Papers and more

This week, I have three finals, two papers, and a paper presentation. On top of that, I have work and regular life. I got a chance to do some fun things, including go see one of my favorite bands in concert, but now I am paying the price because I have to do all my schoolwork now.

I hope to post some pictures soon, because I have been taking pictures, some of which I am very pleased with.

Moving into break

Hopefully I can get ahead on my papers over this break. I have an ambitious but hopefully doable list of tasks to accomplish over Easter break, which runs from tomorrow until Easter Monday. This list includes writing one paper, outlining another, going to the doctor, and tidying my room. Perhaps I will post before and after shots of my room. Or possibly I will decide the before shot is too humiliating and only post an after shot!

This Easter will be new, as it's the first major Church holiday since we moved. I am hoping that our proximity to the D-house will mean we can go there, but I suspect the others will want to go to a parish church. Oh well.

7 quick takes, vol 23: impending doom

--- 1 ---

Ok, so impending doom is a little over-dramatic. But Comprehensive exams start Monday and go until Wednesday. I hate taking tests, and tests that cover four years of accumulated knowledge are even worse.

--- 2 ---

Also, I'm sick. Yesterday I threw up at work, and today I am staying home from work and resting. I don't plan to change out of my pajamas or get out of bed more than necessary. I don't feel super bad, but I need to get better quickly. (See comps, above.)

--- 3 ---

To go along with comps, it looks like there is another storm coming. At last check of the Capital Weather Gang, it's still not clear whether we will have rain, sleet, or snow. Of course, I'm worried that it will be snow and that school will shut and comprehensive exams will be delayed.

--- 4 ---

Also, for the less liturgically aware, or who just haven't put two and two together, the last day of tests is on Ash Wednesday. ASH WEDNESDAY! I hate fast and abstinence days enough as it is, and now I have to deal with a test as well?

--- 5 ---

Ok, so things look very bad. Comps, in the snow, while starving and throwing up. Luckily, I have some good things to look forward to after comps are over. Besides the obvious, I mean, namely that comps will be over.

--- 6 ---

I have almost no class next week, because on any day that there is comps, you are excused from all philosophy classes. Also senior seminar is canceled that week. So I have one seminar Monday night, and one humanities class Thursday morning. I intend to spend Thursday afternoon tidying my room and preparing it for Teresa to come home for Spring break.

--- 7 ---

Then, spring break! I will be visiting Kevin's family and helping his mother sew costumes for his little sister's cheerleading team. I am really looking forward to it. So not everything's bad...but I do have to get through comps.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

7 Quick takes: Lessons in Trust

--- 1 ---

This semester, I am taking three philosophy classes, one honors humanities class, and the capstone honors class, which is basically a seminar about memory. Needless to say, I have a lot of reading to do. This takes up most of my time.

--- 2 ---

When I'm not doing my homework (or, let's face it, playing on the internet) I am doing one of either two things. One is participating in study sessions for comprehensive exams, which are at the beginning of March and can cover anything and everything we've learned.

--- 3 ---

The other is job hunting. Kevin and I are probably both going to get jobs for next year, although he may get an MA in theology first, depending on funding. We are very much hoping to stay in the area, and I have a good solid lead on a job. (Prayers or fingers crossed or well wishes or whatever your expression of choice would be greatly appreciated.)

--- 4 ---

I can't find it in my heart to stress out about any of these things. For a long time now, I've been an untrusting person. When I started to pray for trust, I was handed all these opportunities to develop my trust: about to enter the workaday world without a job, engaged to someone else without a job, preparing for comps without the greatest foundation due to having taken some courses out of order, and so on. In any previous semester, I would be a basket case.

--- 5 ---

A few months ago, though, I was talking to a friend, and I said, "Well, I guess this is God teaching me to trust Him." It was out of my mouth before I even knew I was going to say it. As my friend said, "Wow, that's a good way to look at it," I was thinking Wow, yeah, that is a good way to look at it!

--- 6 ---

So far, this seems to be working. When I am calm, I am better able to study for comps. I have a good lead on a job that works very well with my long-term plans, which basically fell into my lap. (I'm not announcing it publicly in case things fall through last minute.) Many people were concerned that being so trusting would mean nothing got done, but so far this hasn't happened. A priest I know said in his homily on Wednesday that there's a fine line between Pelagianism and quietism, and I think this is equally true here.

--- 7 ---

I have found where I want to be on that continuum. Much as Descartes embarked on a project of radical doubt, I'm embarking on a semester of radical trust. We'll see where the road takes me this year, but I have no doubt that it's in God's hands and that He will provide.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

A productive day!

