Lessons Learned

When I was a first-year college student, I enrolled in "Intro to Biblical Hebrew" at Drew's seminary. It was a last-minute thing, a choice made because the class I really wanted (now long-forgotten) was full. I was the lone undergraduate, and very intimidated. I almost dropped the class.

But then I learned a very valuable lesson. Once I stopped trying to make Hebrew "just like English," things got easier. And once I started laughing at (or with?) this quirky language where everything was "backwards," it all started to make a perverse kind of sense.

When I arrived at Princeton five years later, once again I had to take Biblical Hebrew. "It's not like English," I told my classmates. "Remember to laugh!"

It helped that the prof was the very funny Choon-Leong Seow, who told us that his students are recognized everywhere they go, because they speak Biblical Hebrew with a Chinese accent.

I've decided that Alaska in the winter is a lot like Biblical Hebrew. Once you accept that it's not like the lower 48, you're much better off. And if you can laugh at the fact that it's still dark out way past mid-morning, and dusk by about 3 p.m., you're on your way to being a bona-fide Sourdough. (I've been told, however, that there are residency requirements for that moniker, much like the ones for the Permanant Fund Dividend).