A (Reading) Period of Turmoil

                Well, finals season is here again; I have finals in the very first and the very last slot of the semester, so I start tomorrow morning and don’t finish for nearly another two weeks. I know it’s December, and we even had a trifling amount of snow a few days ago, but my holiday spirit is nowhere to be found; it feels strange wishing people a Merry Christmas and seeing friends already heading off for vacation when I’m still in the middle of so much work and stress. At the moment, I’m only concentrated on the immediate future, and I can’t seem to get un-tensed, even on days when I technically have nothing scheduled. Hopefully once I get a couple of the harder hurdles out of the way, my Christmas mood will begin to emerge.

                My focus is getting narrower and narrower as various activities begin to finish up, though; the week has been a series of endings. In CI, we finished up our LIFE Group, and we also had our last FUEL session of the year. Next semester we’ll start transitioning in the worship team leader for after I’m gone, so this is the end of my solo run, as well as the series of experiments I was running with worship.

                We’ve sent out a survey to see what people thought of my ideas: foreign language worship, scripture readings, kids’ songs, old hymns, etc. This past week was a cappella – for O Come, O Come Emmanuel – which seemed to be a hit. So far, there haven’t been that many responses, but I’ve had quite a few comments over the course of the semester, positive and negative, so hopefully people will make the effort to let us know what worked and didn’t. I think my main legacy for worship team, though, will be adding a regular structure and schedule for practice times/songs/etc. But these are musings for the end of next semester.

                In ROTC, we had change of command, so I’m now officially not in charge of anything (although we had one person missing on Wednesday, so I still have to do one more absence report). It’s very nice not having any more emails with sudden things that need doing, at least for a while, but my mindset has also switched into proactive mood for ROTC now, so I’m finding problems and fixing them even when I’m not really in charge. That was one of the things I wanted to work on this semester, so I’m glad it’s happening. We’ll see what next semester brings.

                We also finished Naval Science class this morning; we all did presentations concerning an imaginary scenario in the Persian Gulf, and as a Middle Eastern Studies major, I was able to spend most of my time talking about the political relations in the Middle East (which you can keep on explaining for pretty much forever and still not reach the bottom of), which made me pretty happy. Also, our LT’s wife made coffee cake and muffins which definitely sped up the hour-and-a-half class.

                I also turned in my semester’s thesis work today – a final outline that’s half the minimum length of the thesis itself (I’m very fond of outlines) with a preliminary intro and conclusions; and a draft of one of the chapters. I wasn’t expecting the chapter to come as naturally as it did; it’s been a while since I was able to sit down and just spend all day putting an argument on paper, but it was very satisfying. I also took the final for my seminary course a few days ago, so that’s done for the semester – only my Harvard classes are left, and all of them involve finals.

                I did have time for a little fun over the past week. I met up with a friend at Starbucks just this morning before we parted ways for the holiday, and several days ago a couple friends and I had lunch with my Roman History professor (Harvard sponsors outings for professors and students), which involved a lot of laughter and good conversation (and steak!). And of course, there was lots of staying in and reading and drinking hot beverages, and walks around Fresh Pond thinking about life and the future, and those sorts of things.

                Well, I should probably finish this up and go back to studying for my final tomorrow. Good luck in you enterprises, and hopefully I’ll be a little less stressed the next time I write!

Pictures:

We've had our share of cold rain, but we've had sunny days, too!

 A beautiful day at Fresh Pond:

 It did snow a little bit (it was gone by afternoon).

 Still going strong on the workouts - hopefully I'll be able to reach my goals before I have to leave my free gym for a month.

 I don't really have a problem with this sign, but it's a little ironic when it mentions the "natural beauty" of the "wildflower meadow"...

 And it's standing in the middle of this:

 I'm sure it's lovely in the early spring and summer, though.

Finally, while these may seem like normal pictures to you, there has been a giant construction area here since around my freshman year; I can't actually remember being able to look across this park without having my view blocked by a fence or a bulldozer. They worked very hard for several years to put in... grass, apparently. But, I'm not complaining.

 Until next time!