Breaktime!

           Well, I took my first final this morning. It was ROTC, and I’ll have the same instructor next semester, so it feels more like a midterm, but it sounds nice to say. And tomorrow I won’t have to get up at five or six or six-thirty, because tomorrow Thanksgiving break starts – and I’m flying home.

            Which is a lovely thought, but would be a lot lovelier if I didn’t have to worry about the work I have to do when I get back. An essay, two projects, three extensive finals… well, it’s almost over. And the nice thing about college is that when the semester ends, it ends. There needn’t be any carryover into the next semester; you kind of get cut loose. And since the thing that wears on me the most here isn’t the material or the lack of free time, but the never-ending flow of responsibilities, getting cut loose sounds heavenly.

            Not that I’m going to run away from responsibility, but we all need a break sometime. And it’s much nicer to fulfill one’s responsibilities with a fireplace, a family, and a full night’s sleep than otherwise. Everyone here is very excited about going home – excited enough that most of them aren’t in class today. According to my Philosophy professor there used to be class on Wednesday, but no one came, so they just cancelled it. And now the same things happens on Tuesday, or even all week. Some people went to the Harvard-Yale game and never came back.

            Yes, let’s talk about Harvard-Yale. I have pictures, including those of Harvard storming the field at the end, when we won, 34-7, for the seventh year in a row. I left on Friday afternoon with my a cappella group and we drove the three hours to Yale, where we arrived in time to put our stuff away before singing a joint concert with Living Water, Yale’s Christian a cappella. The concert was awesome, and afterwards we sat around and sang together and as groups and had a sing-off and taught each other songs until dinner finally arrived at eleven pm.

            It was a good time – it’s always fun when a bunch of people who do something well get together to do said thing for fun. And when it’s a bunch of Christians getting together for a worship jam improv session, it’s even better. Nevertheless, I don’t stay up until one-thirty very often, and I was beat by the time we finished. This was exacerbated by the fact that it had been dark outside since around 4:30, which drives my internal clock crazy.

            When I was little, my parents used to take me back to visit friends in my original hometown. It was about a five-to-six hour drive, depending on traffic, and to me it was a great odyssey. I did all sorts of things in the back seat, without any siblings to annoy: movies (this was when the mini-TV was still shaped like a box), books, games, for hours and hours and hours. And then we would finally arrive and it would still be light outside, and I would always be simply amazed. The trips to Yale and back were the opposite – I felt like we’d been traveling for hours. I may have gotten jet lag; I’m not sure if that’s possible or not.

            Anyway, we woke up on Saturday morning just in time to take a shuttle the three miles to the stadium, and despite some very unorganized shuttle lines managed to grab some snacks at the tailgate before heading in. I’ve missed football, and it was nice to watch again, though it didn’t help my ‘jet lag’ that the game was on a Saturday afternoon and not the Friday night I’m used to. Our a cappella group sat together; everything is more fun with friends, and we all had a good time.

            And while I’m totally not on this topic, it’s cold here! It snowed again for a few seconds when we got back from Yale and didn’t stick, and the same this morning. I’ve never worn so many clothes in my life! At the moment I could take off two complete layers and still be fully clothed. That’s partly, though, because my room is pretty cold itself. The heater’s broken. Or at least, it blows room temperature air, and since room temperature is probably in the low fifties or below, that doesn’t really help. Hopefully they can fix it before I come back from holiday.

            I will be back at school at the beginning of next week, hopefully through with all the projects I need to turn in – if not, the post may come a little late. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving, share some good time with family or friends, and get ready for the even bigger holiday season that’s coming!

            And Go Crimson!

PS – They got the heater fixed!
PPS - Yay! Lots of pictures! I took all of them except the one of all four of us - Jasmine took that one! Enjoy!

An Eventful Epoch

            So far, today is awesome.

            Why, you ask? Well, several reasons. First, the weather is lovely. Second, a week from tomorrow I will be on a plane headed home. And third, I woke up at 6:30 this morning to find that my ROTC class had been cancelled. Which means, if you do the math, that I got to sleep in two extra hours and still had an extra hour of study time this morning. Life is good.

