I just sat down at a table, only to realise that the person I was sharing with was a violent computer user- he banged his laptop so hard that the table was moving left and right. I was trying to figure out a polite way to inform him that, although he had loud headphones on, there WAS a world around him that was easy to disturb, when he stood up, jammed his computer into his backpack, and left. At least I don’t have to move. But I do feel like I should call some computer protection agency on behalf of his poor little Dell. My computer was cringing just being that close. It’s ok. It’s over now.
So! Yesterday! I spent the morning at work, actually, rather productively at work considering the fact that I was dog tired. I headed home a little early so that I could spend some time studying for the bio test that had kept me up all hours of the night before. I read over my answers a few more times, laid down for half and hour, studied for another hour after that, and then we headed to the testing center to take the exam. It took me about an hour. It took John about half that, but he snuck out from behind me purposefully so that I didn’t freak out that I was taking longer. I felt pretty good about it. As good as I could feel about a test that I felt was full of unnecessary, uninterested, over-tested information. What a joy the class is. I now know more about Galileo than your average 5th grader. And solstices and eclipses and the “Ecliptic” and the phases of Venus. In a BIO class. Yes. Anyway.
On the way home from the testing center, I got rather dizzy. It was kind of interesting. It wasn’t “I haven’t eaten” dizzy- but more “inner ear infection” kind of dizzy, or another kind of dizzy that I will refrain from naming altogether. I sat with John a few minutes before he had to go to work, but seeing how exhausted I was, he tucked me in and I fell asleep for about an hour. I could have slept more, but wanted to sleep that night. PLUS, Gilmore Girls was on, and they’ve finally cycled around to the episodes that they showed when I was on my mission. I’m loath to miss that! I also worked out- to the chagrin of the lower part of my body, with new DVD’s I ordered from Amazon. They are GREAT. And I like being able to do it in my home. Bye bye Gold’s, overpriced and stuffy, stuckup gym!
After that, I made some dinner, cleaned up the house a bit, and just relaxed. Making dinner at 10:30 at night has become sort of a habit now, with John arriving home shortly after 11. We’re very European. Hmf. But my chicken last night was GOOD. I’m getting the hang of making the SAME thing taste DIFFERENT on DIFFERENT nights. Yes. And I made baked potatoes, too. All in all, yummy and nutritious.
Waking up this morning was a little rough, but we managed it. I arrived at my William James class to greet a stack of freshly graded papers. Remember that 10 pager I alluded to last week sometime? Apparently, a few people had failed to grasp the nature of the paper, and didn’t understand what Paulsen had wanted. He said quite a few people did it well, however, and that he would read aloud to give everyone an idea of what he was looking for. At that moment, I knew, just KNEW, that he was going to read my paper aloud. Don’t get me wrong, it’s NOT because I think I’m an amazing writer, or because I did anything spectacular, but rather because in writing this paper, I had the urge to include some personal examples that are very sensitive to me. Against my judgement, I wrote, in detail, about my two friends, their tragedies, and my reactions in an attempt to comfort them. My reaction, in these two cases, was very, very wrong. I took one track with the first and made her outrageously angry with me, and I took the opposite track with the second, years later, and almost lost a friend. It was then that I discovered how I should really handle the problem- and where I got my thesis for a paper about the sick soul, or healthy-mindedness, and how to approach evil in the world.
When he started reading, I could feel myself turn red, and then my hands got cold, and I thought to myself, “No one knows who you are, just relax or they WILL!” So I calmed down, and had to watch as my soul was borne vicariously in front of a classroom of overly intellectual BYU students. I had never just watched people react to my writing before. Well, that’s not true, Rich and Ron react to my writing all the time- but strangers, complete strangers, being given my experiences and my words. It was odd. I usually have to prepare myself for a situation like that, and I had included several details in my paper that contained BYU “hot” words…things that are usually ignored or at least, just not thought about in public at BYU. My point was meant to show how desperate people can get, how truly horrible circumstances can make someone forget or ignore God, and that even a religious person can have a hard time believing that God has any power over evil in their life. It was a little intense for me, and only got more intense as my paper became the avenue for people to ask questions about whether or not it was appropriate to add such personal experiences into a critique paper, at which point a guy that usually drives me CRAZY pointed out that everything we had read of William James had been written in similar style, and Paulsen agreed. CoocooCachoo. I wanted to say, “I didn’t write it for the class, I wrote it to express my feelings as precisely as possible, and because I trust our professor.” But I didn’t. I just let it go, and think that somehow, I had an important experience this morning. I’m still sorting out what that experience was, exactly, and if I do, I’ll let you know.
So now I’m waiting for John. I think he’s going to drag me to the grad fair for a few minutes after his class so that I can see the options. It’s kind of nice, having a husband who wants me to do things that I want to do, and am occasionally to lazy to pursue. Speaking of things like THAT, how’s ALICIA GREY, John?
Perhaps, more later. But probably not, because tonight is my late night with classes, and I’ve got a film exam to study for.
Leave a Reply