Whew!

After 7 cumulative hours in the library today, my presentation for tomorrow is finished, marking the end of major assignments until December (yay!).  My PowerPoint is all kinds of adorable...children's ministry presentations lend themselves well to bright colors and polka dots and pictures of adorable children jumping up and down.  For interested parties, I'm presenting on the Workshop Rotation Model of children's Christian education, which basically claims a thesis of declaring that Sunday School shouldn't be boring.  Google it.  It makes me want to be a kid in these Sunday School classes...but then, I guess that working in educational ministry is the next best thing!   Hooray for having an intended career path!

In other homework related news, I did the wrong reading (and wrote a response sheet on that incorrect reading) for my systematic theology class this week, and only found out half an hour before class.  That was exciting...those systematics readings are no small task, it takes about 3 hours to complete all the reading...that wasn't really going to fit into half an hour.  I read about half a page of one of the proper readings, and managed to write a substandard response sheet on it...I think they're mainly for completion anyway, so it's all good.

So it was an intense day of work, but I actually managed to finish at the reasonable hour of 10:30pm, walking out the doors to the dulcet tones of the intercom blaring "Bridwell Library will close in 30 minutes..."  

Looking forward to tomorrow night...no homework to do! :)

Schwew!

That's the sound most appropriate to my life right now.  "Schwew".  It's the sound of relief at finishing my systematic theology reading all in one night, approximately 15 hours ahead of when I usually finish the reading.  I still have a quick response sheet to write, but this puts me in REALLY good shape homework-wise, since it opens up the bulk of the day tomorrow to get Thursday's reading done (instead of doing the reading Thursday night), meaning I'll also be able to start working on next week's 3 major assignments tomorrow.  Hooray!

I also have a new writing project that I'm starting, which is exciting!  Pieces of it may float up here eventually, but probably not for awhile (see previous paragraph outlining present homework situation).

Overall, today was a pretty good day.  I got some really good feedback at work, made a tasty and minimal-effort dinner of orange-honey tilapia, almond rice pilaf, and fresh green beans, and obviously maintained the productivity streak of yesterday.  I find myself being reminded of that easily-forgotten truth that I'm happier when I don't procrastinate my work.

I also definitely spent half an hour watching a 1970s cartoon called The Funky Phantom on TV...it's about three teenagers who befriend a revolutionary war-era ghost and travel around in their dune buggy upholding justice and fighting discrimination.  Seriously.  I can't find a video that will let me embed, but I urge you to follow this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSL2ED-JrWE .  Also, Mom and Dad, this is why I sent you that text message.

A bientot!

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.  

Spoiled

Today I discovered how spoiled I have become in my foreign language studies.

Take French and German, for example.  For each of these languages, I had a pocket dictionary at my disposal.  In the case of French, I also had a bigger Larousse dictionary and a Bescherelle verb conjugation dictionary to reference when working through things.  These were all very helpful, but the tool I used the most (much to the chagrin of my professors, I'm sure) was wordreference.com.  Unlike online tools like Google Translate, WordReference doesn't translate entire phrases, but just acts as a thorough online dictionary.  Type in a word, get several possible translations back.  Easy.  If you don't understand a word, it takes all of about 5 seconds to figure it out.  In fact, I still use WordReference frequently when I'm translating letters and such for my job.

Here's the problem.  Ancient Greek doesn't have an online translator.

And that is really, really not cool.

So instead of typing in my query and getting a translated result back in 0.365 seconds, I have to spend anywhere from 5-10 minutes searching for unfamiliar words in the giant lexicon, the back of my textbook, or the back of my Greek New Testament, in the "dictionary."  That's 5-10 minutes PER WORD...and the Greek words that I don't understand are plentiful.  The time adds up fast.

The problem with all this is that you have to know the "lexical form" to look up the word...which often doesn't look anything like the word you're trying to find, because Greek has like 50 different spellings for practically every word in the language, depending on its usage.

Say you have the word "elelutha" in front of you, for example: to ascertain its meaning, you need to know to look up the word "erkomai."  And those don't look the same, now do they?  And that's even one of the easy ones to remember...

And of course, you get all the Greek characters involved, so in the time it takes you to find a possible definition you've forgotten which word you were trying to look up in the first place, and have also probably lost your spot on the page.  And of course, by the time you find your spot on the page, you've lost your spot in the lexicon.  It's a vicious cycle.

So while I was working on Greek for a whopping 11 hours today (to be continued for another 1-2 hours after I post this), it dawned on me how truly spoiled 21st century language-learners have become.  We can have everything on modern languages at the click of a button, and it's REALLY nice.  Even the magical analytical Greek lexicon, which lists words in all their forms (and which I discovered in the library today), still takes awhile to get through, and really only adds another book to the pile.