I had such a productive day Tuesday! Here's what I did:
-Packed three boxes of books
-Packed a box of fish tank supplies
-Freecycled a box of fish tank supplies
-Wrote a description of the fish tank we're selling
-Finished J's Christmas present and wrapped it
-Wrote my friend in the convent a Christmas card and packaged up her present
-Wrapped Teresa's fiance's Christmas present and wrote him a card
-Started and finished M's Christmas present, and wrapped it
-Finished Kevin's grad school check list (since he had more final papers due than I did, I pulled together a list of everything he needed to apply for grad school)

Yesterday was less productive, as we had two Christmas parties to go to. But I did manage to do 2.5 hours of work for my grandfather, get the oil changed, and cut out one Christmas present.

Let's see if I can keep up the high productivity!

7 QT, Volume 17

I'm just popping in to say 7 quick things...about moving!

1. We made an offer on a new house, and it got accepted. The closing is scheduled for right before Christmas, so we'll probably move after Christmas.

2. The pros of this house are as follows: it's in a better parish, it's closer to Papa's work, there's an intellectual Catholic community there, and it's prettier than our current house.

3. The cons are as follows: it's smaller, the yard is smaller, and it requires leaving the house we've owned for fourteen years.

4. The older people think that, on balance, this will be good for our family. The younger people, who can only see what they would lose and not what they would gain, are rather distraught.

5. Prayers for them would be appreciated!

6. Since the house is smaller, we'll have to do some purging. That's definitely not a bad thing. We could use it.

7. Lastly, lest I leave you on a depressing note, here's a little beauty for you.

Papers galore

I'm currently in a sea of work. Last week I turned in two papers. This upcoming week, I have one paper, one paper abstract and bibliography, and one midterm. After that, it should settle down until the end of the semester, when it gets even worse.

Tomorrow I get the exciting job of going to see the philosophy librarian. I've never been to see the man in over three years as a philosophy major. Shocking, I know. But now I am making up for this lack by asking him to help me find good secondary sources for my paper in my graduate class.

Somehow I find myself doing schoolwork during nearly all daylight hours. This week, I am going to track what I do when so that I can have an accurate picture of what I spend my time on. I suspect the answer is a little too much SVU. I shall report back (since I'm sure my non-existent readers are all dying to know).

In terms of current events, no comment! It all seems so stupid in every direction and quite frankly I have a hard time caring.

Hopefully I will have a more organized and/or beautiful post up soon. I do have some pictures I could post, once I can get them edited and cropped and such.

The plans, they are a-changin' (7QT, vol 15)

1. Instead of writing blog posts, I have been busy turning my life upside down.

2. How, you ask? I'm not applying to any PhD programs. I was sort of working on my applications, which basically meant watching many episodes of SVU to avoid thinking about them, and then I realized I don't want to spend the next six years of my life writing papers. I hate writing papers. I love reading philosophy, I love reading Greek, and I love talking about philosophy. But I hate writing papers. And grad school involves a lot of writing papers.

3. However, that means that I don't really know what to do with my life. I might apply to some MA programs, but I'm not really sure yet. It's hard to get funded for an MA in philosophy (since you usually go straight to a PhD) and I would still have to write papers.

4. I'm still behaving academically as though I were heading to grad school. I'm taking a graduate class this semester, and I have three hours of week of translating Greek with professors and grad students, which takes at least another three hours to prepare for.

5. Ideally, I think I would teach sewing classes to children. I'm not sure that I can pull that off, but I do think I will try to make money sewing in some way.

6. I've come up with the following ideas: alterations, an Etsy shop, sewing classes, mending/alteration classes for adults, custom made clothing. Depending on my area, some of these may be more or less realistic. I'm not going to do a link-up within a link-up, but if anyone has advice on making money sewing I'd be glad to hear it.

7. And, for no real reason, BIRDS!

Go over to Jen's to see the rest of the quick takes, or to add your own.

7 quick takes, volume 14

1. The semester is off to a good start! I missed my last first class of the school year by being in the emergency room, but other than that I have had a relatively bump-free transition back into the American university system. I have one paper assigned already, but I know what I want to say in it, so it shouldn't be too bad.

2. My little sister loves organizing things, so she organized all my books for me. Now I can find them easily. I also learned I have three copies of Dante's Inferno. Overkill much? Somehow, though, the fact that I have three Bibles (and a Greek NT) doesn't bother me.

