Fall Flavor

                It’s been a fairly uneventful week, partly because I made it that way. I have a habit of getting sick every week around finals time, but I thought it was just a general end-of-semester process, that my body realized I finally had time to rest and forced me to do so. Being the Harvard student I am, it took me a full year to realize that being sick is a direct result of overwork.

                How did I discover this? Well, the first two weeks of this semester were like the end of the semester usually is – an all-out sprint. I wasn’t really sleeping; I wasn’t really eating; I was just trying to get everything done. And I did. It wasn’t until this past week, when I finally had time to rest, that I really got sick.

                Fortunately, after the craziness of the beginning of school, my workload dropped significantly, and I was able to get sleep and food, so after a few not-so-wonderful days of recovery, I am nearly back to normal. Speaking of which, I went to the Physical Therapist yesterday to see if my ankle injury had healed sufficiently to allow me to work out normally again. It didn’t hurt, but it’s apparently still swollen. In addition to not signing off my waiver, the therapist informed me of three-five other things that were wrong with me, and only half the exercises she gave me have nothing to do with my ankle. Oh, well. I’ll probably start working out again anyway, if it doesn’t hurt.

                Despite not doing PT (I still get up at five in the morning to watch everyone else), I am enjoying ROTC. The lab last week was war games, which can be very fun, if you have an idea what you’re doing and the stakes aren’t particularly high. I also met with one of my mentors, a veteran studying at Harvard, this past weekend, and she was great. I also have an upperclassman mentor in the battalion, and I myself am mentoring a freshman, who I took for ice cream last night. We had a good talk.

                Also last night, I managed to make it to LIFE group* for the first time. We are just starting Galatians, and there were homemade cookies, and we had a good time. I hadn’t planned on coming to the group until about an hour before, and I didn’t know who was in it, but as it turns out, I know everyone there, and it’s a small group, so it was a very comfortable space and a good way to end the day.

                Classes are plodding along as usual; papers are beginning to come due, and people have started worrying about midterms. (You don’t have just one midterm; some classes have three or four. I think the theory is that students take tests more seriously if they’re called midterms.) We had our first Arabic quiz/test on Friday, and I’m working on a Physics take-home exam this week. So we’ll see how that goes.

                Philosophy is very interesting. I end up doing my reading for it way too far in advance, since I consider it the most enjoyable of my readings, and then I don’t remember what’s it’s about, but the class notes are usually specific enough to remind me. The discussion is interesting – the class is undergrad and grad students – and section will hopefully shrink and become more conducive to discussion. However, even with our 50-60 person class, I’m able to comment and ask questions, and the professor knows my name.

                One of the nicest parts of my current schedule is my ability to take a Sabbath. I did manage to get all my work done the past weekend and spend noon Saturday to noon Sunday relaxing and then studying and praying. It was marvelous, but it’s still difficult to maintain focus all throughout the rest of the week. I get everything done, but I tend to get distracted – I spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday reading 1984 for the first time. The writing was superb, I hadn’t read a novel in forever, and I devoured it, but it drained a lot of my time. I have to remember not to start any more books on the side, unless I’m willing to wait until the weekend to pick them back up.

                Overall, it’s been a fairly good week. My schedule and workload are almost stabilized, and hopefully soon I’ll have worked out how to integrate them. The weather got pretty chilly, and then warmed up a while, and now it’s settled into a mix of nippy and almost-warm, depending on how much shade there is around. Pretty soon I should be posting pictures of a New England autumn, so stay posted! Until then, I hope everyone has a lovely first day of fall and a fabulous week!

*The small-group Bible studies held by Christian Impact (formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ)