Bethel Alum­nus Leads Po­etry Read­ing

MISHAWAKA—On Wednes­day, Oct. 16, Bethel Alum­nus Spencer French ‘19 re­turned to Bethel’s cam­pus to lead stu­dents in a po­etry read­ing. A to­tal of 11 stu­dents and two pro­fes­sors at­tended the event. 

French se­lected nine po­ems for the event: “Bat­ter My Heart, Three Per­son’d God,” from the Holy Son­nets by John Donne; “The Weather in Space,” by Tracy K. Smith; six haikus by the sev­en­teenth cen­tury Japan­ese poet Mat­suo Bashō; and “The Bluet,” by James Schuyler.  

French is cur­rently pur­su­ing a three-year Mas­ter of Di­vin­ity de­gree at Yale Di­vin­ity School in New Haven, Con­necti­cut. 

French has found that his stud­ies deepen his Chris­t­ian faith. 

“I had these ques­tions in­side me and this pas­sion for learn­ing that could­n’t be sa­ti­ated with any­thing be­sides deeper study,” said French. “The more I read, the more I stud­ied var­i­ous top­ics, not just the­ol­ogy, the more I fell in love with Je­sus.” 

De­spite French’s love for study, the road to grad school was a dif­fi­cult one. 

“Grad­u­ate school ap­pli­ca­tions are just, they’re just pur­ga­tory,” said French. “I spent a full year... work­ing on dif­fer­ent ap­pli­ca­tions. I sent in four.” 

French em­pha­sized that, while every part of a grad­u­ate school ap­pli­ca­tion should be the best it can be, the per­sonal state­ment is the most im­por­tant. 

“Every grad­u­ate pro­gram has this,” said French. “It’s like you say­ing, ‘this is who I am, this is why I want to study these things, and this is why I would fit at your school,’ and that is the most im­por­tant thing by far, that is the thing that gets you in or out of grad school.” 

French said that his top three tips for stu­dents cur­rently ap­ply­ing to grad­u­ate schools would be to have men­tors in the process, to thor­oughly re­search the schools they’re con­sid­er­ing and visit them if pos­si­ble, and to re­mem­ber to place their iden­tity in some­thing be­sides their work. 

“There are peo­ple on Bethel’s cam­pus who aren’t Chris­tians, so it does­n’t have to be Je­sus,” said French. “But if your iden­tity is in any­thing you do, this process will be evis­cer­at­ing.” 

French also strongly urged stu­dents to make sure that they are not alone in the process. 

“Have a com­mu­nity around you,” said French. “You can­not do it with­out com­mu­nity; I promise you, it will be im­pos­si­ble.” 

French closed by en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents not to feel in­tim­i­dated by grad­u­ate school. 

“I know many peo­ple at Bethel, I know, right now, ten or fif­teen peo­ple off the top of my head, who could go to Yale Di­vin­ity School, and could flour­ish,” said French. “The ap­pli­ca­tion process for grad­u­ate school is of­ten more gru­el­ing than the school it­self in cer­tain kinds of ways. So, if you’re a hard worker, if you en­joy and are en­er­gized by the things you’re study­ing, do not let a name in­tim­i­date you.” 

French will grad­u­ate from Yale in 2022.