3. The fact that school has begun means that summer is officially over. I find this frustrating, because I never got to paint my toenails this summer. One toenail fell off before summer started and it hasn't grown in completely, so I'm hesitant to paint it while it's still recovering. Sigh.

4. I went to a Baysox game with some of my beloved family on Wednesday. It rained for two hours in between the second and third innings, so we had to leave at the bottom of the fifth because it was almost eleven. Too bad! That was the only Baysox game I saw this summer.

5. Oh well. Summer is over, school is starting, and I suspect I will be too busy to worry about such problems.

6. From my facebook page: Yesterday, I found myself sitting in the living room watching football while Kevin cooked dinner. So much for traditional gender roles.

7. Speaking of football, I am going to have to miss the Redskins' season opener because I have class. Argh! If only the professor would cancel class. Or reschedule it. Or live-stream the game in and we can discuss the philosophy of football. Or something. I am going to borrow a jersey from Thomas and wear it to class in protest. (Football, obviously, is one of the things that will make me too busy to mind having unpainted toenails.)

7 quick takes, volume 11: scattered and short

1. This may be brief, because I have a paper to write! Normally, I don't really freak out about papers, especially not in philosophy, because that is my major, and I am good at it. (That is magnanimity, not pride. I hope.) This paper, though, is causing difficulties, because the library system here doesn't work super well, and it's in German.

2. The library system here. Sigh. I could write a whole ranting post, but I won't. Instead, I will say that while the Uni Freiburg renovates its library, the rest of us suffer. My typical way to get a group of secondary sources together is to find a call number that's relevant, and then flip through the books on the shelves around it. Here, because the books are not on their shelves for the duration of the renovation, you have to put the name of a book into their computer system and they will fish it out and you can go pick it up in two days. This makes it harder to find secondary sources, and harder to procrastinate.

3. Let me just say that while my super sturdy (and bright pink!) backpack may be designed for carrying around many large hardcover books, my back is not.

4. On a more cheerful note, I don't have any work to do other than that paper, so I hope to get in at least one more good birdwatching trip before I leave.

5. Does anyone have any experience traveling through Pearson airport? I have a really long layover there, and I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle to leave the traveler area and try to meet up with my aunt who lives in Toronto. On the one hand, I would have to go through immigration an extra time (or maybe two), but since Canada and the US are pretty friendly, it shouldn't be sooo bad. Should it?

6. Freiburg has a wine fest! I went with Kevin and a friend. We had a great time, although I didn't manage to get any very good photos.

7. Last but not least, please pray for a friend of mine, who fell down a hill and broke his nose and required 91 stitches to repair the damage done to his face. 

For some quick takes with maybe a coherent thought running through them, go see what other people are saying at Conversion Diary.

Pretty, happy, funny, real

I've never done this before! I almost never have enough photos that would work. However, today I do, so here we go! The idea, which was created by the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter, is to post four (or more) photos, one each for each of the words pretty, happy, funny, and real.

{pretty}

It's finally getting warmer here. These flowering bushes are on the way to the streetcar, and they are so pretty! Anyone know what kind of flower this is?

 {happy}

I do know what this is--it's a gray heron. I took advantage of a few rain-less hours to do some birdwatching, and this is the first bird that Kevin and I saw! It stood there forever, so I could photograph it as well as identify it.

{funny}

I mean, really, if you're going to graffiti a dorm, it *should* be in Latin. The highlighter wasn't a good choice, though. It's hard to read, and the transmission of your message is hindered.

{real}

This week, I have two reals:

I missed my brother's Confirmation because I was in Germany. So I made him a cake and celebrated anyway. Flourless chocolate cake, with strawberries to look like tongues of fire. It didn't occur to me until after it had already been decorated that a chocolate cake with white icing is maybe a bit more Lutheran of a metaphor than I was going for. Oh well.

My desk has the dubious honor of being my other {real}. Can you tell I'm trying to write a research paper? I did clean it up, but it already looks this bad again!

3/50

I have already done three of the things on my summer fun list! This is what I have done so far:

1. Read The Name of the Rose. (Spoiler-free review coming up!) I thought this book was fascinating, for sure. It was recommended to me by a dear friend who I have had many a philosophical and theological discussion with. The basic setup is a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. The detective is a monk who is interested in the philosophy of Francis Bacon and reasons much like Sherlock Holmes. At times, the prose got very thick and I felt like I was wading rather than reading, but I did enjoy reading this book anyway. I don't think there are any characters I agreed with completely, but there are some very interesting threads of thought running through the book. The two threads I found most interesting were the questions about heresy and the question of whether books and knowledge should be restricted and/or censored.

