What My Students Probably Do When I’m Not Looking

I stum­bled across this guide to steam tun­nel­ing at Stan­ford.

For those of you who aren’t famil­iar with the con­cept, steam tun­nel­ing is an old col­lege pas­time where­in stu­dents crawl around in the tun­nels that run under cam­pus.

I had two thoughts:
1) How cool.
2) I bet a large per­cent­age of my male stu­dents have done this.

I am very con­fi­dent of num­ber two because I know have stu­dents who have nefar­i­ous­ly rap­pelled down the side of build­ings on cam­pus. And that’s way less a part of the col­lege tra­di­tion than explor­ing tun­nels.

Surprise Birthday Party

When I returned from church today I was gen­uine­ly shocked to find a house full of stu­dents wait­ing to wish me a hap­py birth­day.

I was touched.

Also, I got one of the coolest gifts I’ve got­ten in a long time. One of my stu­dents took a pic­ture of me play­ing with Dana, devel­oped it her­self, and framed it. It’s the kind of pho­to I’ll prob­a­bly wind up keep­ing on my desk until I don’t have a desk any­more.

Thanks to every­one for the Apples To Apples game, to Jin for bak­ing the cakes, to Desir­ae for shop­ping, and to Karen for the pho­to. Thanks to Paula for orga­niz­ing the whole decep­tive shindig and to who­ev­er did the dec­o­rat­ing. I’m sure oth­er peo­ple did things I don’t know about, and I’m grate­ful to them as well.

It was just great.

Today’s Students

There’s an arti­cle on cam­pus min­istry up on Reli­gion Jour­nal right now: Cam­pus Min­istries Look for New Meth­ods to Reach Amer­i­ca’s Sec­u­lar Gen­er­a­tion.

Noth­ing real­ly new, but a pret­ty decent overview of today’s stu­dents.

Birthday Desires

As a ser­vice to my friends and fam­i­ly, I glad­ly pro­vide the fol­low­ing birth­day wish­lists:

Glen’s Ama­zon Wish­list (most­ly books, although some oth­er stuff is there as well)

Glen’s Gen­er­al Wish­list (stuff not for sale on Ama­zon)

As always, these are just my every­day “I want to get these some­day” lists. They haven’t been espe­cial­ly con­coct­ed for my birth­day or any­thing. So some things might seem odd. Or even bizarre.

Spirituality In Higher Education 2004–2005

The Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty In High­er Edu­ca­tion project has released a new report for the 2004–2005 school year.

Some high­lights (and my thoughts):

80% of col­lege stu­dents attend­ed a reli­gious ser­vice with­in the last year.
MY THOUGHT: if they’re not com­ing back to the church it’s not out of ignorance–they don’t like what they see.

50% of stu­dents are “seek­ing” “con­flict­ed” or “doubt­ing” when it comes to their faith.
MY THOUGHT: that’s half my audience–is my min­istry struc­tured accord­ing­ly?

26% of fresh­men con­sid­er them­selves born again.
MY THOUGHT: they don’t know what that phrase means 😉

There’s a very read­able arti­cle, Reli­gios­i­ty Ris­ing On Cam­pus, that cov­ers the same data as in the offi­cial report.

Lisa Returns. Yippee!

Paula just found out that our friend Lisa is return­ing to Stan­ford to pur­sue her Ph.D. next year.

Lisa grad­u­at­ed a few years ago and we’ve sore­ly missed her. It’s going to be great to have her back on the Farm again. Paula was almost in tears (with joy) when she called to let me know.

Dana Is Now Paid For

Paula has just informed me that we have com­plete­ly paid for Dana, and she can no longer be repos­sessed by the hos­pi­tal.

She’s entire­ly our prob­lem now.

Inci­den­tal­ly, she got mad at me the oth­er day and began wav­ing “bye-bye” at me to get me to go away. That was pret­ty cute.

Heh

Andrew Wright, friend, fel­low blog­ger, and stu­dent in Chi Alpha, refers to a pos­i­tive impact I had on his life:

[Tobias] Wolff destroyed any resid­ual inter­est I still had in Ayn Rand and Objec­tivism, com­plet­ing the process begun by a series [of] sum­mer con­ver­sa­tions with Glen in 2002.

I hoped I was mak­ing sense back then. That was real­ly one of my first min­istry chal­lenges at Stan­ford. Andrew was our very first stu­dent in Chi Alpha (and he turned into our house­mate with­in weeks of our arrival).

It’s bit­ter­sweet see­ing him grad­u­ate in a few months. On the one hand, my job as a min­is­ter will be MUCH eas­i­er with­out Andrew ;), but on the oth­er hand he’s our last link to the begin­ning. We will have offi­cial­ly cycled a stu­dent gen­er­a­tion.

I was pret­ty heart­ened by his last para­gaph:

Com­menc­ing the last quar­ter at Stan­ford – the last 3 months of indis­cre­tion of my life, but to cram all of the fun and fol­ly of the past 4 years into one quar­ter would prob­a­bly kill me. Rather than resolv­ing to live it up, I’m hop­ing to end on a note that is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reflec­tive and for­ward look­ing, a sort of tran­scen­dent Bud­dha-like coast­ing into the next high­er phase.

We’ll be watch­ing, Andrew. 🙂

Dr. Frankenmouse

Creepy squared:

In one of the most con­tro­ver­sial sci­en­tif­ic projects ever con­ceived, a group of uni­ver­si­ty researchers in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sil­i­con Val­ley is prepar­ing to cre­ate a mouse whose brain will be com­posed entire­ly of human cells.

Researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty have already suc­ceed­ed in breed­ing mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from abort­ed foe­tus­es to cre­ate an ani­mal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human.

No, you did not mis­read. Stan­ford sci­en­tists are plan­ning to make a mouse whose brain is com­posed of dead babies’ brain cells.

Rats of Nimh, any­one?

full sto­ry (or read anoth­er, broad­er sto­ry on the same issue)

Cows With Guns

One of my stu­dents just sent me the very fun­ny Cows With Guns. It’s a lit­tle long, but beyond hilar­i­ous. Espe­cial­ly if you find puns fun­ny.