And so I admit it.  I've become spoiled in my foreign language pursuits.

So now, three days from the end of the course, I've begun to realize why the nickname around seminary for my summer Greek intensive course is "Suicide Greek."  As I told my friend T.Wes in the library today, if something goes wrong with my salvation and I wind up in hell, I'm pretty sure you'll find me at a dimly lit library table, under a stack of Greek lexicons and scattered with scratch paper.

Only three days, two tests, one quiz, and translating all of 1 Thessalonians to go!

I AM SUCH A SLACKERRRRRRRR!

Yeah.  My example today should never be followed by anyone, ever.  I quite literally spent almost the entire afternoon/evening sitting on my couch surfing the internet (do people even say that anymore?) and watching TV. And that's about it.

I think this is primarily a result of three things:

1) Post-exam study burnout.  When you spend 15 hours studying in one day, it is very hard to become motivated to study the next day.  Unfortunately, the intensive nature of the course makes us have no real breathers after exams; we just plunge right into the next lesson, in the same class period.

2) Exhaustion.  Last night I went to bed around 11:15 (45 minutes later than usual), didn't fall asleep until almost 2:00, and then got up at 7:15, left my apartment at 7:45, drove through McDonalds for breakfast (don't judge me, I was out of cereal), got to campus at 8:00, studied for half an hour, took an exam, then had 2.5 more hours of class.  So I was tired.  BUT, I didn't want to take a nap because I couldn't justify spending time sleeping when I had so much stuff to do...but since I was tired anyway, I still ended up just doing nothing.

3) Overconfidence in the stuff we covered in class today, leading me to assume that homework wouldn't be difficult.  I didn't get a chance to look over Lesson 15 (the Greek perfect tense, if you were wondering) as I was supposed to, but when we covered it in class today it made perfect sense and I was translating sentences mostly correctly off the cuff with ease.  So I figured that since the homework was going to be easy, why start it before 9:00pm?  Yeah.  Not a good idea.  But I did get done what I think we'll get through in class tomorrow, and I'll have the weekend to catch up.

But today, I was a slacker.  Big time.

On the bright side, I was eventually somewhat productive in the realm of domesticity.  I did laundry (finally), hung up two new pieces of wall decor (finally), and cooked a real meal with real ingredients that didn't come out of the freezer (pineapple meatloaf and confetti couscous).  I also played guitar until I wore blisters into the fingers of my left hand (I haven't played in a while).  I also spied on a cluster of attractive men who appeared to be moving into a neighboring apartment, but it turned out that the attractive men were just friends of the lovely young couple who seems to be the real residents.  Drat.

To some things up, I was a mess of procrastination today.  Even as I've been writing this post I've been floating over to Facebook and staring blankly at the screen for no reason...I need a fresh start, and a weekend.  Happily, both come tomorrow, along with some relaxation with friends that I am REALLY looking forward to.  But more on that later.  May you be more productive than me as you carry on with your day.

Procrastination 101

Welcome to Celia's lesson on the Art of Procrastination.  At the end of this course, students will be able to effectively put off working on their homework in creative and vaguely productive fashions, until they magically reach a point where they are willing to complete that work which they aim to procrastinate.

Part 1: What is procrastination?

Procrastination is the deliberate avoidance of a necessary task.  In the case of the seminary student, it may be blamed on ancient Greek's excessive use of conjugation and cases, resulting in an endless set of paradigms that is of such an overwhelming nature that the very thought of homework study induces tactics of avoidance within the student.

Part 2: Practicum

A series of procrastination techniques will now be presented to the student.  These techniques may be performed in any order and according to the student's preference.  Please note that this is merely a sample set of the myriad of procrastination techniques which are available to the average student.  The provided procrastination techniques were collected via a case study of myself on June 4th, 2011.

• Search for a DVD copy of Funny Face at 1) Half-Price Books and 2) Movie Trading Company.  After each of these attempts fails, order the DVD from Amazon for $7.50.

• Make a grocery list.  To lengthen this activity, search through two cookbooks and several online websites to find intriguing and appealing recipes with the cheapest ingredient list possible.

• Go grocery shopping.  Upon return, put groceries away.

• Make homemade hummus.  Since you do not have a specific recipe, you merely experiment with the rough guidelines once given to you by a friend until the result looks and tastes appropriately hummus-like.

• Eat lunch, including the aforementioned hummus and grapes, while watching an episode of Friends on DVD.  Laugh a lot at the sitcom antics.  Follow the healthy lunch with a tasty but unfortunate combination of chocolate chips, peanut butter, and banana that will be satisfying in the moment but later make you feel sick.  This will grant you an extra hour of procrastination.

• Research French Christian student ministries for your job for half an hour.  Begin to feel sick from the previous step.  Cease to work, and lay down on the couch.

