The Good News...

...is that I made MAJOR headway on the seemingly insurmountable children's ministry paper today.  I changed the topic from second-generation immigrant cultural identity to "moving from cliques to community", which fits wonderfully with my very community-centered small congregation for that much-detested case study that was a surprise requirement of the paper.  Did that sentence make sense?  Well I understand what's going on, and ultimately that's what's most important.  None of you are going to read my paper.  In any case, today I acquired 9 typed pages of research from 10 sources, which will shortly be organized into outline form, from whence I will write the actual paper itself (this is my patented three-day paper-writing process, although it's going to be squished into two days in this case).  Hopefully I'll do that tonight (it's 11:45, but I'm not tired yet and it's all copy-pasting) so I can focus on writing tomorrow.  Ideally, I want to whip out a Theological Reflection Paper for my internship tomorrow (that little gem is due next Tuesday night at midnight, which is the day after I get back from Thanksgiving).  Needless to say, if I can achieve my ambitious goal of writing two papers tomorrow, it will be a very good thing...leaving me to focus on studying for my two December 5 finals and writing a final paper that is due on December 7th.  Follow all that?

I'm actually really hopeful about being able to write those papers tomorrow...I'm planning my strategy today, which was "Suck it up and just do it" (very profound, I know).  Thanksgiving break is a good motivator...nothing on my to-do list will be neglected, I am adamant about that.

In other news, week two of the kid's fellowship ministry I designed for the church where I'm interning was SPECTACULAR.  Literally flawless.  I couldn't believe it.  It was exactly how I envisioned it.  The kids were well-behaved, we had enough food, every kid had a seat at a table, the volunteers got to eat, the kids were excited to come back.  It was a beautiful thing.

Back to paper land.

Update:  I power cleaned.  And in an hour I had a clean apartment, and knocked 5 things off my to-do list for tomorrow.  Boo ya.

Good Day!

Today was a really good day.  This really good day comes to you in three parts, and excludes one portion of the day that was not so good because I was exhausted and feeling sick.  Focus on the positive.

Part 1: Gave a KILLER presentation on my Children's Ministry class (bad terminology?  you get the point).  Seriously though, it went really, really well...I was very pleased with how it went, despite having a page of my notes mysteriously disappear from the printing (GoogleDocs was acting up).

Part 2:  My Pride and Prejudice earrings came in the mail from England today!!  Squeeeee!!!!!  This is good for two reasons: 1) I now have awesome new earrings, and 2) I no longer have to worry about the possibility of this small, untrackable package getting lost somewhere in the Trans-Atlantic shipping process.  PLUS, the packaging was (necessarily) all British-tastic, with a giant stamp of the Queen's head and stickers that say "Royal Mail" and "Par Avion."  It's always good to have extra proof that something European has entered your life.  And the earrings look just like they did online, which is also good!  I've spent a good amount of time tonight just holding the box and looking at them, which may be nerdy, but they're pretty and I like them :)

Part 3: Spontaneous Frozen Yogurt outing with friends, after an evening consisting entirely of television and frozen pizza.  I'm finally off the massive homework pile, and have time to relax again!  Now if only I didn't have to go to class and work tomorrow...Thursday nights are always deceptively Friday-like in my life.  But maybe I'll wear my new earrings tomorrow and remember the goodness that was today :)

Productivity ATTACK!

I decorated for fall.

I was a productivity machine today.  Grocery shopping, lunch with friends, writing an entire paper, and cooking an all-out barbecue sandwich dinner with baked beans and pasta salad.  I also acquired a pumpkin and two gourds at the store, and hung my masquerade mask from Friday's mystery dinner on my bathroom mirror, so I also decorated for Fall.  It was a good day.

Working in the library with my friend Rachel (the photographer) and her sock monkey)

  

Finishing the Doctrine of God paper was the real highlight of the day.  Besides the fact that I finished the paper two days before it's due, it was actually a big confidence boost to write.  I feel like so much of my time in seminary has caused me to sit around and feel like I don't have a clue what I believe that it was good to have an assignment designed for me to sit and WRITE what I believe about God (in part, anyway).  It also gave me hope for the infamous Credo assignment that this class is working toward at the end of next semester, which is essentially a massive paper where you write about what you believe about everything, and make sure it all goes together.  This paper is, in effect, the first chapter of the Credo, and much to my surprise I not only wrote it fairly easily, but wrote what I think is a solid paper, and I even ENJOYED writing it, once I got past the intimidation factor.  Go figure.

Hopefully I'll keep up this productivity streak, since I have two papers and a class workshop to plan by the end of next week, in addition to the usual pile of reading and weekly written work.  Happily, after November 3, I actually won't have another major assignment due until December 2.  So I'm holding out for that little reprieve...the life of a graduate student marches onward.  

Work, Class, Study. Such Is My Life.

Today was just like yesterday, but it involved work and class in addition to the marathon library sessions.  And a chinese buffet for lunch, which is always good.  Highlights included tropical shrimp and a seafood biscuit.  I'd go back to that restaurant just to eat a plate of those two items.

As far as work is concerned, it continues to go well.  Today I went with Edwin, the associate pastor, and his wife to help at a food pantry down the street - packing food into boxes, stocking shelves, etc.  Edwin took some pictures for the church, which is good for you blog-readers because it allows for illustration...

Class was kind of a struggle to get through - I was tired from work and becoming more and more overwhelmed with the amount of homework awaiting me at the library post-class, and these factors made my professor's Argentinian accent more difficult to understand and my classmate's irrelevant comments more difficult to put up with.  The class is mostly first-year students, and they haven't been "broken" yet, as I say...meaning that they are still naively unaware of their naivete and still trying to sound super smart by making connections that don't need to be made.  I'm also fairly certain that Hermione Granger's upper-middle-aged American counterpart is in my class.  But anyway, I don't mean to rant...I'm sure they're all wonderful people, and I'm probably just more annoyed with them than usual because I'm tired and stressed by the time I arrive in class.

Anywho, I headed to the library directly after class and finished all the reading for my systematic theology class tomorrow, but I haven't written up the half-page response yet.  I'm worried for tomorrow because I'm going to have to write A LOT for my Thursday classes, including a reflection essay for my internship that I haven't started yet.  Here's hoping that tomorrow is a day that I work well under pressure instead of becoming paralyzed in my studies...otherwise, I could be looking at an all-nighter in the second week of the semester.  And that definitely doesn't bode well for the rest of the year.

All this being said, I did sincerely enjoy the food pantry and the chinese lunch with my work colleagues, and even sitting in the library reading was nice (for awhile) after a day of running from one thing to the next.  Now I just need to make it through tomorrow, and the homework avalanche will be stalled enough for me to catch my breath briefly before diving into next week's assignments!