9. Try gluten-free beer. I found gluten-free beer at the health food store across the street, so I thought I would try it. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't terrible. I would say it tasted like a standard American beer. Or maybe the Americans I know don't drink the standard American beer. Anyway, it was not tooo expensive (1,19E for a bottle) and I will be keeping it in mind for things like cookouts where beer is far and away the most appropriate drink.

25. Go to the Augustiner Museum. This is an awesome museum if you like medieval local art. It had lots of stained-glass windows and statues that were taken out of the cathedral at some point.

I doubt I can keep this rate of completion up, but we will see! Every time I post one of these updates, I'll update the original list with the date I completed each thing.

Readjusting thinking

So I spent the last week rather frustrated, because I feel like this semester is a bit of an academic waste. Two of my four classes have almost zero work involved, and the other two are not super challenging either, although I have high hopes that that will change. I was getting cranky about this, and wondering if it was a bad decision to come to Germany.

Then I had a conversation with my father, who managed to cheer me up and give me a new way to think about this semester. He said that I should look at this semester as an opportunity to learn a lot about something I want to learn about. Rather than being frustrated that I'm not learning a huge amount in class, I can use my extra free time to learn a lot outside of class!

Since hearing that, I have been so much more cheerful. It makes perfect sense, and yet I never thought of it! I don't want to spread myself out too thin, so I picked two goals for this semester, besides the inevitable improvement of my German skills. Here is what the goals are:

Work on my Greek. A lot. And hopefully improve it substantially. I have been reading the New Testament with Kevin, but I am also going to get a copy of the Gorgias and read that, since I'm taking a grad class on it next semester.

Get my writing sample for grad school in order. I need to pick a paper I already wrote and lengthen, expand, and polish it. I hope I won't need to write a whole new one.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life!

7 quick takes Friday

1. Happy Easter to all! I had a great Easter with four good friends. We had a lovely afternoon cooking, chatting, and hearing about the trip to Turkey that three of them had just taken.

2. In the spirit of Easter, or in a fit of madness, I have committed to spending one hour in a church every day until Pentecost. Usually I go to the cathedral, because it's always open, and spend some time just sitting in a pew and reading Jesus of Nazareth. It is a great book, and I am really enjoying it. If I go to the cathedral late enough, they close it to tourists and have Eucharistic Adoration, which is always wonderful. I haven't made it to a daily Mass yet, because they are all either much earlier than I feel like getting up, or right in the middle of dinner time.

3. There are almost exactly two days left until the start of the Freiburg Half Marathon. I am super excited, as well as a little bit freaked out. I am quite sure I can do it, since I ran 11 miles two weeks ago, but I am a competitive enough person that I am worried about my time, especially since I paid to have it engraved on the back of my medal!

4. Classes started on Tuesday. I have had two sessions of my German theater class. My medieval art class is once a week on Mondays, so the first meeting of that is on Monday. My other three classes are through the university and don't start until the 15th. I like my drama teacher a lot. Yesterday we picked our topics for our two presentations. I will be giving a presentation on costumes and one on the play Daniel Stein (which is based on the book by the same name) which is about a Jewish translator for the Gestapo who saves many Jews and then becomes a Catholic priest. I'm looking forward to reading it!

5. I finished my 1000 piece puzzle of Tuscany. However, it's missing a piece! This is probably a metaphor for something.

6. Since I share a kitchen with relative strangers, I wasn't sure how I felt about the prospect of dying Easter eggs with vinegar and food coloring the way I usually do. So I improvised! Behold Sharpie-decorated eggs! I think they came out quite well:

I made the first, third, and fifth ones (counting from the left). Kevin made the other three. Clearly, he has more artistic talent than I do. Between the six eggs, we have three different languages going on! The tricky part of decorating German eggs is that every egg has the region where it comes from stamped on it, which is not attractive, but can be tricky to cover.

7. Speaking of eggs, we got a box of free-range eggs from the open-air market a few weeks ago, and my goodness you can tell the difference! Keeping chickens in the cages PETA likes to complain about is illegal in Germany, but even so the yolks of the free-range are much more orange and the eggs have more flavor.

The eggshells are also much harder to break. I'm not sure why that is, but it's rather annoying. This week I bought the regular eggs from Aldi instead of the free-range eggs. The free-range ones from the market are more than twice the price of the ones from Aldi, which is a little hard to pay given how many eggs I eat. I will probably switch back and forth--it is more fun to buy local food!