• Watch an episode of Gilmore Girls of the title : "The Gnostic Gospels were Found at Nag Hammadi," because you are intrigued as a seminary student about how this reference will be pulled into the episode plot (spoiler: Lorelai and Rory attend a Rare Manuscript Society benefit dinner at Emily's request).  Laugh, and wonder why you don't watch Gilmore Girls more often (especially when you own the first 3 seasons on DVD).

• Go for a walk with the hope that fresh air will be reinvigorating both in health and in productivity.  Call four friends, get their voicemails.  Call your mother, talk to her extensively, and be scolded to go and do your homework.

• Sing your entire college voice lesson repertoire, along with assorted Broadway tunes, with the assistance of karaoke/instrumental YouTube videos.

• Return to the grocery store to purchase Bisquick, which you did not purchase on the morning grocery run, but which is necessary to make the Coconut Pie that you want to bake.

• Attempt to work on homework.  Become overwhelmed.  Attempt fails.

• Use the internet.  This may include watching YouTube videos, stalking high school classmates on Facebook, checking friends' blogs for updates, checking Facebook for updates, etc.  Repeat these steps as often as necessary, as the real-time world of the internet yields the possibility of new posts every few seconds.

• Sit down to really do your homework.  This attempt is successful.  You accomplish several of your assigned Greek Lessons, and make paradigm charts for the Present Middle/Passive Indicative, the Imperfect Active Indicative, and the Imperfect Middle/Passive Indicative tenses.  Become more adept at recognizing demonstratives.

• Get hungry.  Decide to make Coconut Pie.  While pie is baking, work on translating a newsletter from French to English, thereby making up the work that was previously delayed due to the chocolate-chip-peanut-butter-banana incident.  When work time is successfully made-up, make Greek vocabulary flashcards.

• Take pie out of the oven.  Marvel at it.  Let it cool, while taking notes from the Greek textbook.  Eat a piece of pie.

• Work on Greek exercises, until you begin to get confused.  Look over weekend to-do list, and discover that a significant amount of work has actually been completed or partially completed.  

Once this final step has been accomplished, the student is free to stop working, with the awareness that less procrastination must be employed tomorrow, and with a decreased feeling of being overwhelmed.

Part 3: Final Exam

In a weekend setting, the final exam is encompassed by the successful ability to complete the necessary study requirements before classes resume on Monday morning.  In our case study, the results of the final exam remains to be seen; however, we remain hopeful of our subject's ultimate success.

This concludes Procrastination 101.  Thank you for your participation.

Disclaimer: Procrastination should not be used excessively, and should not be used to the ultimate detriment of the student.  Celia's blog will not be held responsible for others' abuse of procrastination.

What Studying Looks Like in Seminary

I had my New Testament take-home final today.  Even though it's take-home, we're not allowed to use any books or anything, so it requires just as much studying as any other test.  Here's what my studying looked like...

One and a half hours of essay prep in the library.

Swift apartment cleaning for study group.

Visual aids:

Philo's significance to the New Testament (with slight error...Philo didn't say Melchizedek was a high priest.  Drat.)

The Four Septets of Revelation

Back to individual studying.

Memory device: "Harry Potter Was Extra Brave When Weasley Slipped By Ravenclaw's Potty."

...which is an acronym for the 11 songs I attributed to 11 of the 12 books of the New Testament on our exam, to help remember the main idea of each book for scripture identifications (Revelation didn't require a memory device, because it has dragons and lakes of fire and is just plain crazy).

Here's the soundtrack, if you're interested:

2 Thessalonians: Heigh-Ho! (Snow White)
Colossians: Pretty Girl Rock (Keri Hilson)
Ephesians: We're All In This Together (High School Musical)
1 Timothy: Eye of the Tiger (Rocky)
2 Timothy: Born This Way (Lady Gaga)
Titus: Wouldn't It Be Loverly? (My Fair Lady)
James: We Can Do It (The Producers)
1 Peter: (The) Smiths' "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out"
Jude: Bad Kids (Black Lips)
2 Peter: Right Here Waiting (Richard Marx)
Hebrews: Prince Ali (Aladdin)

Also, reading aloud/listening to recordings of 10/12 of the books (sometimes in German/Swedish/French/Southern accents)

Study Sustenance:
-Stouffers' Cheese Manicotti
-Garlic Bread
-Fruit Cocktail
-De-frozen Halloween Brownies
-Frozen Yogurt from Yogurtland
-Corndog

One panicked phone call to best friend from college.

20 minutes of jumping around the apartment waving hands in the air, spouting off facts about alleged pseudonymity of deutero-pauline works and responses to persecution from a feminist critique (while waving arms around in the air)

Deep Breaths.

