Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Three Days... We're Halfway!

            The reverberations and aftershocks echoed through the room as the young warriors, still reeling from the recent onslaught slowly raised themselves, looked around them, and tried to make sense of what was happening. Finally, one turned to his friend and, hardly daring to breathe, whispered furtively, “do you think it’s over?”
            “For now,” the other replied. “I think that was the last one.”
            Suddenly one of the others seemed to realize something for the first time. Leaning forward, brow creased, he half-whispered, half-shouted – “but – but that means we’re halfway through!”
            The students stared at one another in growing amazement. It was true. Midterms had ended. And so had half the semester. There was only a month-and-a-half to go…
            I’m not quite sure where to go from there, but yes! The year is halfway through. Surprised? So were we. I think most of us are still settling in; there are weekly appointments I’m supposed to be having that we haven’t found a regular time for; there are friends I haven’t had the time to catch up with; I’m still trying to get an idea of how my professors grade and where I stand in my classes. And yet – and yet half the semester’s gone, and I have to hurry up and get everything done before it’s all over.
            The long weekend was very nice, despite all the anti-Columbus posters taped on various doors and message boards asking me if I know what I’m celebrating. I know what I’m celebrating: I’m celebrating having finished my midterms and enjoying my only three-day weekend this semester. At the risk of sounding callous and ignorant, that my three-day weekend happens to be connected to Columbus makes absolutely no difference to me.
            Anyway, what did I do this weekend? Because I was touring a ship with ROTC last weekend, I was behind on work all week, besides having three essays to write. So Saturday was a work day; I got up early and tried to knock as many things off of my to-do list as possible. I also helped ROTC pass out free programs at a Harvard football game; you may remember that I did this last year as well. It’s a lot less fun in a cold rain, let me tell you, but it went fine, and we passed them all out. It was a pretty productive day. Once the sun went down, though, my motivation flagged, and I ended up on Netflix once I’d determined that I’d done enough to get myself back on track.
            On Sunday I got up and went to Church, and on my way back I caught the annual Oktoberfest parade. After church I went jogging down by the Charles – (okay, I should stop to acknowledge this. I went jogging for the first time since I sprained my ankle, and except for slight twinges of discomfort, my ankle was fine, so that’s a prayer answered.) – and quite by accident discovered an entire festival happening down in Harvard Square. I just wanted to get to the river, but I did stop to snap a few photos. Sunday evening I mainly tried to relax.
            On Monday I slept in – I had a lot of sleep to catch up on – and then headed into Boston; I haven’t been to the MFA this semester, and I’ve missed it. However, I must remind myself in the future to show up earlier and not go on holidays; the line extended out to the street. So there was a change of plans, and I instead wandered over to the little duck pond behind the museum and spent a while just sitting against a tree and musing, away from school for a little while. It was pretty nice. When I got back to school I had a cappella rehearsal; our concert is coming up pretty quickly. And afterwards I had dinner and finished the rest of the work that had to be done this weekend. All-in-all, this weekend wasn’t as restful as I would have liked, but it was productive, and it’s the semester half-way point; nothing except Christmas break is going to be as restful as I want it to be.
            I am now going to indulge in a bit of mid-year musing, despite the fact that this post is already plenty long. What have I learned thus far? Well, as far as book-knowledge goes, I’ve learned a lot, though there’s as always the age-old problem of learning vs. education. I have more responsibility than I did last semester, and although I’m still not doing as much leadership-wise as I did my last couple years of high school, I feel I’m still progressing.
            One of the main challenges this semester has been balancing work and relaxation. I’ve tried to do that through my Sabbaths, but the further into the semester we get, the more my free time wants to encroach on my work time. I started this year ready to go, but the first couple of weeks were so crazy, they drained all my excess enthusiasm. I’m not quite in ‘survival mode’, like I was my first semester freshman year, but I don’t feel like I’ve got everything together, either.
            So I’m still experimenting with ways to recharge my energy. The best way I’ve found, in my little experience, is a ‘detox’ period, a time completely separate from responsibility, where I can wind down and de-stress, until I’m charged up and bored and ready to get something done – it’s not in my nature to do nothing for too long. Unfortunately, those times don’t come very often. And when I don’t get enough time, when I start to detox but don’t finish, it’s like waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle: I’m more tired than I was before. There’s such a thing as too much rest.
            Yes, that’s how I feel now. The whole weekend was a mix of wanting to throw all responsibility to the dogs and wanting to make sure everything was done and together. It was a mix of watching Netflix and sending business emails, of staying in bed and making to-do lists. It was strange, and I’m still not quite sure how good or bad it was, but hopefully it gave me enough energy to get back to work.

            It’s not that I don’t do well with stress; I work best under pressure. I love learning, and it’s awesome to be here. All the same though – I’ll be counting the days until Thanksgiving Break!

PS - If you recognize some of the places in these photographs, it's because I had pictures of them last semester - except that back then, they were covered in snow.









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