            The more settled in I get, the more events I go to outside the normal routine of classes. This past Friday I went to the Veritas Forum. It was a conversation-sparking discussion between Professor N.T. Wright and Professor Sean Kelly, moderated by Professor Jay Harris (the latter two are from Harvard.) There was a packed house to hear them talk – the topic was “The Bible: Gospel, Guide, or Garbage?” The interesting and non-contentious discussion followed into the refreshments and mingling afterwards.

            On Saturday I served as a judge – yes, a judge – for a Junior ROTC drill meet. The drill meet itself wasn’t, perhaps, so interesting, but I got a big kick from being on the other side of things, what I call an anti-vicarious pleasure. I was judging Armed Regulation, and all of the cadets looked so nervous! It brought back so many memories – all those nervous minutes we spent standing on the side of the drill deck, just waiting for the big moment so we could compete. It all seemed like such a big deal back then – not a minor interruption to a relatively calm Saturday. Of course, part of that was the smaller size of this drill meet, but the difference in atmosphere still stood out to me. Incidentally, I was also amused that I was judging Armed drill. I never liked marching it.

            Saturday night was a birthday party for one of my friends (pictures below) during which I finally learned how to use chopsticks. It was a good time, but afterwards we all agreed that we’d eaten way too much. On Sunday I had church in the morning and then we had the Hebrew department dinner that evening – the first time I’ve had falafel since I was in Israel. I’m going multi-cultural over here, I guess.

            Yesterday was a normal class day, more or less. We had ROTC PT in the morning. I didn’t do the track workout, due to a strained ankle, which meant that I joined a few others in doing other exercises. Mainly planks – a lot of planks. But it was good. And of course, there’s no ROTC class today.

            Classes, on the other hand, are passing out final assignments and slowing down. All we really have left for ROTC is review for the final. In Philosophy we’re finishing off the Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense, which are a lot more complicated than I thought they were, but far from unfamiliar. In Calculus we’re rounding off the semester with Green’s theorem and then starting review. And in MME we have an essay due today, a short oral presentation on Thursday, and then prep for the final. (How do you give a broad-based, well-supported and developed argument in two minutes? No idea. At least it’s in English, though, right?)

             In Hebrew, we’ve finally gotten into one of the great loves of my life: complex sentence structure (e.g. If I hadn’t been able to see you, I wouldn’t have been able to give you your present). I enjoyed the class, despite the fact that we probably spent half-an-hour arguing over the translations because of complexities in English grammar. If you want something to puzzle over this week, imagine that it is an hour before your exam, and someone asks you how you think you’ll do. And you say, “Had I studied, I would succeed.” Wrong or just weird-sounding? Anyway, between this and the novel I am now over halfway through, I’m pretty excited about Hebrew at the moment. So classes are going fairly well.

            And everyone is getting increasingly homesick the closer we get to Thanksgiving. Posts are popping up all over facebook; random comments come up in conversation; countdowns are being recorded. Those who aren’t counting down the days to homecomings are counting down the days until the semester’s end. Once we come back from Thanksgiving we have one more week of classes before the start of reading period and finals. And then we’re an eighth of the way through college – geez, where did the time go?

            During the drill meet last Saturday, everyone was commenting on how little the high schoolers looked. And I commented that when I was in third grade I though middle school students were really big and mature. And when I was in middle school, I thought the same about high school students. And so on and so forth. I suspect that one day I’ll wake up, eighty-five years old or so, and find that it isn’t nearly as old as I thought it was.

            But before then I have an essay to proofread and Harvard-Yale to prepare for this weekend. So with that thought, goodbye until next week, and I’ll see some of you in nine days! Go Crimson!

PS – Okay, maybe not epoch. But it starts with an ‘e’, and it’s close enough.

