Usually when I come back to school, it feels like I never
left, but this time was different. Granted, this is the first time in a long
time I’ve been in the same place two semesters in a row, but somehow, my room
didn’t feel familiar. I remembered that I’d done things in it, but I felt
disconnected from those experiences. And of course, upon coming back to school,
I needed to have a space I could feel connected with and call my own. So I set
about redecorating.
You can compare the results with the pictures of my room
from earlier blogs. I discovered a way to attach all the summer scarves I won’t
be needing to the wall, and decorated accordingly. I took everything out of
each and every box, drawer and shelf, and then set about reordering it all. I
was quite pleased with the result.
I’m also pretty happy with my schedule this year, although I
have a few things that have yet to be scheduled. Because I’m taking two NS
classes, I have ROTC pretty much every morning, but on all but one day, I’m
done with my other classes by 1:00, and I have space in between ROTC and my
Harvard classes to work out and get ready for the day, which adds a novel
regularity to the week. ROTC hasn’t started yet, though, so we’ll see if the
theory works in practice next week.
At the moment*, the only class I’ve actually started is
Arabic, although I’m heading to my other two Harvard classes in about
half-an-hour. Arabic class did feel like I’d never left – you had the same
teacher giving the same format of lesson to the same students, with the same
amount of homework as always. I won’t say I loved it, but it went fine. After
this semester, I’ll be done with my formal study of Arabic, if all goes well.
I’m also continuing my German class from last semester, if I
can fit it in. For NS, which starts next week, I have Naval Weapons and
Navigation, so we’ll see how those go. As far as the Middle East goes, I’m
taking History of the Modern Middle East, which is actually in the History
department, but counts for concentration credit.** I’m taking one more class,
but it’s still in flux, so I’ll let you know how that goes next week.
I’m still planning on doing a joint concentration in
Philosophy and Middle Eastern Studies. My relationship with philosophy went
through a rough patch last semester due to my Personal Identity tutorial. For
one thing, all the course’s basic assumptions about the world ran almost
directly contrary to all my basic assumptions about the world, which made it
difficult to get anything done, because nearly everything that I was interested
in was then outside the scope of the class.
For another thing, philosophy, at least of the
Anglo-American variety, is – well, nit-picky. About everything. You must always
be defining things, listing assumptions, explaining what you’re not arguing,
heading off misunderstandings, and giving long adjectival phrases to clarify
everything, and for a while I’d given up hope of actually getting anything done
in the forest when you always have to be working leaf by leaf.
However, lately I’ve been reading quite a bit of Christian
philosophy which does say something meaningful, and is as annoyed as I am with
these problems, so things are looking better. I will probably never be a
philosophy professor, but I’m still excited about being a philosophy undergrad.
If one takes the broad definition of philosophy – thinking carefully about what
the world is and who we are in it – then I can think of few better things on
which to spend my time.
Philosophy is a powerful tool, and I’ve been using mine to
re-shape the way I see the semester. I’m attempting to constantly remind myself
to see both ROTC and my classes as, first and foremost, areas for personal
growth and development, for the glory of God, and not as imposed duties
(although there’s a good helping of that as well). And as long as I remember
that, I’m excited about what the semester will bring.
*As of writing, not as of posting; I've had other classes now, but they'll keep until next week.
**concentration=a major at Harvard
Pictures:
My redecorated room:
