Scenario You are a student chaplain intern for Simpson College Religious Life Council. You’re working on planning the next RLC event- and, to be honest- you are a bit further behind on your timeline than you would prefer. So, you are working into the dinner hour after everyone else has gone home in order to catch up. You hear the door to the office open, and a young woman walks through. Her face is shiny with tears as she asks you if the chaplain is still around for the day. You explain that you are working late and that everyone else, including the appointed staff chaplain, has already gone home. Her face grows red as she stammers her apology that she thought the chaplain would be there as she saw a light on. Because you are a decent human being and recognize she needs support, you ask her if she would like to talk. She hesitates, says “no,” and then says, “well, I don’t know, it’s just that I’m so lost, and” She bursts into tears. You pull up a chair, and you sit beside her. The woman informs you that her name is Sylvia. She’s a second semester senior at Simpson, and she simply feels like a “train wreck.” When you ask her why, she tells you that it just feels like she doesn’t know “what the point of all of this is.” She informs you that she has been on the Dean’s List every semester she’s been in college, and now she’s in the process of applying for a job. So far, she has been rejected from many of the jobs for which she has applied. However, she has just been offered a position with Wells Fargo in their claims department. She informs you that she is relieved to know that she isn’t going to be homeless after graduating, but she’s really struggling with what the point is of everything. “I mean, I worked pretty hard here, ya know? I made Dean’s List every semester. Andlikefor what, though? So that I can slave away behind a cubicle? So that I can talk on the phone with people pissed off at me? It just seems so pointless. Why go to college and work hard, only to be a measly little peon afterward? I mean, I get it, this is just my first job, and maybe I’ll find something else eventually. I get that. But it’s not JUST this claims job at Wells Fargo. This whole thing- this whole LIFE- it just seems so arbitrary. So we go to college and are told we can be anything we want to be, and then after thatwhat? We work for huge corporations, become a cog in their wheels, maybe pop out a couple of kids because that’s what everyone does to stave off monotony, and then we drink wine at the end of each day as a reward for surviving? Why? What’s the point?” Guidelines Your paper should answer the question: Where is there hope for Sylvia? Please do NOT write the paper in terms of what the student intern should say to Sylvia. I want an intellectual analysis of the situation, and this is DIFFERENT than what the student intern would say to Sylvia. Do NOT write this as a sample pastoral conversation. I know that the question is broad because I really dislike stifling creativity. However, there are SO MANY different directions you can go with this paper! Think about what we have read with Moltmann in regard to promise…sufferingand mission. How do those relate to Sylvia’s situation? Or, think about Lester’s origin and sources of hope. How might they play a role with Sylvia’s concerns? Your thesis need to be NARROW AND SPECIFIC. You cannot have a thesis that essentially states, “Sylvia has a lot of hope in many different places.” You need to have a singular argument uniting your paper about where there is hope for her.
