During this term, I am taking 窶廱ewish Identity in a Greek World窶� class. It does sound so interesting to me, and over 15 students are taking; however, due to a lot of readings, some of the students have already dropped this class. It is actually hard class, and some of my classmates also told me so too. Basically, I agree with them; I think it is hard, but at the same time, I still think it is interesting.

What we deal with in the class is the Jewish literature, most of which is written during the before century era, and in addition, all of them constitute the Old Testament Apocrypha. Therefore, descriptions are quite confusing time to time. Weird event happens a lot. I am not really familiar to these biblical texts, and the contexts often have certain kinds of connotation which is just impossible to guess, so I don窶冲 really understand what is going on. However, it seems to me that I am not only the student who is not familiar to this subject, so the class sessions are usually very helpful to understand the text and the history.

I got to know one of the students in the class, Kevin, who is a graduating senior, so this is his last class at Coe. Somehow, we got to know each other and had some conversations during the lunch time. (I didn窶冲 really expect this kind of experience during this term, but it is good to see him.)

He is majoring in religion, and religion major student this year was just him only. It is not difficult to imagine since religion seems to be no longer very much important to our life especially for younger generation. Some would be interested in, but it doesn窶冲 make someone decided to study as a college major. But he is different. He once talked to me that his concern has been always religion. Now that it is very understandable for me. Religion is important. As I had studied at Religion and World Politics class, religion influences people窶冱 mental life in to the depth and ultimately shapes culture. I don窶冲 know if this logic works in Japan, but it is true in the most parts of the world. He is now currently looking for a job at the church, and he wants to work for some religious institutions in the future.

Today was the first exam for the Jewish Identity in a Greek World class.

Yesterday, he invited me to study together for the Friday exam. Since I went to the movie on Thursday, I couldn窶冲 start studying early, so I thought it wouldn窶冲 work. However, fortunately, when I went to Hickok Hall to study, he was there, and we could get the study started. He suggested me to go to the restaurant to study where the religion major students usually go to, and I thought it was a nice idea, we went to the restaurant.

We talked a lot. But it was not a one-side discussion. Since he didn窶冲 really attend the class so far, or he did attend some classes, but he was often late, he didn窶冲 really follow the class, so I explained the teacher窶冱 idea or contents and points of the text to him often. In addition, he didn窶冲 seem to have done homework promptly, so I explained the answers of the discussion questions to him. However, once he got the main idea of the class session or text, he quickly learned it and explained it to me. That was just so great.

The professor also gave us a study guide and possible questions for the exam, and our study followed the professor窶冱 directions. However, even though his explanation was so great, and definitely it is the outcome of his five years study at Coe as a religion major student, I was a just bad student; I had a really hard time to understand the main point of the answers correctly. He was kindly and patience enough to bear and answer my out-pointed questions many times. Since I wasn窶冲 able to understand his explanation and asked many questions, this discussion, which had started around 1230am, lasted until 6am in the same restaurant. Both of us didn窶冲 fall asleep at all.

Then, we moved to the coffee shop, Brewed Awakenings, which is very near to Coe. The discussion finally ended at 8am. We just found out that it was impossible to think since both of us were so sleepy. I was kind of worried about oversleeping when I went to bed at 830am because the exam was supposed to start at 10am. I was also worried about him since he doesn窶冲 seem to be a person who is good at getting up early. However, we both were able to get up at time and take the exam.

It wasn窶冲 easy actually. But greatly thanks to Kevin窶冱 help, I could figure the point of the question out and answer most of the question. It will not be a bad score. So maybe we should stay up all the night every Friday and get the better grade:) Although that made me so tired, I am sure that was a really good experience, and I deeply appreciate his help.