Back on Track

From the outside, my weekend involved exercising, a walk around the lake, and a whole lot of sitting in my room and reading/writing/thinking. It doesn’t sound very exciting, written down here. But it was the most exciting weekend I’d had for a long time, internally.

I fasted this weekend. It’s not something I do on certain days or holidays, but there are times in my life when I need to jerk my own leash and refocus, when I start getting distracted by things that will never make me happy at the cost of what’s important. I also just tend to like fasting – it makes life more interesting, it brings back good memories, and it makes you remember how good food really tastes.

So I spent my weekend refocusing, and I think my resolutions for the semester are now back on track. I need to focus particularly hard at the moment, because I’m going to a Naval leadership conference this weekend, so I’m missing two days of class, as well as most of the time I usually use to get the week’s work done. Being me, I compensated by starting next week’s work last week, with the result that I’m sick of assignments but have taken care of most of my work for the next week-and-a-half.

ROTC is going fairly well this semester. I’m easing into my responsibilities as a platoon commander, which have significantly expanded with the new staff and structure. I have ROTC five days a week: staff meeting Sunday, PT Monday, lab Wednesday, and class Thursday and Friday. Except for staff meetings, though, everything takes place somewhere between six and nine in the morning, so I’m done pretty quickly and can move on to my slightly-later block of Harvard classes, and then the odd appointment scheduled in the evening.

One of my classes – the German translation – I only have once every two weeks. It’s almost more of a tutorial than a class. I was attending, but not technically enrolled in, the course last year, with a few grad students. This semester, though, I was the only one who wanted to take the class, with the result that the professor generously offered to just let me come in every couple of weeks for an hour and attempt to read Hegel in German with his help.

While I’m thinking about it instead of taking it for granted, I’d like to say how thankful I am for the people attending and working at this school. I forget, being here all the time, how rare it is to find people who are so gifted, so curious about the world, so talented in different areas, so eager to make a difference in the world, and so willing to offer substantial and thoughtful conversation on all topics.

There’s been a lot of college/Ivy-bashing in the news lately, and some of it is understandable. Academia in general, and higher education in particular, are very strange communities, and this particular group and type of people has its particular set of vices as well as its virtues (not that any vice or virtue is limited to one group of people). I don’t deny that people can be silly and even ludicrous at times. But overall, the caliber of people here is very high, and I’m grateful to be a part of this community.

For a note of perspective, I’ve also become increasingly familiar with the drivers-of-Boston community. Not being very accustomed to city driving, I am still slightly agape, but it takes definite skill to navigate the obstacle course of Cambridge streets. You pull into the lane of oncoming traffic to get around the truck parked across the middle of your lane, only to swerve back the other way to avoid the fire truck nobody’s stopped for. As you do so, you slam on your brakes to avoid the jogger who’s appeared in the middle of the road, giving a honk of annoyance, and then another honk at the person in front of you, who’s inexplicably slowed to a stop at a green light. And all while you’re avoiding the pack of bikers stealthily slipping in and out of your blind spots. It’s quite the experience.

I’ll have a lot to report next week with the conference, but all the things that have happened in my head over the past few days are hard to make sound interesting unless you’re me. I wish you all a happy and exciting week until next time!

Pictures: I didn't take many this week; I didn't go out much. Still, here are a few from my walk to/around the lake on Sunday morning.

This is what it looks like in Cambridge now; everything's warmed up a bit. I'm not sure why you can see the grass in February, but I'm not complaining.

 At the lake:

 Sunrise on the water:

Just Chilling

Well, the Boston winter is finally kicking in, although the tourists still show up, come snow or cold or gloom of night. It was below zero for a while over the weekend, with a far worse wind chill, so I went over two days without leaving the dormitory. I spent most of Valentine’s Day and President’s Day curled up on my bed with a cup of hot tea, a book, and my laptop – just the way I like it. And one of my friends was sweet enough to send me a flower for Valentine’s.

The long weekend was really about normal length, given that I had ROTC for most of Saturday morning and section on Monday afternoon despite the holiday. Still, it gave me some time to recharge. I needed to reevaluate my schedule and make a few changes to accommodate the fact that I only have time to make it through my full morning routine about once during the week because of ROTC. And in addition, last week was just really busy, sleep schedule or no.

Last semester I started helping out with the Worship/Praise Team for Christian Impact (Cru), and this semester I’m transitioning into heading it. I led rehearsal and worship for the large group gathering last week, with the help of some wonderful people, and I thought it went well. It’s been two years since I’ve really been in charge of anything, and I’d forgotten how much I like it. I remember now.