Start test, 10:10pm

Finish test, 11:43pm

Eat a bowl of cereal and watch an episode of "Friends" in celebration.

And that, my friends, is how I study.

You may think it's weird.  You may not understand it.  But it helped me nail this test.  I only missed one scripture ID (I googled them all after I submitted the test), and I feel super confident on the Term Identifications and Essay (even though the latter sent me into a panic trying to memorize all that info).

Three classes down, only one final left!!

Happy studying :)

Sleepwalking and Speedwriting.

I think that I sleepwalked last night.  I base this on the fact that when I went to bed, I was wearing one t-shirt, and when I woke up, I was wearing two.  It was weird.  To make matters worse, I accidentally slept until 1pm.  That's not cool.  I'm meeting a friend for breakfast in the morning to try and get my sleep schedule back in the realm of normalcy.

In other news, I've been ROCKING my finals prep.  Today I wrote my last paper of the semester, a 10-pager on holistic spirituality from an interfaith perspective, in four and a half hours...that's FAST.  To be fair, I did spend about 2 hours or so making a really detailed, well-organized outline beforehand.  It definitely paid off, because the actual writing process was quick, painless, and even (dare I say it) enjoyable.  Go figure.  I'm going to proofread it in the morning (standard practice in Celia-world), and then email it off to my professor.  And then, two classes will be completed for the semester!  Woot!  I'm planning to spend tomorrow filling out my New Testament study guide, study it during the day on Friday, and take the exam Friday afternoon/evening (it's a take-home).  That'll leave me free to spend Saturday, Sunday, and potentially part of Friday to study for my church history midterm, which will go down on Monday morning.  Then I'll see the Dalai Lama and go to a painting class with my life group girls, and then Tuesday I'll hit the road for a few weeks at home!!  The end is in sight!

Also, I got my Greek textbooks for my summer course in the mail today...and I'm stupidly excited about this course.  I do like me some foreign languages :)

My Life at the Library

Yesterday I gave you a sneak peek into my life at the gym.  Today, I give you the sequel: my life at the library.

You know how some days you're super productive and get things done and feel awesome about it, and how some days you just aren't feeling it and even the smallest tasks become more difficult than necessary?  Today was definitely the latter of these two alternatives.

Welcome to the library.  Step one, return a stack of books about Christian education in the African American church.  Walk up to the desk, no one's there.  Oh wait, here comes David.  David is one of my classmates, and he's from Korea.  He's quite nice, and always greets me with an enthusiastic smile, but occasionally I have a bit of trouble understanding what he's saying because of his accent (and he, in turn, occasionally has a bit of trouble understanding what I'm saying).  I put my books up on the counter.

"Hi David!  I'm just returning these..."

"Ah okay.  May I see your ID?"

I dig out my ID and hand it to him.  I always forget if that's necessary for turning in books or not...guess it is.

"Celia, you choose your classes for next semester?"

*insert random chit chat about class schedules, the fact that I'm a CMM student and not an MDiv student, and the general state of my friendships, with confusion on the part of both parties*

David reaches for the roll of stickers.  "Yes, okay.  August 24th."

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm returning these books, not checking them out."

Blank stare. "You...don't want them?"

"No, I'm finished with them.  I'm returning them."

"You don't take them?"

"No."  I pick up a book off the top of the stack, and put it back down, "I'm done with these books.  I had them, and now I need to turn them back in.  Give them back."

Understanding dawns on David's face.  "AH, okay, I'm sorry."  He starts scanning the books back in.

"That's okay, I'm sorry, I should have stopped you earlier."

And, scene.

Books "successfully" checked back in, I wander off to the Biblical commentary section, wondering if it's possible to check a book out twice, and if I would therefore need to check the book back in twice, and if I'm going to wind up with some obscure fine for an "overdue" book that was actually turned back in.  Oh well.  Scanning the commentary shelves, I locate the commentaries on 1 Corinthians, choose four that look promising, and continue into the room to find a study table (the commentaries are along an entry hallway to the Green room).  Two steps later, I stop abruptly.  All the tables are full.  I'm now one of those awkward people who stands looking about the completely occupied room and is then forced to do a 180 degree turnaround.  It's not an unusual occurrence given that the library study rooms don't connect, but it's still a relatively awkward moment for all those involved.  Defeated, I turn around, and walk back to the foyer.  My other options are the Red room or the Blue room.  The color red seems particularly stressful today for some reason, so I continue on to the calming chalky tones of the blue room.

The undergrad students who flock unbidden to the theology school library glance at me quizzically as I walk in with my stack of books.  I realize that this library is close to several undergraduate dorms, and  I realize that it's worlds prettier than the main SMU library with its aforementioned colorful rooms and colonial crown molding and window shutters...it's still a bit of a pain to have a bunch of giggly undergrads in gym attire or flouncy sundresses taking up library tables when you've got a 10 page exegesis to write.  But, all the tables aren't taken, so I choose one, switch on the lamps, and set up research camp.

