If
anyone ever wondered what state of matter to-do lists were, I have the answer:
they’re gaseous. Why? Because they take the shape and volume of whatever
container you put them in. The more space you make for them, the more space
they will take up; you might think that if you work harder, you’ll be able to
carve out some free time, but it’s no more use than trying to let air out of a
balloon so that half of it is a vacuum; it doesn’t work. On the other hand,
while these lists expand very easily, they don’t compress so well; if you’re trying to
get more and more done in less and less time, good luck.
And
with that optimistic thought, on with my week. It’s been pretty good, actually;
as you can guess from my opening, there’s been a lot to get done, but it’s
mostly enjoyable, and I’m working along steadily. I’m behind where I want to be
because on Saturday, I went with a group of people from my unit to tour the USS
Cassin Young, a WWII/Cold War era destroyer that’s docked here in Boston.
A
Harvard Graduate who worked on the same class of ship gave us a
behind-the-scenes tour that covered everything from the quarterdeck to the
kitchen. We enjoyed listening to his stories, and he enjoyed telling them. We
left at 0900 Saturday morning and got back around 1200. It was a good way to
spend a morning, but I didn’t get much done.
From
noon Saturday until noon Sunday, I take my Sabbath, if possible. On Saturday
evening I have my free time for the week (occasionally supplemented with breaks
throughout the week, if I feel like I can manage that. Not that my feelings are
always accurate, but it’ll be alright). This past week, a lot of that involved
the season of Bones that just came out on Netflix, but I also had time to get
some creative writing in. Also, I recently bought a book on European History
that I’m working my way through over the weekends. Growing up in Texas, I had a
year of State History and two years of US History, balanced by one year of
World History. So World History is still kind of unexplored territory as far as
I’m concerned, and fortunately for me, people love writing books about it.
Speaking
of History and books, anyone who was in my World History class will remember
the infamous Ibn Battuta, whose travel account I very much doubt any of us read
in its entirety. A word of warning: if you ever study Arabic or the Middle
East, you will almost certainly run into him again, and this time you’ll be
trying to read all of that in Arabic. Arabic is going alright, though; I need
to work on my spelling, but that’s one of those things that comes from
practice, and I don’t have that much time to practice outside of what’s
required for my homework. That’s a problem in all my classes, though, and one I
need to look into a remedy for.
This
past week I’ve been spending most of my extra time on philosophy, firstly
because it’s interesting, and secondly because I have an essay due this
Thursday, and while I know for a fact that my writing is better than it was
when I wrote my first philosophy paper a year ago, I’m not sure my logic will
hold up. For the first paper, though, the professor and TF provide comments and
give you a chance to revise your paper, and then average the two grades.
I’m
not sure how I got better at Philosophy writing – just practice, I guess. I
often find that I learn more than I thought I did when going through classes.
Hopefully that will hold up, since I never feel like I’m learning as much as I
would like to; the homework distracts me from thinking about the concepts a lot
of the time. There’s been a lot of controversy lately about the clash between
grades and learning. In my opinion, it’s a broken system, but I think it’s
about the best we can come up with in a broken world. But of course, that’s
just the opinion of an “excellent sheep”*.
Overall,
life is busy as usual, but pretty good. In a cappella we’re learning new songs
now, instead of just teaching the old ones to the freshmen, and some of the
parts are hard, but we’re coalescing as a group, so things are going well. It’s
actually warmed up again, enough so that I open my window to get a breeze in my
room, but the leaves are starting to change, and fall is slowly approaching.
It’s almost October, and in my mind, ingrained from childhood, is the idea that
October leads into “holiday season”: Halloween waterfalls into Thanksgiving,
which cascades into Christmas. Once you can get to the end of October, you’re
almost there.
Of
course, that takes a while (though not as long as it seemed to take in
elementary school), so I’ll still be blogging for a while. There is still a
great deal of work to be done. But Fall is in the air, and before anyone knows
it, I’ll be rereading this blog on the plane on my way home for Christmas!
*It really got started with this
article, with the lovely picture accompanying it.
And then there was this.
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