Misery loves disease

Everything is just a tad bit more miserable when your nose is clogged, your throat raw, and the amount of pressure in your sinus could power a small automobile.

Just saying.

My current rant: following through.

Why can't more do it? Why are so many people on this campus incapable of simply doing what they say they will do? Why are there so few people on this campus who actually have the ability to have an idea, talk to people about it, and then make it happen? Why is cooperation a foreign concept?

Will I graduate and find that most of the world's people are like this...or will I find that those people somehow learn that lesson after graduation?

Wrestling...

So tonight at Celebrate a migraine pushed me out of the Gloria Christi and up the stairs into the sanctuary...

the chapel is beautiful in the dark.

the lights over the majority of the sanctuary...i'm hesitant to use this metaphor because i'm pretty sure that this image is only in my mind, but the lights are like these star clusters that somehow give off just enough warmth to make it feel like God's living room. Okay a really big living room, with a lot of uncomfertable pews...but a room which gives off the perfect amount of hospitality - not overly welcoming, but there waiting when you're ready.

so i finally sat down. i sat on the edge of the chancel and looked up. my thoughts scattered. i didn't understand. i don't understand. the windows were darkened; the chistus rex golden in all of it's incomprehensible symbolism. the branches moved outside. everything felt open. Celebrate continued on below - voices rose up, prayers, songs, the blessing...

there's something about the chapel, maybe about God really, that makes you feel like you found where you were supposed to be and yet are completely lost all at the same time.

I guess it's sort of apt that of all the irreconcilable differences in the world that it seems we as humans are to sort through, that God just simply makes us sit with the irreconilable oddities that are life and faith and realize there's absolutely nothing we can do with it.

I can make up my own beliefs or reasons for the way things are, the way things could be, and why I should or shouldn't make those happen. I can use logic to find out what I have to do each day and I can survive by drowning in the necessary tasks that consume every hour and minute. Then I go to sleep after an exhausted or forgotten prayer and think I've survived.

But you know there's still that moment when I finally sit down and realize that it's all in vain. I still haven't figured out anything.

Week of 9/18/06

Thoughts before beginning this week: OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!

Up ahead: 1 Test, 1 Paper, Lots of Homework that is not done yet. Launching the Viva la Vote! Campaign, publishing the SALT Shaker, Writing a lot of stuff, F. Haus stuff, Writing Center Shifts, DA Shifts, Arabic...oh gawd, Arabic, oh and then there's that honors thesis to think about.

Is college life preparing you for adult life? Or showing you what you should not do in adult life?

Now there's a conundrum to think about.

Thoughts on Studying Abroad...

So, ever since I've returned to Valpo I've been sort of haunted about leaving again to study abroad. Ever since I said it out loud I've been trying to deal with the fact that I'm scared, and there are many things that make me simply not want to do it.

For example -

I have no desire to go alone and experience it alone.
I have no desire to go through that month long dive into a foreign culture, with a language that I'm completely inept at, be homesick, be friendsick, and oh yeah, BE ALONE.
That idea simply sucks.

And yet I know that I have to because 1) I would regret not doing so. 2) It's the only way I'll be able to figure out what I want to do at some point in the future. 3) It's the plan, damn it. And whether or not I knew what the hell I was doing when I made that plan, well. I made it. And what else would I really do anyway? It's not like Valpo has an abundance of Middle Eastern courses anyway...

Which is what made me occur to write this post. I'm filling out my 2nd study abroad application, this one to Al-Akhawayn University and I had to pick my top ten course choices and put them in order of priority. Wow. I couldn't pick. There were so many good ones to choose from! Moroccan History, North African Government, Economic Development in North Africa & the Middle East, Islamic Art & Architecture, The Middle East and the United States, International Law, Women and Society...I could go on and on! Wow. Amazing.

When I was talking to Kellee tonight, she told me should would go back and relive the initial suckiness of Mexico again rather than trade the experience. I'm sure that's true.

I just can't help feeling like I will be that slim percentage of people who really just don't enjoy their study abroad experience. Of course, that's also scary since what does that say about my major? But then if I do turn out to love it...what will that change about my life in the future?


Does the fear ever go away in adulthood or does it just change?