My children keep asking me how much longer Spring Break will be. They haven’t really distinguished yet between Spring Break and Summer Break.

They are true COVID children in that their experience of their first few years of school has been marked by several extended breaks or pauses of in classroom learning. So Summer Break has yet to take concrete shape in their minds. And different than my childhood longing that summer breaks would last forever, they are looking forward to seeing their friends and teachers again. They have lived through the experience of not knowing when they might suddenly without warning not be returning to school for a week or month or even longer. 

So we have been preparing them for how long summer break is and when school will start again, going over the schedule of family trips, days camps, visits from friends and family, and so on. 

As the kids look forward to going back to school already, I find myself in the same boat. I announced a few weeks ago that I am going back to school this fall too, to begin a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) degree program at the seminary in Saskatoon. Since graduating in 2009, I will admit that I have enjoyed being free from the unique pressures of going to school, as I went straight from grade school to university to seminary. In fact, I still have the occasional bad dream where I haven’t prepared for an exam or written a paper that is due. 

But the seminary that I am going back to is quite different than the one I graduated from in 2009. My four years of seminary, like my four years of undergraduate study, were fairly traditional. In person, on-campus learning in a semestered format. 

Now, the seminary has shifted to an intensive and often online format. Courses are taken one at a time in the span of two to three weeks, one after another, rather than three to five courses at a time over a three-month semester. Courses are also offered either in person or over Zoom, which the seminary started long before the pandemic. This was done to accommodate students who couldn’t uproot families or cease working, but who could be in Saskatoon for a week or two and could study at home. 

In addition to the changed intensive, online option format, the Doctor of Ministry Degree program will also be a new kind of study experience for me. The DMin program is similar to a PhD program in that it is a terminal degree meant to help students delve deeply into un-researched topic areas. But it is different than a PhD, which is a purely academic degree intended to focus on theoretical research; the DMin has a professional component. It might be a compared to a specialization in Medicine or in Law. A DMin is intended to be done while a student is working, and research is meant to be conducted in the context that the student is serving in. So it is not just that you *can* work full time while doing a DMin program, you *must* be working full time in ministry.

Because the DMin is done in short intensive spurts along side the regular rhythms and duties of ministry, this summer I have already begun readings and coursework. I used to get truly annoyed by the mature students in university or seminary who were always reading and working ahead, and here I am doing the same! And at this stage of my life, I now get why those olderstudents were like that. It is the same reason why sleeping in these days means getting up at 7 am, rather than 6:00. 

Thankfully, there is still more than a month until school starts and almost two months until I head off to Saskatoon for my first week of DMin work. Yet, this year, like my kids, I am looking forward to school starting in the fall and the new journey that it will bring⎯but not too far forward!