Slow Day (Thankfully)
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009.
Today was a snow day. I slept until noon, and went to lunch with my friends from the dorm. Upon returning, I took a four hour nap. When I woke up, I went to the drumline building to practice for a few hours. Then I went to dinner, came back, and spent the rest of my night reading, writing, and in the company of some friends. It was a relaxing day.
I am feeling a bit under the weather, however. I have a cold and it’s cold. Nothing to worry about, though. I just need to rest well and keep my diet consistent and I’ll be over it in a few days. I think I’ll be returning to that rest part now!
Day Two, More Classes
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009.
Today completed the introduction to my new classes (which started yesterday), and I even had enough time to go into town with my friend, Kelsey, to find books. Of course, I ended up getting all of them online for much cheaper, but the walk was nice! I will give a synopsis of my first impressions of my new scholarly endeavors. This list will only include my academic classes, and not the extra classes and activities I’ll be doing (of which there are many).
Yesterday I had biology 101. This is the next step in what I took last semester, biology 100, and it builds off of it. In other words, if you took bio 100, then you take bio 101. The only difference seems to be that we have new instructors. For bio 100, our professor was a man named Randall. He was blunt. He was sarcastic—at our expense. In a word, he was amazing. His approach to teaching such difficult material was brilliant, and I feel that I learned more from that class than any other I’d taken. He was also a neuroscientist, and he helped me to personally find my way and how I was going to go about getting where I want to go. My new professors seem to be more akin to dried up hippies.
Today, I had three classes: Intro to Afro-American Literature, followed by Medical Ethics, follow by Calculus. Afro-American Lit is a course that I have almost no interest in taking and am only doing so to complete a Gen Ed requirement. It seems to be a rather boring class, and so far this has proven true. But to my instructor’s credit, she is not jumping to slavery and slave narratives as the only literature worthy of dissection. In fact, none of the books we will be reading are written by slaves or about slavery. I think that the discussions may be more exciting than I originally thought.
Medical Ethics was the class that I was looking forward to the most. But so far, I am most disappointed by it. The professor is a pretentious “quantum theorist” who spends his time teaching here and as a visiting scholar at MIT. Okay, so that’s alright. But that doesn’t mean he’s bringing in the good money. Indeed, his wife is a doctor. Furthermore, he has made it clear that he “doesn’t care what [we] think,” stating that we have never taken a philosophy course before, and therefore our opinions are essentially base and unimportant. This was where my appreciation of the man flatlined. How many courses do I need to take to know what my opinions are on abortion? Furthermore, I have five adopted brothers and sisters. During their pregnancies and in the early stages of their life, they would have been considered by a man like this teacher “babies who should have been aborted.” My little brother was shaken, beaten, and abused. He had severe brain damage and was expected to be a vegetable. He is now one of the most brilliant and intuitive seven year olds I’ve met. My little sister was neglected and near-starved when she was found in an abandoned apartment. She was completely unresponsive to all stimuli for several months. Now she is one of the most vibrant, playful, and well-natured kids I’ve ever seen. My experience compels me to believe in a greater purpose and a greater good than this man’s ideologies could ever proffer. I have a feeling that the material we’ll be covering in that course will be a big topic for me over the next few months, and it will be hard to stay on his good side while fighting the urge to argue with him. Of course, it may be too soon to judge such things, and I will certainly remain objective to the situation until he completely proves himself one way or the other. My last class was calculus, and it will be run much in the fashion of the math class I took last semester. I even have the same teacher!
After classes I went into town for a bit, and later settled into my friends’ room downstairs to watch television and talk into the wee hours of the morning. I’d say that today went pretty well, and I am looking forward to another great day tomorrow!
Warming Hearts and Open Hands
Monday, January 26th, 2009.
It’s finally time to return to the grind of schooling, and I’ve moved back in and restarted my academic life. With it, I shall begin exploring all of the wonders of college life once again. My break was too long. I had borrowed a vibraphone to keep me busy, and I took a class for three weeks (forty hours a week, 8-4 M-F). The class was to become certified as a nurse’s aide, and although it’s better that I took it (significant increase in wages, will have no problem finding work), it stopped me from getting the rest I needed for a long while. When I started this break, I was rather depressed at the way that things were going. And when I am depressed, and I am given time to think (for instance, a month-long break with no obligations), I dwell, and I brood. And it gets worse. So at first glance, it would seem that this class would be a good way to keep my mind busy. But it ended up keeping me adequately tired and incapable of thinking clearly at all.
