I’m so excited to be moving to the Chicago area on May 20.
It’s a sudden decision and is something that, just a month and a half ago, was honestly not on my radar and that I hadn’t been considering.
This spring, I started taking graduate classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in their Master of Divinity program. Trinity is located in Deerfield, Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago.
Trinity has an extension site in Columbus (as well as in a few other cities) where professors travel on weekends to teach classes. For my first semester, I decided to take advantage of this route, but I’m very limited in what I can take and moving to Chicago was always going to be necessary. I had been looking to do that in the fall of 2012 or spring of 2013.
When some unforeseen changes occurred a few weeks ago, I reevaluated that decision and started to explore the possibility of moving to Illinois for summer classes.
Certainly this decision did carry difficult aspects: I was born and raised in Columbus, most of my family is in Central Ohio, I have a church that I go to that I really love, AND I had season tickets for the Buckeyes.
All of those things being said, there are certain goals that I have. And to get to where I want to be, continuing to live in Columbus was not going to be an option in accomplishing those goals. It’s not a knock on Columbus or Ohio. But for my future ambitions, Trinity is a great school, and for what I’m studying, it is one of the best programs in America. When I decided to apply for an Master of Divinity, Trinity was the only school I ever applied and the only school I ever wanted to go for this.
A year ago, I don’t think I would have personally been ready to take this step. But with where I am in my life today, in my heart of hearts, I truly believe that I need to make this move.
In these last few weeks, I’m finishing up one of my spring classes, phasing myself out of my role as Chapter Advisor for Phi Delta Theta at Ohio State, and getting ready to pack up my life. I’m so busy, that I don’t think it’s quite sank in. I don’t think the surrealism of it all will truly hit me until I’m sitting in my room thinking, “Yeah. This happened.”
If any friends (or even people I might not know very well) have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
note: I do realize that May 20th is actually 20 days away, but I’m leaving Columbus on the 19th.
jrb
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My most important leap: 8 years (or 2 leap days ago)
Josh Benner 