The paper I'm working on is for my New Testament class, and is an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24.  An exegesis, for you non-seminary kids, is a critical interpretation of a religious text that pulls from the text itself and scholarly commentary thereupon, and not from things that crop up in your head or ideas you want to prove (that's eisegesis, and the mortal sin of seminary studies).  1 Corinthians 7:17-24 is a passage in Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, telling them not to get their undies in a bunch over their social position because it doesn't stop you from being a Christian or from serving God.  He specifically mentions gender, ethnicity, and slavery issues.  I've already consulted four books on this passage, including one in French that ended up being the most useful of the bunch.

The book on top of the stack is "Ancient Christian Commentary", so I pick that one up first, flip to the appropriate section, and immediately have flashbacks to last semester when I got all frustrated with this set of commentaries.  The term "ancient" in the title should give this away, but this is commentary from the ANCIENT church writers...people like Origen and Pelagius and several other people who wrote important things but were deemed heretical by the Church.  Considering we're supposed to consult sources from the 1990s onwards, and considering that I don't want to get into a squabble about who was heretical and who wasn't in the 2nd century, and considering that I don't want to get labeled as a Pelagian, I shut the book and push it off to the side.

As non-helpful as the first book was, the second one, the "Sacra Pagina" commentary, is brilliant.  It has a TON of information not just on the structure/meaning of the passage, but of the historical context, specific word studies of important terms, and tells you more about 1 Cor 7:17-24 than you ever wanted to know.  Ten minutes into typing direct quotes into my research document, I know that this book DEFINITELY is telling me more about the passage than I wanted to know...but that's probably exactly the amount that my professor wants, so I keep typing.

I see movement across the room...there's an enormous black cricket walking across the floor.  Gross.

Back to typing.  I shift the book, and my headphones pop out of my computer, playing my French pop music of choice to the entire room, albeit rather softly.  I quickly find the cord and shove it back into the headphone jack.  Glancing around, no one seemed to notice the dulcet tones of Emmanuel Moire pervading the otherwise silent atmosphere.  Anyway, most of the other students are plugged in to their own music...except the woman next to me.  I try to furtively glance her way without being too obvious.  She has a Perkins water bottle.  She, like me, and unlike the undergrads, belongs here.

Back to typing again.  "...7:17-24 constitutes a distinct literary unit set off by the literary device of inclusio or ring construction..."  The woman next to me is looking at me.  Am I typing too loudly?  My college roommate always made fun of me for typing too loudly.  I carefully glance over at her...no, she's just looking at her computer.  Okay, back to typing.

"...the pericope, a digression embedded as element B within the A-B-A' structure of chapter seven is itself chiastically structured..."

Holy crap, the cricket is right beside me.

I start wiggling my chair legs around, hoping to frighten it away.  The cricket just moves closer.  I wiggle the chair more forcefully.  Undergraduate #3 looks at me in confusion.  I stop rocking.  The cricket is sitting still, still facing my direction, probably just waiting for me to look away so it can crawl under my table and hop across my bare feet.  Not okay.  I have a flashback to the Zen center last week...they had a plastic cup sitting by the fireplace, with a sticker on it that said "to catch bugs."  No plastic cup available at the moment, unfortunately.  Carefully, eyes on the enormous cricket, I remove my flip-flop.  I'll just knock it away, I think. Lightly, not to kill it or anything, just to scare it off.  I swing the shoe lightly in the cricket's direction, and it sees it and immediately leaps about 4 feet away.  Good.  Just...stay there.

Back to typing.  My hands hurt.  This book is boring.  I feel like all these commentaries are telling me the same thing, and even though I have 10 pages of direct source quotes, I feel like I have nothing.  Stop lamenting your situation, Celia.  God has called you to this, right?  Has 1 Corinthians taught you nothing while you've been reading about it for the last 3 hours?  I press on, typing line after line until I  think my head is going to explode.  I finally finish that commentary, and push my way through the other two.  Victory.

My brain is completely fried, and my eyes hurt from staring alternately at small print and the bright computer screen.  I let my brain cool off with some YouTube videos for about 15 minutes, decide that I've had enough research for one day, and pack up my things.