Of course, I am starting to do more in ROTC as well. This past Saturday a couple of our instructors took a group of us over to Lincoln Labs to see what they do there. You know you’re touring a government-affiliated organization when the PowerPoint is twice as long as the actual tour. Still, they have a lot of resources, and they’re doing a lot of neat stuff (which they’re rather touchy about, so no pictures).

The tour was interesting and informative, but it was slightly strange being the only non-STEM major in the group. The man taking us around would say “this satellite technology does X to help us locate the bad guys,” and everyone else wanted to know more about X, and I wanted to know how you decided who the “bad guys” were.

I have the same strange pairing in my courses overall this semester. I open the first book and find, “how would you calculate the course and speed of ship M?” I open the second book and find, “Supposing that Truth is a woman – what then?” (I’m sure Nietzsche thought the ‘what’ was something very profound – or, being Nietzsche, he just wanted to mess with people’s heads.)

This, of course, is the text I’m reading in English for my German class, not the text I’m reading in German for my Philosophy class. For that, I’m reading Hegel, which is – well, convoluted, to say the least, although the actual syntax is a little simpler than last semester’s Nietzsche. You know you’re in trouble when your professor, who is a native speaker, tells you he has no idea what the sentence you’ve just read is supposed to mean. It keeps life interesting.

Life is also made interesting by the fact that I’ve gone from not driving at all to driving several mornings a week for ROTC. It’s usually not that bad with the snow – Boston is very efficient when it comes to salting and shoveling its roadways – but this morning the job didn’t quite get done, so it was a slippery, slushy trip to class. It took half the time of public transportation, though.

I’ve also had quite a few meetings over the past few days – I met with my squad leaders for ROTC, and I had dinner with my blockmate and the tutor for our floor, and I met with my Bible study leader.  I’m trying to narrow down my social interaction to have more meaningful conversations with fewer people, but I’m not sure if my life is organized enough to allow that to happen.

I’ll end with a bit of life advice: if you ever need to get up early and watch a bunch of PowerPoint presentations in a cold room on a regular basis, make sure to go to bed early and bring a hot beverage with you to the presentation, and life will improve drastically. Hot tea covers a multitude of sins.

Pictures:

You don't get a ton of exciting pictures by sitting cozily inside your dorm room, but here are a few:

Harvard in the snow:

 Me:

 Widener Stacks:

 One of the work spaces in the Stacks:

 One of the Widener reading rooms:

 My Valentine's Day flower:

Recalculating...

It’s snowing again. It’s been snowing all morning, and it’s going to snow all day. It looks very tranquil and scenic through the window when you’re curled up in your bed on a Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, but on Monday morning it just looks cold. Still, at least something’s happening. They don’t cancel class if you’re tired of looking at ever-dirtier piles of slush, but they might if it snows enough.

I’m particularly attached to my bed and hot chocolate this week; I always get more attached to my creature comforts when I’m feeling down. Not that anything particularly depressing has happened this week – I think the back-to-school blues are just hitting me a little late this semester.

I think this is perhaps the most annoying time of semester for me, actually. After I get my main class schedule nailed down, suddenly there are sections meeting at unwieldy times and meetings to be fit in and ROTC classes to be worked around, and all the neatly-scheduled time you thought you had is suddenly split into useless chunks or gone altogether. It’s only natural, but it frustrates me nonetheless, although I’ve by now reconciled myself to the workload that appears to be coming.

I’ve also been staying snuggled cozily in my room because I was slightly sick for Friday and Saturday. I spent the weekend with hot tea and hot soup and studying in bed, and by Sunday the danger had passed, but it meant I didn’t get much time outside between Friday’s snow and today’s. I took lots of pictures out the window, though.

I did go out once on Friday evening; my music class from last semester worked in coordination with the Boston Symphony Youth Orchestra to get us free tickets to a concert in Symphony Hall (at the very back row of the highest balcony, as far to the side as you can be, but after all, you don’t go to a symphony to see it). I had to dash at the end in order to grab a taxi home and get some sleep, but I had a good time, and it was nice to go into Boston, if only for a couple of hours.

And of course the weekend also included a brisk walk to church on Sunday, followed by the walk back to my dorm and then a combination of walking and public transportation to go to a ROTC meeting and back. I’m getting plenty of use out of my boots, and today I finally gave in and pulled my full, heavy winter coat out of the closet, and I was very glad I did. Why do people build cities where it snows?

