At the beginning of the Fall Semester 2010, some of my fellow Wesley students and I made a D.C. Bucket List. The list contained all the things that we wished to do in the city before we graduated and parted ways. In the past year and a half the bucket list has taken us to Kabob Palace in Northern Virginia, the Einstein statue, a DC United soccer game, and every station on the blue line on the metro (not really something I would recommend looking back on it). We continue to cross things off the list even while adding new things we discover. In fact, after watching Midnight in Paris last night I added F. Scott Fitzgerald’s gravesite, which is a mere 30 minutes from Wesley in Rockville, MD.
 

However, despite the fun of the bucket list, I will be honest: it can also be a cause of stress in my life. I have recently come to the realization that there is no possible way we are going to complete the list before graduation in May. Things are going to have to be left undone. As a hardcore “J” on the Meyers-Briggs test, that realization is really hard for me.
 

            It gets even harder when I realize that come May I may not be able to do and learn everything that I intended to during my time at Wesley. But I suppose that isn’t a bad thing. Anybody who tries to tell you that you don’t grow during seminary is either lying or slept through it. But seminary is not some three-year period to do all your growing and learning; it really just gets you started.
 

            During my time at Wesley, I’ve crossed a lot off my bucket list. I learned how to live in community. I learned my first Korean words. I went to Harry Potter World. I wrote more pages and read more books than I care to count. I served at my first church. And through it all, I discovered more about who God is.
 

            So as my time at Wesley comes to a close, I realize that for everything I learned, there is something yet to learn. For everything that is crossed off a bucket list, there is something to new to add. And in the timeless words of the band Semisonic, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Hannah Tucker
Master of Divinity, 3rd Year