I walk out the library doors, and am immediately greeted by lots of nicely dressed people hovering about the entrance to the chapel.  There must be a wedding going on today.  Sure enough, there's a white limo parked on the street, waiting to whisk the happy couple off to their new life together.  I shrug my backpack over my shoulders, and walk down the stairs in my jeans and striped t-shirt, my combination flip-flops/cricket shields making unglamorous slapping noises with each step.  I'm a bit underdressed for a wedding party; what WILL the bride think of my ill manners?  My head still hurts from hours of research, and the whole world seems slightly out of focus.  An attractive groomsman comes into focus out of the corner of my eye.  He's looking in my direction, smiling.  Could this be my soul mate, right here on my campus, tuxedo-clad and waiting to whisk me off in that white limo, causing scandal to the bride and groom but not caring a bit because it was love at first sight and he's Mr. Willoughby and I'm Marianne Dashwood and we don't care what the world thinks of our naive and unspoiled love?

Sorry, attractive groomsman.  1 Corinthians 7:17-24 just told me over and over again to stay in the situation in which I was called, not getting all upset that I'm single and not trying to change my social position by marrying the first good-looking guy in a tux that I pass upon exiting the library.  Besides, Willoughby had a scandalous past and gave up on Marianne in favor of a woman with a good fortune.  So much for naive and unspoiled love.  No, attractive groomsman, I'm better off without you.

And anyway, I have an exegesis paper to write.

NOOOOOOOOOO!

So UK lost its Final Four game to the UConn (which was pronounced as "Yukon," and rather confused me for the first half of the game).  Most of you probably know this, since most of you are affiliated with Kentucky yourselves.  Since I spent the last four years of my life living just down the street from the University of Kentucky, I'm a UK fan by association when the proper moment arises.  Moments like tonight.  I'm generally not that into sports, but this game managed to make me into one of those people sitting on the edge of the couch yelling at the TV and waving my arms in the air.  The neighbors were probably alarmed and confused.  It was an INTENSE game...UK came back from being 10 points down at the start of the second half to take the lead, then lose the lead, then take the lead, then lose the lead, then take the lead, then lose the lead, and so forth...until they ultimately lost to UConn by ONE point.  It was crazy.  My Facebook wall is now flooded with status updates of similar frustrated sentiment tinged with sadness.

Other news of the day includes library researching adventures, homework adventures, and (surprisingly successful) homemade fried chicken adventures, and work adventures.  I also made friends with two random black people at Cafe Brazil who were (understandably) intrigued by the books with "African American ____" in the title that my suburban white girl self kept pulling out of my backpack and placing in an ever-growing stack on my table.  To update you readers, I have a 1.5 hour group presentation next Tuesday on Christian Education in an African American cultural context, and had raided the library for all relevant materials before heading to the cafe to meet one of my project partners.  The girl next to me was really nice, and talked to me about her perspective and gave me her email and phone number to contact her if I have any other questions.  Yay for friendliness!

Tomorrow I WILL go to church AND my small group (I've been slacking on both of those things lately).  Also, can you believe that it's April???  Time for another goal check-up and goal setting for the month...that will be a post (hopefully) for tomorrow :)

My New Success Scheme

I have a new scheme for academic success: to make reading my primary hobby.

I've discovered this trend in my life where my primary hobbies have become 1) Facebook, 2) YouTube, and 3) TV.  That's healthy right?  Not so much.  But they're like a vicious cycle of electronic addiction.  I tend to leave my computer open and on all the time because my internet is really finicky for some reason, and the wireless doesn't like to connect to my laptop when I first turn it on, even though the computer is less than 10 feet away from the router.  In order to avoid undue frustration, I just turn my computer on, and leave it on.

The problem with this, though, is that then the internet is ALWAYS there, giving easy access to unproductive hobbies #1 and #2.  And, when I've watched all the YouTube videos I care to, and Facebook gets boring, I turn the TV on in the background to make hobby  #1 more interesting.

See the cycle?

But then, I had this brilliant idea!  Instead of having these pointless things be my hobbies, I'm going to make READING my hobby.  I'm going to make READING be the thing that I do most often, and my go-to activity when I have some length of time to fill.

The beauty of this plan is that I have a GIGANTIC amount of reading to do for classes before the end of the semester, especially if I want to pull my church history grade up from the depths to which I expect that unfortunate midterm has caused it to plummet.  More and more, course reading has become this seemingly insurmountable task, and I avoid school stress by avoiding class reading and trying to get by on the bare minimum.  It doesn't take a genius to know that that's not a good study technique.  But, if I can make studying seem like this cozy time of me snuggling up with a book, it won't seem as intimidating.  That's the theory, anyway.  And, of course, reading will include fun books too, to balance things out.

So, two plans for moving forward.

First, Don't have the computer open unless it's necessary for 1) Classwork, 2) Work work, 3) Skype Dates, or 4) Non-excessive facebook/email/youtube time.  And, of course, blog-writing.

Second, READING IS MY NEW FAVORITE THING TO DO.

Happy 50th Post!

The little blog post counter on the Blogger homepage informs me that this shall be my 50th post.  Yay for blog dedication!  Everyone should go eat a cupcake or something in celebration.

