this once I'm out "on my own." I know it won't look the same...Peers, Beers, and Professor Jeers won't happen...I won't always have people reading me inspirational Bible passages...and I'll probably have to beg people to massage both my ego and my funny bone (ehhh...you catch my drift, right?). But little experiences here and there have provided me with a ray of hope. I can see my academic crushes (yes, I have crushes on all of them) making way for professional crushes. My current internship supervisors are incredible and I enjoy supervision more than I ever have before. I read books and articles by authors in the field that enlighten me far beyond what a text could. And in attending a lecture last week on the Paranoid Personality, and I now think I'm in love with the presenter.

I think we need people to admire, to look up to, to strive to be like. We need to look longingly at them and their attributes. We need to follow their lead so that we can one day lead. And I do want to lead someday.