Over a month into summer and I haven't accomplished much, but that's okay. It's not like there are impending deadlines right now, which is nice, for the first time in four years or so.

Mostly I just sit around and do nothing at home. I go to the Y almost every day and work out. I've been playing some in Second Life, learning Linden Script and how it works in general, since I'll have to figure all that out in the fall anyhow. I was kind of ambitious and downloaded about 10 scientific papers that I was going to read and make notes on, hoping to prepare for the fall too, but so far I've gotten halfway through one, hit the term "emotional octopus", and not started reading again. Typically over the summer I devour books, but this summer a stack sits at my bed and I mostly just stare at them apathetically, occasionally flipping through a few pages and then deciding shortly after that it's probably not worth the effort.

I just feel apathetic. It's not really that I don't care about things, but that it seems like there's not a point in caring. This summer feels like waiting for something to happen while completely lacking the power to actually make anything happen. Waiting for an apartment to work out for next semester, waiting to figure out all the things I need to buy to live there, waiting for school to begin so that they'll pay me the money that I need to buy these things. Waiting until my family vacations to Alaska. Waiting to see if distance is going to work out between Patrick and me. Waiting for friends to call back, or for opportunity to do anything, really. Most of the time I would tell myself to get over it and do something about all this myself, but I think this past academic year kind of wore me out and I don't feel like making the effort for anything at the moment.

At least I have the Y. Though I'm a little lazy and it's a battle to get there some days, I do enjoy what I do there because I can measure myself making progress--reps and sets complete, calories burned, weight lifted, miles run. It's nice to see numerical progress. Maybe I can trick myself into doing something progressive by counting pages read, books completed, or lines of code written. I don't know; we'll see. I'm just saying, I can't sit here and do nothing from now until August.

Besides the apathy, though, things are good. I am enjoying the time off and am glad that I can spend my time catching up with friends and family and overall just taking care of myself. Lots of heavy decisions and transitions are coming, but for now it's mostly smooth sailing.

All right, enough writing. Maybe I'll straighten up my room and finally delve into one of these books for real.

finals week

I've always felt like finals week is a terrible idea. There's just way too much going on at once. You're constantly stressed out because you're studying for all those final exams, and then on top of that, you're trying to pack all your things into boxes to go home, to say goodbyes to the people that you're not going to see for a while, and to enjoy the beautiful weather outside and the little bit of free time that a spaced-out exam schedule brings. Everyone's throwing parties and playing outside.

This year, I have gained a new hatred for finals week. I am admittedly apathetic about my finals--well, except for piano juries, because it's just embarrassing to play poorly in front of people--but there's plenty enough to keep me busy. I'm graduating, and that means saying forever goodbyes to a lot of people, and long-time goodbyes to more people, and it's just difficult. There's all this work to be done and all these boxes to be packed but instead I end up spending time with people. I don't think it's a choice I'll regret, but it's stressful.

Today was my last seminar at UNCC, and although I plan on coming up to say goodbye before I leave for Clemson in the fall, I already miss this place. I've worked here for two years, lived here for two summers, and have felt more at home here than at Winthrop many times. My lab coworkers were like family to me. I was convinced I was going to grad school here for nearly two years, and I had dreams and plans about living in this place, the things I would do, and the people I would spend time with. I miss how things used to be. I have so many memories here, and I miss the people that belong with them, because this entire year has been a slow drifting away from each of them for various reasons (too busy with schoolwork to spend much time here, no research mentor or project, people moving away, general group dynamics changing). I mean, very good things have happened, and I've made new friends, but I deeply miss how things were.

I know I will miss Winthrop. I will miss my professors, who have worked so hard to give me every opportunity they could to flourish during these four years. I will miss my friends; there are so many people here who I am very close to. I'm going to miss my roommate, Bethany--I couldn't ask for a better friend. I will miss Jason and Andrew (Chad's going to grad school with me), who have been in most of my undergrad classes. I'll miss all the people that I randomly run into on the sidewalk after not seeing them for a really long time, and the people I've kept up with for all four years, and the people I grew up with that I'll soon say goodbye to. And of course, I'll miss Patrick. I don't know how distance will affect our relationship.

I miss home. I want to go home and to let things be simple again. I'm afraid of moving away and being alone because I need people to take care of me and just be there to listen sometimes. Moving to a new place means starting over again, which is fun in many ways, but also tiring. There's no one there who automatically cares about me like my family does; I have to earn it. There's no one who knows my stories and looks out for my best interests like they do. I know it's not that far away and it's not that different than living on campus at Winthrop, but still, I feel very alone.