PPS – Finally, pictures of people! You can also catch glimpses of my new Harvard hoodie – I tend towards the cheap side, so it hurt a bit, but I figured I needed one…

 

Gold Stripes and a Glimpse of Snow

           Happy Veteran’s Day, everyone! I’m sorry this is up a little later than usual; I was waiting so I could tell you about a few events that happened over the past week. It’s been a fairly packed last few days.
           A lot of things have been happening with ROTC, first of all. Last week we had a Marine Lab, which meant a lot of PT, a lot of yelling and, it turns out, a lot of fun, despite or because of the other two. Though I must say, while USMC boots may be made for mad dashes and flutter kicks, our NWU steel-toed shoes weren’t very cooperative. But everybody loved it either way. At one point I was a ‘casualty’ in a fire and had to scream my head off for fifteen minutes straight – it was fun. Believe me, it was fun.
            We also had our Navy/Marine Corps birthday ball this Friday, which was nice. A former Navy pilot/SEAL and a USMC General spoke about some of their own past experiences and what it meant to be part of the military. We had a good time; the food was good, and so was the company, despite all the freshmen freaking out because of the sea of gold stripes in the ballroom. You couldn’t move without accidently bumping into somebody important.
            The Veteran’s day ceremony at Harvard last night was about the same, except that all the people there weren’t only military personnel, they were also attending Harvard grad schools. Which of course isn’t intimidating at all. They were all really nice, though, and we got to mingle with actual active-duty personnel more than we did at our own ball. And they cut the USMC birthday cake again – for our ball I was on the detail walking it in, so it was nice to just be able to watch the second time around.
            Having appointments directly before and after the Veteran’s day ceremony at Harvard made me notice how I change in different atmospheres. It’s not that I put a false persona on, but I see things in a different way and act differently at ROTC events, especially in uniform, especially in SDBs. It’s as if I’m living in two worlds: military and civilian.
           This is exacerbated by the fact that 1) ROTC mainly takes place at MIT or BU, not on my own campus/home; 2) people don’t tend to recognize me in uniform, so people I would normally interact with now reply to my waves with blank stares; and 3) ROTC usually takes place very early in the morning, and when we go back to Harvard I tend to go back to sleep before starting the rest of my day. All of these together mean that ROTC exists in a kind of quasi-alternate universe for me, in a different place, with different people, and in what seems a semi-awake twilight zone during my fully-conscious life. This isn’t really a problem; it’s just something I notice more when things are suddenly juxtaposed.
            Anyhow, enough about ROTC. There are other things going on in my life, though perhaps not quite as interesting. My CI group is going well; we had some good talks yesterday night and got to know each other a little better. I’m so glad I have a group of girls I can just sit down and talk to about things, or invite out to lunch spontaneously, however infrequently I may actually take advantage of that. We also have the Veritas forum this Friday, but I suppose I’ll talk about that when it happens.
          Classes are alright. I’ve about given up hope of getting an A in math, a subject I always loved before, but it doesn’t matter as much as you might think. I’m not, of course, happy about it, but it’s not the end of the world; I got over that years ago. All my other classes are going great and are very enjoyable. I have finished most of my major assignments before Thanksgiving – I have one more paper to finish, but that’s all.
          And with the assignments finishing up, there is time open for other more enjoyable things. My current preferred form of free time is a pastime I have long neglected – reading a fiction novel. The catch? It’s in Hebrew! Six months, and I can read and understand a novel – not perfectly, but enough to tell what’s going on. Just the thought excites me – even aside from my natural excitement at the unexplored pages of a physical book!
         I have also, quite randomly, started watching episodes of the original “The Incredible Hulk” on Netflix. They’re not bad, if you can ignore the special effects and the fact that the Hulk wears bell-bottom jeans and has hair that looks – well, monstrous.
        But TV and movies are for weekends, so right now I’m just chugging through, waiting for Thanksgiving to get here. I’m not homesick – I’m just home-excited. I can’t wait! When you’re in college and only come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, home doesn’t just mean the glories of family reunion. It means food and rest and, at least to me, warmth.
         It snowed yesterday – first time this year. It didn’t last very long, and it didn’t stick, but it did snow. I don’t know if you can see it in the pictures – I couldn’t – but take my word for it; it was there. I wore long underwear for the first time yesterday as well. I grew up with a subconscious distaste for it, probably because my only recollection of it involved vague images of Mr. Edwards in Little House on the Prairie. Turns out, though, it’s quite comfortable. I have a feeling it will be used a lot in the coming weeks – at least until I can head back to Texas. I’m dreaming of a green Christmas…
        Well, this installment was pretty long, since I had a bunch to cover. I’m using a lot of next week’s ammo up here, so don’t worry; my next post should be shorter! Until then, I wish you health and happiness and, if you live somewhere less wonderful than the American South, a few pairs of long underwear.

