One of my favorite parts about being a Session Leader in the School of Biblical Studies is making announcements during the first first five minutes of each class… and if I’m being honest the announcements usually take me closer to 10 minutes because I’m having fun, probably more fun than a person should have while making announcements.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all the other aspects of staffing an SBS – teaching, studying the bible, and getting to know my students and staff – but man, do I love giving those announcements! I think it’s because we always end up laughing for one reason or another. Usually it’s because I’ve said something dumb, or didn’t pronounce something correctly, or one of my students was snarky and I snarked back. It always ends with us all laughing though. I don’t know what comes over me. There’s just these moments during announcement time where I’ll end up dancing, fake crying, stumbling over a “big word” like “Thursday”, or being sassy with one of my more sarcastic students.
My students learn quickly that I really like to laugh, and have fun, and just be a total goofball. Life is too short to be serious all the time. God has blessed us too much for us to not laugh at the silly things in life. I give a lot of credit to this group of students. They are all really great. They’re totally chill, they make any environment super comfortable to be in, and they value laughter.
This group of students really exemplifies the personality of “Rocket Raccoon” from Guardians of the Galaxy. If you haven’t seen it, thats a bummer, because it’s a really great flick. We discovered this comparison when I had the students over to watch the movie, and the more Rocket did his thing in the movie, the more we realized that my fun loving, snarky group of students was embodied in that crazy, spit fire of a raccoon. The students have fully embraced this comparison, and they are very proud of it. Not all of them are that way, some are quiet but even the quiet ones laugh at the sarcasm and join in from time to time. I love my students. They are my snarky raccoons, every single one of them. They are going to do amazing things because they really love Jesus, the Bible and other people.
This is why I love what I do, we get to learn a lot about Jesus, the Bible, and people. We get to live life together – laughing at the goofy things, crying in the hard times, and loving each other in this shared nine months of SBS. For me giving announcements is so much more than a bland chunk of information at the beginning of class. It’s a time where I get to laugh and connect with this awesome group of students.
