Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Studying vs. Surviving

            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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