Most of my weekend, though, was spent inside, studying for classes and doing some independent study in German and Greek. I finished reading A Study in Scarlet in German, so I’ve read a novel in German now, without too much trouble.  I met with a few friends over the course of the week/end as well, but most of my time was spent trying to find time in my suddenly-packed schedule to do my homework. It took me until this morning to be quite sure I had enough time to finish everything (I can’t rest quite easy unless I have my to-do list at least nominally planned a week in advance).

I am still getting up at five in the morning; it’s beginning to seem natural, so long as I go to bed on time, which thus far I’ve managed. I don’t have nearly as much time to recharge as I did the first week, though, since ROTC schedules over my time in the morning. Still, despite my reluctance to venture into the snow this morning, things seemed to have settled into a routine, if not the routine I was hoping for a week ago this time. 

Pictures:
One of the house common rooms:

 Care package from home!

 And then there was snow.

 Symphony Hall:

 Thankful for my coat:

Five O'Clock in the Morning and All's Well

It didn’t take long for the school year to get up and running, and I’m well on my way to a (hopefully) productive and fairly enjoyable semester. I mentioned previously that I was implementing a rather complicated new year’s resolution, but I didn’t want to say any more about it until I was more confident it would work. So far, though, it’s functioned very well, so I’ll go into a little more detail.

The most noticeable part of my resolution is the fact that I now go to bed by nine and wake up at five every day. Most of my friends don’t understand how I do this, and it looks kind of extreme written on the page, but I’d wager that I’m actually getting more sleep than most people in the college. I have a regular sleep schedule, for the first time since high school, and it’s actually very restful.

But why five am? The original reason is that I have ROTC four mornings out of five and have to get up early anyway, so I might as well just plan for it and have a sleep schedule. As it turns out, though, at least for now, I really like getting up early, despite not being a morning person. I do it even when I could sleep in, and especially when I don’t have ROTC.

For one thing, if you’re trying to quietly meditate on philosophy or study German, five in the morning is much quieter than one in the morning, as far as the college campus is concerned. For another, your morning study will almost never be interrupted by phone calls or scheduled over for other things (excluding ROTC, of course). I have my free time in the mornings, and by the time I’ve done my Bible study and done some independent study and worked out, I’m about ready to face the world and start the work day. And then I work all day, but I’m done by nine pm. It’s a good system, if I can keep it up.

It’s possible I’m saying so much about my sleep schedule because not much else has happened yet. ROTC has started up – we had our first workout yesterday morning – and I have more responsibility this semester than ever, which makes me very happy, but also very busy with meetings and emails and etc.

Our first activity for ROTC started last week, but MIT doesn’t start classes until today, so our lab only included Harvard and Tufts. I very much enjoyed just being able to walk to lab instead of drive, especially now that all the snow has melted. The main part of ROTC, and my ROTC classes, haven’t actually started yet, though, so I can talk more about that next week.

I did figure out, after a lot of vacillation, what my final class at Harvard will be. I’m taking “Ethics of Atheism,” which is actually in the German department, and studies the ethical theories Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (in English). In the lecture last week, the professor spent the better part of two hours defining “ethics” and “atheism.” I can’t say his definitions were terribly clear to me, but it looks to be an interesting class.

Directly after my class on atheism, I have my weekly Bible study meeting, which I’m looking forward to starting today. I’m also continuing my participation in the worship team with Christian Impact, which also starts today (everything seems to start today). Tuesdays are my busy afternoons, but they’re also the one day I don’t have ROTC in the morning, so it balances out.

What else has been happening? In Arabic we’re discussing conspiracy theories in order to practice new vocabulary and grammar structures. The first week of Arabic wasn’t my finest hour, but things are improving, although my extra study of Arabic and my independent study of German tend to get in each other’s way. On the bright side, the words are pretty easy to tell apart.

Overall, I’ve had a very industrious past week; we’ll see if I have time or energy to maintain this level of productivity once the rest of my classes start and I have to concentrate on the quotidian. Still, new projects and responsibilities give me energy, and I have quite a few going right now, so maybe I’ll make it through without falling off the wagon entirely. Have a lovely week, and best of luck to all our New Year’s resolutions!

Pictures: I'm having problems with my computer, so I couldn't manage to get many uploaded this week. Sorry!

Textbooks: also known as passive-aggressive book placement 101

 One of the dining halls in the River Houses.

 I went to walk by the lake this weekend. A good part of it was frozen.