Deadlines and Dorm Rooms: Home and Back Again

It feels like a long time since I’ve posted, but it’s only been two weeks. Last week went by really quickly, but this week has felt more like a month. I’m not entirely sure why, except that my body knows we’re almost done with the semester and is prepping to crash at the end of everything. Hopefully it gets the timeline right.

Harvard-Yale wasn’t a win, sadly, but Thanksgiving was wonderful. I flew home to Texas Wednesday morning to see family for the holiday. I enjoyed seeing my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (not to mention parents!), but there was also a new member of the family to meet: my parents’ new dog, Tikvah (it means “hope” in Hebrew; he goes by Teek for short).

I’m not sure how he manages to find so much energy, but he’s quite the acrobat. So I ended up doing something I haven’t done in months; I started running for the few mornings I was home. Thursday morning I took him out to see what would happen, and we had a great time. After the first mile-and-a-half or so, he stopped sprinting, and by 2.5 miles he needed a little tugging, but we made it home. By then he’d decided I was alright. On Friday morning I really didn’t want to get up and run, but I opened my door and there he was, excitedly waiting, so run we did. The same on Saturday. We’ll see if I have the energy to keep that up by the time I make it home for Christmas.

Speaking of which, this is the last week of classes (!!!), but I have nearly three weeks of finals left, so I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. There will be a few more blog posts, so I won’t start nostalgically reminiscing just yet. Still, I’ve now attended my last class of the semester (outside of ROTC, which is still going for another week) and turned in all my assignments except for a history paper and a logic pset, so things are wrapping up.

In ROTC we’ve finished PT; we had the PRT (Physical Readiness Test) the week of Thanksgiving. We were using the indoor, 1/8 mile track, which always throws everyone off, because by the time you’re at 12 laps you’ve lost count, but we all still did fine. We had our last company lab yesterday. Part of it involved the seniors answering questions and giving advice to the underclassmen, which was fun, even if it didn’t last very long, but also made me feel kind of old. Next week we have the Change of Command lab, and although I don’t particularly want to drive across town at 5:45 Wednesday morning, I’ll be happy to pass the baton to next semester’s staff.

What else have I done since the last time I wrote? For one thing, I’ve watched quite a bit of football; it’s becoming a coping mechanism for being away from home. I’ve definitely become more Texan after four years of living in Massachusetts; I suppose that makes sense, although it would probably dismay some people.

We’re finishing up CI for the semester as well; we have one more week of FUEL, which is going to be all Christmas carols as far as I’m concerned, and one more week of LIFE group. This past week I asked everyone to sing in Spanish for part of a song; I think it went well, but only the survey can tell for sure. And yesterday we had a very good LIFE group, with really solid conversation about the passage and about our lives, which was encouraging. (I was leading. We were finishing up Philippians, so the themes were anxiety and rejoicing – very apropos for this time of year).

And one more highlight from this week: my Roman history professor arranged for some of us to see some Roman coins from one of Harvard’s art museums that date back all the way into the period of the Roman Republic (before the Empire). We could hold them and try to figure out which mythological or historical scenes were being depicted on either side. It’s a strange thing, thinking about another person who held this coin in their hands so many, many years ago, and recognized the same scene you did.

I hope everyone else had a good Thanksgiving – just a few more weeks (and one more semester) to go!

Pictures:

I did have a good time at the Harvard-Yale game; I stayed until after the halftime show. I'd forgotten they didn't allow backpacks, but I didn't want to have to go all the way back to my dorm, so I hid my stuff in the Widener stacks until I could come back and get it.

Off to church! I'm still practicing my mirror-selfie smiling technique; it always comes out a little odd.

We had a tiny bit of snow and ice, but most of it was over Thanksgiving, so I wasn't here.

The morning before heading off to the airport for home!

I still don't think of Harvard or Cambridge in general as home, although as I finish more and more of senior year, I realize how attached I've grown to them. I do, however, think of my dorm room as home; it's my space. I cleaned it all up so I'd have a cozy place to return to after Thanksgiving.