I am, quite simply, exhausted.  Today was a mental race to the finish line in the world of homework as I paid the price for the homework evasion I've been engaged in since Thursday.  Luckily, I managed to answer the giant set of reflection questions for my Education class by reading only one chapter of the book we were supposed to read in its entirety (and using Google Books to search for things that didn't fall in that chapter).  The questions were mostly about personal experience, so they were fairly easy to answer even without doing all the reading.  After that was done, I read the chapter that I have to lead class discussion on on Wednesday; still have to plan out the actual class, but I have some ideas floating around.  I'll be glad when that's over...it seems like it's causing me an unnecessary amount of stress.  Having accomplished a fair amount of work, I took a break by watching a documentary about Royal London, and called home for a chat.

It was also in this time frame that I discover that I owe around $500 in taxes...self-employment sucks this time of year (my job contract defines me as an independent contractor, so I don't get taxes taken out the rest of the year...so they all pile up).  That was an unfortunate discovery...combined with the persistent overwhelmed-ness that is my life in grad school, I proceeded to lay on my bed tearfully for 10 minutes or so.  Then, I got up, got dressed, and got myself to the library to keep working on things.  This was slightly awkward at first, as I began to have one of my bi-weekly tearful nervous breakdowns actually IN the library, but eventually I was able to get my entire New Testament paper written...if in a rather unorthodox fashion for me.  I think it's alright...at any rate, it's not going to get much better, and it's good to have it out of the way early (it's not due until Thursday).

Eventually I returned to my apartment and ate Chilis leftovers and shortbread cookies and a cupcake.  Then, I realized that I haven't done the Wii Fit in like forever, so I made myself do step aerobics for half an hour.  And now I'm here, writing this blog post.  See where that exhaustion came from?

The good news is, I think I should be able to go to the Valentines Day Indian dinner tomorrow night, which is good, unless something crazy happens.  For once I've actually managed to get ahead...even though I still haven't done any reading for my class tomorrow.  I guess that will be the morning activity.

But right now, I'm absolutely exhausted.  I'm going to take a shower and go to bed.  Don't try and stop me.

(Sorry the 50th post wasn't more intriguing...how interesting can a day filled with homework be, really?)

A Day Which Was Good.

Random thought of the day: When real-life movie stars play normal people in movies set in the present time, does that mean that in that fictional movie-world, their real-life movie star persona doesn't exist?

Think about it.  We're coming back to it later.

Today was a very good day of several very good things.  First, the bridesmaid dress adventure: my friend Miranda needed to get a bridesmaid's dress for a wedding that she will be in this summer, and my friend Rachel and I came along to her appointment at David's Bridal for no real reason other than to frolic amidst fancy dresses, dig through racks looking for specific sizes, muse about personal wedding dress preferences, and offer our wise second opinions about the caliber to which each dress contributed to the general fantastic-ness of Miranda's appearance.  It was a good time.  After the perfect bridesmaid dress was acquired, we went across the street to the mall and had similar adventures in Forever 21, before hopping off to lunch at Pei Wei, where much good conversation and tasty Asian food was to be had.

After our morning adventures, we went back to Miranda's house to "help" her housemate Amy make shortbread cookies (not that we were really too much help, because she had things pretty well in hand).  So we just hung out and munched on shortbread cookies and cupcakes, while I finished translating the first portion of the Pray for France prayer guide to English (yay for work productivity!).  Eventually, Rachel and Amy ran off to the Nuevo Dia, a new Spanish ministry some people from Perkins are starting, and Miranda and I continued "working" on homework...though, we got more complaining done than actual work.  Despite making huge strides in work for my job, I really got nothing done in the way of schoolwork (again).  This...is a problem.  I'll be hitting the library or White Rock Coffee tomorrow afternoon for sure.  Things are starting to look tight...my Valentines Day plans, which currently consist of eating an Indian dinner with a bunch of people, may turn into a paper-writing/reading festival.  I have GOT to kick my butt into gear.  Here is my to-do list as it recently stands (as in the things that must be completed by Thursday...and which were intended to be accomplished this weekend, and many of which will need to be done BEFORE Thursday)

-Plan how I'm going to lead my Spiritual Formation class for an hour and a half this week

-Read the chapter necessary to do lead that class

-Write my New Testament Paper

-Review the book necessary to write that paper, and outline it before actually writing

-70ish pages of Prayer and Spirituality Reading

-Start reviewing the book for my Prayer and Spirituality presentation next week

-Read 160 pages for my education class, and answer a ton of questions about them (or skim the book enough to find the answers to these questions...last week's questions took me an hour and a half to answer)

-Write up self-care journals for the past few weeks for Spiritual Formation

The unfortunate thing is that this list, daunting as it is, doesn't even include the normal class reading for my church history and New Testament classes that I have (unfortunately) become accustomed to skipping.  

