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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