Cure for Boredom#3...

Study!

This week, school started again. (For those of you who didn’t know, I am taking college courses from home.) Because of the way this particular online program works, my courses are each half a semester long; with the exception of the math course I am taking this quarter. That means doing all the work of a full-length class, in half the time. Last quarter I took four classes, -a total of 12 credit hours- all in one half-semester. That was very challenging for me, especially as it was my first experience with college classes, and I literally had to spend nearly every spare minute doing homework. This quarter, I am taking 15 hours, which works out to five classes. Thankfully, though, I was able to spread them out over the whole semester so that I am only working on three at a time. The classes have been challenging this week, but having one less to work on makes me just busy enough not to have time to be lazy. : )

One doesn’t have to be enrolled in college to study, though. I used to do quite a bit of reading as homework for piano teacher training, and I subsequently got into the habit of studying "just for fun". Not that I am by nature very studious, but I am a voracious reader, and once I had read enough “serious” books to get accustomed to them, I found studying much more enjoyable.

Of course, studying needn’t be confined to books. One may study in many different ways, one of which is by observation. For example, I learned more about English ivy than I ever thought to know, just by endeavoring to pull it up! I had to observe the way it grew if I was ever to get it all removed. -Observation does not come easily to many people. In fact, it took me four years of walking the same route nearly every day to begin to observe what I was walking past. How simple a thing it is to stop and notice the sights, sounds, and smells of God’s creation, yet how easy it is to forget!

Another non-literary method of study is that of trial and error. For example, my brother likes to cook. He is the only person I know that can simply decide he’s going to make a cake, -having never made one- and then go to the kitchen, throw a few ingredients together that “seem like what should go into a cake”, bake it, and come out with a perfectly edible cake! And, off the top of my head, I can only think of one thing he’s made over the years that didn’t turn out. And each time he made something, he would try to figure out what could be changed to make it better the next time he made it.

Conversation can also be a form of study. I had the privilege of staying with my Grandma for three weeks last summer, and through our conversations, I learned quite a lot about my family’s history and about my Grandma as well. And much of what I know about homemaking, I learned by simply talking with Mommy as we go about our every day life.

Study may not seem at first like a very appealing antidote to boredom, but as long as the object of your study interests you, it should be fascinating, as well as quite effective!
Warning: Studying may be habit forming, and can become a way of life! : )