grading midterms...

Some more pearls of wisdom, although the midterms were--regrettably--rather coherent except for, of course, when they weren't:

Defining the nature of the covenant in pre-modern Judaism, a student wrote:
The covenant was when God promised Moses and his people Israel, as long as he and his people kept the Talmud. The Talmud was the first Hebrew Bible. This occurred after Moses and his people escaped from Egypt.

...another festival is Advent, or atonement. Its the period before Jesus was born.

No comment.

I learned a couple of things from this midterm.

1) I hadn't quite realized how many people feel that the government is infringing on their rights as Christians: quite a few of my students felt that this country has deserted the Christians grounding fathers.

2) I clearly spent too much time on the liturgical reforms of the Council of Trent. Their future teachers will no doubt be surprised about their eclectic knowledge and the no doubt gaping holes in many other areas.

3) The importance of botox had escaped me but the ingredients of the drug fascinated my beauty-obsessed students.

4) This student generation has no problems with the presence of gays in their churches, at least in theory.