My college major was Sleeping To Eleven, with a minor in English Literature and Drinking. I was never a live-wire in the classroom. I was always slouched halfway down the chair, fidgeting with a pencil until it was time to pack up and go. So when I feel an eye-watering yawn come over my 50-something-year-old self during my afternoon classes here at Princeton Theological Seminary, I can’t say it’s a new feeling. To be honest, I had a hard time memorizing French verbs when I was a teenager, so it’s impossible to detect if my brain has gotten worse since then. Memorizing the first and second declensions of adjectives in Biblical Greek is about as painfully impossible now as it would have been when I was in college. That is, had I had the courage to take such a class back then. Which I didn’t. 

So, mental dullness and corporeal laziness are old friends, and the fact that they’re back again isn’t surprising. Truthfully, in a lot of ways it’s sort of cheering — it’s nice to know that some things stay constant, even 40 years and one career later. A very wise psychiatrist once told me that the secret to his profession is remembering that people don’t really change. And neither do their study habits, I’ve now learned.