Tag: College Life

First week craziness

So, this last week was the first week of school.  It was as crazy as anything.  Back to classes, back to papers, readings, buying books, waking up early…everything.

Fortunately, even though I’m taking six classes, three of them are only two credit hours, so the load is going to be somewhat lighter, freeing me up for time to do other things (clubs,  blogging, writing, dating etc…inshallah), and several of the classes are actually fairly interesting.  The poli sci 201 class in particular looks interesting–we’re reading all kinds of ancient texts (like Homer and Dante) and tying it in with Western political thought.

Unfortunately, a lot hasn’t been going very well this week either.  Just lots and lots of hoops to jump through, payments to make, expenses and such.  The little stuff really grates on me, especially when it doesn’t line up.  Probably has to do with my ENTP personality type.  The bigger stuff is harder to handle but I don’t flare up over it.

I don’t know where I’ll be working this semester, and that’s an issue.  I had thought that I would just be rehired by the BYU Bookstore, but right now that’s looking unlikely, because due to my class schedule I can’t work M-F.  It would be nice–REALLY nice–to get a TA job, but nothing has worked out so far.  Or maybe I could go and work for that used bookstore downtown?  THAT would be nice.

So, with all of these stresses and stuff, and just my general disorganization, I’m sad to admit that I haven’t really been doing much writing…but I have been working to get the quark writing group started up again, and I am starting to formulate some really awesome writing goals for this semester.  More on that to come.

And I even if I haven’t actually put any words down in the new novel I plan on writing this year, I’ve been thinking about it A LOT.

This week, as I was walking home to the FLSR under the sunny blue sky, I saw a patch of grass on a hill and decided to lay down and relax for a bit.  As I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, I just immersed myself in the world of this new story, working out all the details for the first scene.  That led me to ask several questions about the characters (who are they?  what are they feeling/thinking?  what kind of a background do they have?) which got me to think through their back-stories, and the tribe they come from, and inter-family conflicts, and how I can tie all those into other characters and conflicts later on in the story.  I fell asleep for a little bit, and when I woke up, it was like I was waking up to a new world, coming down from meditating on a mountaintop or something.  Really sweet feeling.  I love taking naps on the grass.

There is SO much I have to blog about!  But it’s 1:58 am and I’d better get some sleep.  Tusbah ‘ala al-kheer!

Thoughts on being busy

I was browsing through some Facebook notes I’d imported from my old blog (now nonexistent), and I came across an old book review I wrote for Momo by Michael Ende. Awesome book–I recommend it 110%. However, the thing that got to me was what I’d written about how the book made me think about how I was living my life back then:

I don’t regret being busy. I’m VERY busy all the time (especially this spring, with Poli Sci 200 giving me a major beating). There are days where I wake up at 6:00 am and I don’t stop running from one place to the next until the evening. Sometimes, it’s true, I let the world around me just sweep me around and control my life. But I don’t think that things would be much better if I just cut out all the things that I’m doing.

I was home this time last year, not working or taking classes–I didn’t really have any responsibilities at all. And I was miserable. I felt like I wasn’t being productive enough, and I looked forward to coming out to BYU for the summer term because then I’d have something to do. Now that I’ve been really busy for a year, I’ve found that I really like it. It’s good to have a lot of challenging projects and responsibilities. I’m doing what I love and even though it can be difficult, I’m having a lot of fun. Work hard and play hard.

My sister Kate sometimes has problems with being overworked or underworked. When she’s busy, she’s so busy that it makes her anxious and she feels overstressed. We tend to fight a lot when that happens. So then, she takes time off to try and recharge, but she gets anxious because she feels that she’s unproductive. So then she fills up her schedule with things to do, until she’s overstressed again.

I think that the problem isn’t a matter of whether or not you’re always busy, so much as what you make time for. The people in the book got to the point where they figured that good things were something they’d only have time for sometime in the future, so they spent all their time doing menial things, and ignored their friends, families, and anything that was fun or enjoyable.

Life should be kind of like a car battery–once you’re up and doing something, it recharges itself. If I were only busy with things that drained me, I’d go crazy. It would just feel wrong, and I would make some major changes in my life. But if I actually enjoyed all of the things I was doing, and am doing, right now, I would know that things are working the way they should.

And ultimately, I think that that’s the message that Ende was trying to get out. Enjoy your life right now, where you are, and make time for the people around you.

This really gets to me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I don’t think I’ve been following my own advice this last year. Ouch.

Second, I want to refocus and spend more of my free time doing creative things and/or spending time with people. The advice here about prioritizing really resonates with me.

Third, it’s totally true. Life should be just like a car battery, and if it isn’t, you’re doing something wrong. Trying to get stimulation without putting in any effort is just wrong, even if it’s innocent.

I guess that’s one thing I learned from my experience last semester writing that novel. It took a LOT more effort to sit down and write the thing than it did to play computer games or waste time on the internet, but the satisfaction it brought was a lot better.

At the same time, I didn’t spend enough time getting out and making friends. But really, it’s the same thing. Do you fill your life with busywork or do you make yourself busy with the things that really matter? They take a lot more effort, but give much better satisfaction.

I arrived in Provo a couple of days ago, and I’m still somewhat disoriented. I’ll have some new writing goals, though, before school starts. I’ll also have some new ideas for where I want to take this blog, and I’ll write about that tomorrow.

In two weeks…

Two weeks from this moment I’m going to be in a plane over the Atlantic ocean heading to Cairo. How cool is that?!

Definitely an order of magnitude cooler than writing this paper.

I really don’t want to write this paper

As in I really, really, REALLY don’t want to write it.

The class was good, and the stuff we learned was interesting (and even profoundly compelling at times), but the grading is arbitrary, the class didn’t present itself as a challenge, and I’ve already written one final paper this week.  One freaking fantastic final paper that is going to rock my other teacher’s world (or at least break a 90, inshallah)!

But yeah, I’ve got this paper due at 4:30 pm on Monday…and I haven’t written the first word yet (though I’ve written the bibliography and cover page)…and I’ve barely got my thesis argument figured out in my mind…

All I really want to do is write in my novel!

Wow…2,500 words

Yeah, that’s quite a bit more than I thought.  I started late in the day, in between sessions of conference, and basically just wrote a little bit here and there.  Just now, I opened it up to finish up the current chapter, but decided against it since I’m really tired.  Then I did the wordcount, and wow…

Continue reading Wow…2,500 words

One down, two to go

It’s done.  Khullas.  Blegh.  Now I’ve just got to get it peer reviewed, edit the crap out of it, write a whole ‘nother paper for a whole ‘nother class, and I’m FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

This is totally me.