The reason I bring this up is because after the class was finally over, I started resting and thinking healthily. It gave me the opportunity to set a lot of things straight, and do some serious soul searching. Much of this revolved around Toni, and it was really the first time I had really gotten the chance to sort things out for myself and not have people interrupting me or shoving ideas into my head about it all. About a week before break started, I had told her that I couldn’t talk to her anymore. It hurt to think about her, much less talk to her, and it was better for me to look forward than backward. She didn’t take this so well (obviously), but it had to be done. How could I rightly detach myself from her if I was still pursuing her in so many ways? This was fine at the time, as, like I said, I was distracted by my classes and my friends.
But shortly after coming home, the entire situation hit me. I missed her a lot. I fell deeper into depression than I had yet been. I went to class and came back, exhausted, and brooded. It wasn’t for a few weeks until I started dealing with my feelings in a healthy way. It went like this.
I love Toni. A lot. She made me feel emotions that I didn’t really believe existed. She changed me. But there was something deeper in all of it. One of the main things that I wanted in a relationship was someone who could understand me, and understand the intricate and often senseless ways that I work. I thought that I had found her. Indeed, Toni is a very kind and sweet girl, and she has a heart of gold. But I saw traits in her that did not exist. I made her into something that she wasn’t, and it is for that reason that I began to expect more out of her than she was capable of giving. When these things weren’t there, I got frustrated. The reason that our relationship wasn’t clicking was because we were on two different pages. We are on two different pages in life. My mind is in one place, and hers is in another, and we’re both young.
I could elaborate, but I think that that is a good summation of how things were. It is obviously more complicated than that, and indeed the issues weren’t entirely of my doing, but that is the gist of it. So where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me in college, pursuing my dreams, making friends, and continuing on. And her, immersed in her own struggles. At this point, I finally feel at ease with the entire situation, and can once again lift my head. I no longer dread the thought of us being apart, and I feel as though I could continue on as her friend. In fact, I’d like to. But I’ve tried to get in touch with her, and she has not been so receptive. I can’t really blame her. None of this was fair to anyone. That’s the nature of a breakup, and I didn’t expect her to wait for me. Life doesn’t wait. It moves on. And now, so too must I.
All of that aside, yesterday was move in, and today was day one, and I am loving it. I got to see many of my friends, I went to classes, I went to the dining commons (it always tastes good at the beginning of the semester). I have to say that in one way or another, some strange amount of optimism has struck me in this past week. I was sure that I would be going back to school as depressed as I was. I could no longer see the bright side of anything. And in the final week preceding move in, my entire outlook has been revamped, my spirits rejuvenated, and my mind is fresh and ready for more. I’m so happy to be back! I have a good idea of my goals for the semester and I am excited about making even more friends, and I know that there will be so many new experiences and opportunities. I can’t wait!
Which brings me to my final point of day one and of this entry. The song “Good Weather for Airstrikes” has been quoted here before. It remains to be one of my favorite songs. The last lines of the song depict darkness and loneliness (“Total silence / No answer”). But the final two lines make up what has become the most profound quote in my life: “The best thing that God has created / Is a new day.” I think that darkness is not only an inevitable part of life, it’s an essential part of life. For without darkness, how could we ever appreciate the light? And although today might not be too satisfying or happy, there’s always tomorrow. This is the first thing that I tend to forget when I am down. I believe that there is no way out and that I’ll be there forever. But somehow a new day comes. And with it come new revelations (that I will discuss more later) and new ideas and thoughts, and new hope, and new optimism, and new courage and wisdom. As Reese Roper said, “Only [God] can make every new day seem so new,” though I often forget it (and will likely forget it again). I must also thank my friends and family who see me through these problems time and time again. It seems as though I’m prone to these situations, and sometimes support and prayer is the only thing that gets me through them.
So I did my share of growing over break—I became a better musician, learned a lot about nursing and the medical field, and learned a lot about myself. But the learning has always just begun. Welcome back!