Mind the Gap

Years ago, I enrolled in a graduate program in Semitic languages at Catholic University. I don’t know what I was thinking. My first class was a two-credit course where we translated the entire book of Jeremiah in 15 weeks.  And while it was only a two-credit class, our professor told us he was treating it like a three-credit course in order to separate the wannabes from the real students. In every class, we were expected to be able to answer any and all questions regarding any grammatical, exegetical or lexical feature of the passage; and if you didn’t know your stuff, you were in trouble. To make things worse, there were only seven of us in the class. No one could hide. Now, to get to CUA, I would take the red line down from Silver Spring. It sounds like a delightful ride, but do not be deceived. Every moment I