Grad school is intense.

So yes, I'll be busy tomorrow.  Church in the morning, homework until my women's small group in the evening, and homework the rest of the night.  We'll see where that gets me...

Now back to my original question...do real-life movie stars cease to exist in the fictional world of the movies in which they play normal characters?  See, I was watching Music and Lyrics tonight, and that movie makes a lot of pop culture references....and it made me think, if Hugh Grant is playing pop-star Alex Fletcher in this movie, then does Hugh Grant the actor still exist in that world?  If someone said something to Alex Fletcher about Hugh Grant, would the character know who that was?  And if someone walked up to the character Sophie Fisher (a completely normal person with no fame at all) and said she looked JUST like Drew Barrymore, would she know what they were talking about?

It makes you think.

In other news, I LOVE Drew Barrymore's wardrobe in that movie.  Every time I watch it I want to run out and buy a bunch of new clothes.  It's a problem.  It's also probably a good thing that the movie ended at 11:00pm, when all the stores are closed.

Leave comments about the movie star+movie character conundrum.  I'm interested to know your opinions...

Slump

Everyone has their little slumps on their way to goal accomplishing; I would call today a slump.

First of all, I accidentally slept until 11:00...I had two alarms set for 9:00 and don't remember turning them off, so I don't really know how that happened.  I've discovered that sleeping in late REALLY messes up my productivity groove.  It's weird, because I always consider sleeping in a luxury (and I suppose it is), but it's really not all that beneficial.  I'm finding out that it's better to stay on a regular sleep schedule as far as energy is concerned.  I'm sure someone told me that along the way...I believe them now.

The morning (time designation loosely applied) was fairly productive: I did my daily CCFOF research, and then went and sat out by the pool for a couple hours and accomplished a fair amount of class reading...unfortunately, I was being proactive and mostly reading ahead for a book review due in a few weeks, so I still have a lot to get through before Tuesday (Monday reading is happily completed).  It was a beautiful 72 degree day here in Texas, and I brought two books with me, allowing me to switch readings whenever I got too bored with one (an effective strategy, I discovered).

The other problem with sleeping late is that it throws off my meal schedule; so around 4:00 I got hungry for lunch and retreated to the room where the rest of the day was spent in a general slump.  After eating a healthy-portion-size meal I was still oddly hungry (despite significant chopping of portion sizes lately, I haven't had this problem before...and don't worry, I haven't been eating an unhealthily small amount or anything, I've just been paying attention to proper portion sizes, which are quite smaller than my past idea of a "portion").  This kind of led into a slump of junk food for the rest of the night, including at various points pizza rolls, hot chocolate, and peanut butter on a spoon.  Yeah...I'd call that a slump.  I was also feeling kind of sick this afternoon (pre-peanut butter and hot chocolate, those were attempts to use sugar to perk me up a bit)...as a result, the entirety of the evening was spent watching "I Love Lucy" episodes and "The Royal Tenenbaums" on TV (I actually liked that movie a whole lot...it's filmed in an artistic way that's really reminiscent of "Amelie," which I love).  After that, I spent countless hours on Facebook/Youtube, and eventually pulled the Wii Fit out not to exercise, but to do a body test (which I've committed to doing every other day).

Actually, the body test was a pleasant surprise: in the past 10 days or so, I've lost 5 pounds and lowered my BMI by 0.8!  I haven't even been working that hard either...just eating healthier foods in proper portions, and exercising for half an hour most days.  I'm rather proud of myself, if I do say so.  I'm sure that I won't keep losing weight this quickly...but still, this is the first time that I've set out to lose weight, and am actually accomplishing it.  It's a nice feeling :)

Bliss

This is bliss: cooking healthy and delicious tomato basil chicken and rice that makes the apartment smell like Italy, curling up on the couch with said dinner and watching "The Swan Princess," making frozen peanut butter and banana poppers, and working out with the Wii Fit.  

And this is how I spent my evening :)

If there's one thing that a week of focused goal-oriented diligence has taught me, it's that being productive in the beginning of the day sets you up to be productive throughout the day, which in turn allows you to have relaxing evenings that restore your sanity, thereby setting you up for productive mornings, and so forth...

If there's one thing that a week of focused, healthy eating has taught me, it's that the guilt-free feeling associated with eating better is one awesome feeling.

If there's one thing that a week of diligent, regular exercise has taught me, it's that exercise gives you endorphins. And endorphins make you happy.  And just as Elle Woods pointed out in Legally Blonde, "happy people just don't shoot their husbands."  They also don't wallow in fits of despair brought on by feelings of being overwhelmed and general lethargy.  They just don't.

Summary of one week back in Dallas: things are going great :)