Deadlines and Dorm Rooms: Back Home

Well, here I am, back from Spring Break and ready to start up again. I’ve been all the way to Texas and back, seen my parents and grandparents, celebrated Palm Sunday, evaluated the first half of the semester, and planned a little for the future. Now it’s time to jump back into the present.

I left Harvard last Friday after a very busy week and came home for Spring Break for the first time in my college career. I had a direct flight, which was very nice and allowed me to catch up on some independent study on the way. I caught up on a lot of reading over the break, although it wasn’t the calmest in the world.

My parents and grandparents (and dog) were very happy to see me, and I got to see quite a bit of them over the week. Texas was having warm days and stormy nights – my favorite weather – and I remembered what warm really meant. I had a few chances to see people; we had people over on Tuesday night, and I went to church on Sunday and sang in the choir and saw as many friends as I could.

We had a short family trip later in the week; we drove to Austen to see my grandmother, then stayed in a hotel Wednesday night and went hiking at Enchanted Rock on Thursday, since I’d never been before. We went in the morning, when it was still relatively cool, and it didn’t take us that long. It’s not a long, winding path; it’s just a huge mound of granite that you get up any way you can. Once we’d hiked the main trail to the top, we spent an hour or two hiking around other places, trying to get away from the crowds and partially succeeding.

We took the scenic route home through the hill country. There were lots of bluebonnets in bloom, but none with room to stop by the side of the road, so I don’t have pictures. While looking for a place to eat lunch, we discovered a Texas Ranger monument/museum-in-progress by an old army fort that had been partially excavated and reconstructed. In the US, it’s exciting if you find something almost 200 years old. It was well-maintained, interesting, and informative, but its primary virtue was being empty of people and fairly spread out (and not charging for parking).

That was the interesting part of the week; most of the rest was spent with the two presentations I’m doing today and tomorrow. One is a semester project and the other is a midterm presentation, so they required a fair amount of work and a lot of editing, but I finished them in plenty of time. And of course, there’s always ROTC to do, but things are calming down a bit with everyone on break.

The week may not have been a break from work per se, but it was a break from winter and college life and tunnel vision. A few long conversations with my parents helped me regain perspective on the semester thus far and begin to vaguely shape future plans. And of course, there was the evaluation of my New Year’s resolutions to do.

I’m very glad I went to the conference at Notre Dame earlier this semester, but it threw me off a good bit resolution-wise, in combination with a sudden influx of work to be done. As I careened down tracks toward midterms, I veered a little off-track, but I’ve had some time to recover and reevaluate, and I’m firmly back on course now, chugging steadily along. I was a little leery of getting up at five again after suspending my schedule for break, but it was much easier than I expected.

I’ve also noticed an interesting divide in my resolutions. I’ve sorted them into three categories: internal (my ordering of my own thoughts/mindset), external (my ordering of my appearance/actions), and interpersonal (self-explanatory). I’ve found that the part I enjoy most about my resolutions, the part that gives me energy, is the internal section: bible study, independent study, and etc. The external I’m more neutral toward, and when I get tired, I start to slack on exercise, eating well, and the rest. And the interpersonal is the one that requires a lot of energy, the one where I’m not always sure what I’m doing. I’m definitely an introvert. Still, it’s going well, and I think I designed a good balance even without fully realizing the different effects of these divisions.

In any case, leaving aside the last half of the semester, Holy Week is the perfect time to refocus on what’s important. Except, of course, for all the work that keeps piling up. Snow is also piling up, though, which resulted in ROTC being cancelled this morning, so I had a slight reprieve. It’s been so warm, though, that the snow was melting even before I set out for my first class.

I faintly remember those fond days of long ago when having trees dump clumps of snow on your head was something I only knew about from Bambi. Especially with Palm Sunday and Purim, I miss study abroad in Jerusalem and get very nostalgic. But that’s no reason to mope around in the present; one day, after all, this will be the good old days, and I wouldn’t want to miss it while it’s here.

After all, that wistful magic that lies over my reminiscences isn’t really about the past, at least not primarily, any more than the rosy future dreams I pondered over break are primarily about the future. The magic that lies over my memories and ambitions is merely the mantle of a higher glory cast about either side of me, turning me in towards that source of joy who must be sought in the present.

Pictures:

From Enchanted Rock: