Grace in Two Columns
Nov. 10th, 2003 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI've just finished my second 5-page paper for my Christian Anthropology class, and this one proved just as challenging as the first one. The assignment: to discuss "grace." A deceptively simple task, especially when the professor wants us to combine our personal ideas about the subject with our assessment of the writings of the theologians we've been studying. One or the other is easy. Combining the two is significantly harder. For me, at least.
At the root of the problem is my long-held bias against allowing my "personal feelings" to enter my academic work. For some reason, it doesn't help that when I've violated this "rule" in the past, it's always been well-received.
My solution to the problem of integrating my own subjective experiences and beliefs with my academic assessment of Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich was to write an opening paragraph and then to insert a text box with my formal theological discussion on the left side and my personal reflections on the right, in italics. I don't know whether it's going to come across as a clever technique or a lazy cop-out for not writing a integrated paper.
Fr. R. liked my first paper better than I did, so there's hope that this one will appeal to him as well. . . At the moment, I'm too tired to worry about it, or work on it, any further.
At the root of the problem is my long-held bias against allowing my "personal feelings" to enter my academic work. For some reason, it doesn't help that when I've violated this "rule" in the past, it's always been well-received.
My solution to the problem of integrating my own subjective experiences and beliefs with my academic assessment of Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich was to write an opening paragraph and then to insert a text box with my formal theological discussion on the left side and my personal reflections on the right, in italics. I don't know whether it's going to come across as a clever technique or a lazy cop-out for not writing a integrated paper.
Fr. R. liked my first paper better than I did, so there's hope that this one will appeal to him as well. . . At the moment, I'm too tired to worry about it, or work on it, any further.