God bless!

PS (aka Glossary, feel free to ignore):

ROTC – Reserve Officer Training Corps
PT – Physical Training
USMC – United States Marine Corps
NWU – Navy Working Uniform (the blue camouflage one)
MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BU – Boston University

CI – Christian Impact (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ)

PS - post scriptum

aka - also known as...

 

Essays and Concerts and Subs - Oh My!

Wow! I’ve done a lot this week! Let’s see how much of it I can remember to write down.

Well, there was Halloween, of course. There was a competition between the entryways for the best jack-o-lantern. I actually have about twice as many pictures as can reasonably fit on here; I may post some on facebook as well. And blogger isn't working (I even started a second blog, but it still won't work), so you'll just have to scroll down to see them. Sorry. I celebrated quietly in my room with a cup of hot tea and TV in bed. Which was nice, but is also part of the reason I still haven’t finished my work from this weekend.

On Friday Under Construction, my a cappella group, had our concert. It was awesome – everyone had a great time, and the crowd got really excited. Not only did the singing go well, but the skit and testimony were also done fabulously. Afterwards we hung out at a reception and then had a late-night/early-morning party with UPenn’s Full Measure, who opened for us. I didn’t go because, well, coming up…

On Saturday I got up early in the morning for an ROTC trip to see the USS North Dakota christened. It still blows my mind that we can drive through three states in less than two hours, after all those six-hour drives just to get halfway across Texas… anyway. It was awesome, even free food aside, but no cameras were allowed in, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. It was quite a different atmosphere from Harvard – the prayer was directed not to “everything forever comforting” but to “creator” “divine master” and “God.” It made me smile.

And then, when we got back, I went to another ROTC event: passing out free programs for the Harvard/Dartmouth football game (which we won, by the way). Oh, speaking of winning, everyone is very happy about the Red Sox here. Anyway, it was a couple hours of standing with stacks and stacks of very nice programs, yelling out “free programs, as many as you like!” and then adding “completely free, totally free, no scam, no catch” to clarify, because people are really very suspicious. Some of them still refused to take them, or even went to the trouble to hand them back. We still haven’t figured out why.

In any case, Saturday was a very long day. And then I went back to my room, tried to watch a movie, and managed to flip my laptop viewscreen upside-down, which led to a call home and a quick google search that did in the end come up with an answer. So Sunday I was feeling pretty indolent; I ended up watching TV most of the day after coming back from church (which was also good).

For those of you who might not know me, in my opinion the phrases “I edited my philosophy paper, finished my math homework, read and responded to a three-page story in Hebrew and studied with my calculus exam” and “I was feeling pretty indolent” are not mutually exclusive. This is, after all, college. At Harvard. I have a midterm, two midterms and two presentations coming up. Things never actually stop.

But then, life never actually stops for anyone. It just slows down occasionally. And today has been pretty slow so far. I went to practice for the Birthday Ball for ROTC this morning, which was pretty low-stress, and then went to Calculus. My long class of the day is Hebrew, but we watched a movie. It was actually more of a documentary, I think. It wasn’t bad, though I wouldn’t suggest anything that gets into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a warm, pick-you-up sort of entertainment.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good day, though it’s kind of dragging. I have to do all the work I’ve been putting off all weekend, and all the work I put so little effort into that it didn’t actually count. And of course, whenever one’s schedule is filled with things one doesn’t want to do, time will drag. But that’s okay. I still occasionally look around my room and just stop to think, “Wow. I’m at Harvard.” Immediately followed by, “Wow. I need to vacuum.”

But, only about three weeks until Thanksgiving! And hopefully this round of papers/exams/presentations is the last wave before reading period. If the syllabi are right, it is. So, time to start picking up the pace and jogging around the final quarter-mile before vacation. For a while I was kind of neutral in the homesick department, just chugging along as normal, but the closer I get the more I look forward to Thanksgiving break, and even more to the end of the semester and Winter Break!

Three blogs away from Thanksgiving – hard to believe. Until next week, then! Happy time change!