I wonder, is life always like this, a constant state of missing things? Is it always a looking back and remembering, wishing for things to stay the same, while being forced through quickly-moving time into whatever's next? I hope not. I don't think it will be. I think that transitions are difficult, and that this next year will not be fun, but that eventually I will get settled and be okay with things. I'll find a place to live and people to live with, I'll get some research established, I'll find a new church family, things will be okay. There's just a lot of questions right now and not a lot of easy answers. I'm still working on seeing this as an exciting opportunity and not only as something completely terrifying. 

Whatever comes, it is a comfort to know that God will always take care of me, no matter what. He always has and he always will. If I didn't have strong theology and tested faith I don't know how I would get through all this. I am so thankful for God's sovereignty and for his proven faithfulness.

All right, enough of that. Now, to dinner with my Bible study group!

a spontaneous haiku

leftover Chinese
now finger food--no clean forks.
this is college life.

sunday morning thought

from http://trevinwax.com/2009/03/21/how-scholarship-shields-us-from-the-bible/

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

“Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

“Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

- Soren Kierkegaard

recent reading

I used to just read the blogs of my friends to keep up with their lives--and I still do. However, lately, I've been enjoying reading blogs that are teaching me things, or that are written by people who are like me or that I want to grow up to be like. Here's a list of the ones I particularly enjoy lately:

twenty two words by Abraham Piper

http://www.twentytwowords.com

All posts are 22 words or fewer. Topics vary, but include: language, parenting, Christianity, random observations.

Sociological Images

http://contexts.org/socimages/

Images for use in sociology courses or discussions. They're interesting and show trends about the way we perceive or portray groups of people.

Geeky Mom

http://geekymom.blogspot.com/

teacher, wife, and mother.

See Jane Compute

http://scienceblogs.com/seejanecompute/

professor working towards tenure, wife, and mom

Yay for kind of connecting with some role models.

I was making tea at one of the coffee breaks today when I overheard a couple of professors talking to each other. One was saying how excited he was that his wife just got tenure, and how he taught at one school, she taught at another, and they were living somewhere about equidistant from the two. The other then said something like, "That's like me and my husband." And that made me smile. I'm forever worried about achieving work-life balance and trying to figure out what it looks like for me to be a professor somewhere and my husband to be working somewhere else and for there to be kids involved in there somewhere. But apparently, lots of people are doing it and are being fairly successful at it. I don't have a clear model of it to work from but at least I know that what I want has to be possible.

All right. Good night. Last day of the conference tomorrow.

appropriate for a conference attendance blog post

i am for serious going to use this template one day.

I got rejected from the IBM summer internship I applied for today. It was a quick rejection (I submitted earlier this week), at least they didn't prolong things. Oh well, I mostly wanted to stay home and do nothing all summer anyhow :)

In other news, my family is going to Alaska this summer for a bit over a week to celebrate my parents' 25th anniversary. I'm sure it'll be beautiful and all, and I look forward to the time spent with them...but we're going to be traveling in an RV while we're there and I don't know how I feel about being in such close quarters with them. I guess I'll have to get over it because that's what it looks like we're doing. And I'm not going to whine about it because I know how important it is to my parents for us to do this together and to enjoy it.

Today's a snow day. When I came out of my software engineering meeting, there were already a couple inches of snow on my car. Jason, Andrew, and I had a short snowball fight, then I went back to the apartment. Patrick & I went out and walked in it, then Bethany, Patrick, & I made apple cider and watched an episode of House together. We found out class was cancelled. I called home to let Mom know, and was getting sad because both my sisters were home and I wasn't. Well, Dad came out and brought me home. So now I'm here, and happy to be here.

I'm having such a hard time with homesickness lately. I know it makes no sense; I'm 20 minutes away most of the time. But I'm just thinking about how much things change next year. I've signed my academic year and summer away for a graduate assistantship, and I'm realizing that this is for real. I don't really want to move forward and be as independent as I'll have to be. I like it here, and in a whole lot of ways I think I'd like it even better if I could just go back home and be 17 again or something. As hard as I try to see opportunities and be excited, I am more terrified than anything. But I'm working through it and I'm trusting that I'll be ready for things when they come.

All right, it's bedtime.