A Precious Moment...

"Teacher, I have a cookie in the box for just You!" :)

A Grand Adventure (Part 1)

Those of you who haven't talked to me recently probably don't know that I am embarking on a grand adventure tomorrow. At 6:05 a.m. a plane will be taking off, flying me and a friend to a training seminar in Florida. Not only is any sort of travel a rarity for me, this will be my very first flight --ever! I will be away from my home and my dear family for 5 whole days, but my hope is that I will be so blissfuly busy that I will not have time to notice how much I will miss them! --Besides, it's only 5 days, right?

I hope to take lots of pictures and gather enough funny stories for at least one interesting post while I'm away... but no promises!

For those of you who are believers, I would greatly appreciate your prayers, both for the time we will spend traveling and for the seminar itself.

School’s Out!

I finally finished my last test this morning, and am now officially done with school for the summer! It is rather an odd feeling, to be able to spend a day doing exactly what one wants, after having been so busy for so long. I actually found myself wandering aimlessly around the house a little while ago –I think I’m still in shock. : )

I have only a very brief time of freedom, however, because the summer is only three short months long, and before I know it, I will be back in school again. I have determined that I shall endeavor to spend my time so well that I will be so tired of “freedom” by the end of the summer, I shall be glad of schoolwork again. : )

My first order of business has been to reacquaint myself with our kitchen. I have been sadly very remiss in my helpfulness to Mommy since I started school, and since it’s Mother’s Day weekend, I decided to bake a cake.

Of course, after I finished putting the cake together, I had to clean the kitchen, since I had made such a mess, and by the time I had finished that, I was exhausted. –I really need to do more housework, so that I can build up my strength again!

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Next week is my last week of school. It’s strange that time can go so fast, and yet feel so slow. I am greatly looking forward to the summer and have but to survive next week with its two seven-page research papers and three finals, and then I shall be free to do whatever…well, whatever my family wants me to! (I guess I won’t have that much more freedom, but it’s worth it anyway.) : )

One of the first things I will need to start working on right away is setting up the organizational/business end of my piano studio, while my brother finishes putting the final touches on the sheetrock in my studio. (Yes, we finally have everything ready to rock!) Then, once I have actual, tangible walls in my studio, I will don my grubbies and become a painter for a while. (Not my favorite job, but hey, it is my studio, after all.) : ) Once the paint dries, my next task will be to find two pianos to put in the studio, (hooray for Craigslist!) have my two strong men move my organ out of the garage and into the house, (no more practicing with stiff, cold fingers!) and set up for business. Teaching from home will be more complicated, but it will definitely be worth it!

And then there’s the garden. One of the things I look forward to the most this summer is working on our still non-existent garden. We have to get rid of the grass in order to put in the raised beds, which means lots of difficult digging, but I actually kind of enjoyed myself last year when Daddy and I re-did the garden beds at our old house. I love being outside, and this will be the perfect excuse! : )

Well, I suppose I should stop dreaming and come back to the prosaic reality of looming homework…

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! : )

Midterm Miracle!

This week I had a History midterm. I had somehow done pretty well on the quizzes, and was short on time, so I didn’t study much for it. -Needless to say, I did not do very well on the first part of the test. (It was even multiple choice, which I usually find pretty easy.) I decided to look up what I was supposed to study before taking the next part of the test. (Essay questions…ugh!) Unfortunately, the topics they said to study covered everything we had learned thus far, and still being short on time, I just skimmed the more unfamiliar portions of my textbook before taking the second half of the test. When I looked at the essay questions, I realized I had absolutely no idea what the answers were, let alone how to tell them in 150 words! I had an hour to complete them, so I just started typing. If you asked me right now what the questions were I might be able to tell you, but I have no more idea what the answers were than I did when I wrote them. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t pass the course if I flunked the midterm. As I pressed the “submit” button to turn in the assignment, I prayed, “Lord, please, just let me pass!” The next few days I was quite discouraged and felt doomed to flunk History. I began checking my grades each day to see if the essays had been graded yet. Thursday, I saw that my test had finally been graded, but when I looked at my grade, I couldn’t believe it! Just to be sure I clicked the button that showed me how many points I got per question. The first essay question got 18 out of 20 points, and the other two got 25 out of 25! Now, I know and you know that I had no idea what I was writing about. Somehow God made my teacher think that I actually knew the answer. I have no idea how that happened. It could only have been God!
-I just hope He does the same with my research paper! : )

Resting

Today I have been learning why God commanded a Sabbath rest. The last few days have been very stressful, and last night I was as close to "stressed out" as I have been in a long time. Usually, I'm not one to let worries or pressures get to me, but last Thursday I found out that I had three fairly large projects coming up for school. One -a timeline and six paragraphs explaining it- was due tonight. (Thankfully, God enabled me to get that one done yesterday.) The next one is a summary of the Old Testament, which is due next Sunday, and the third one is a research paper which is due the following week. The summary is do-able, but will be very time-consuming. The research paper, however, will be harder because I have not done a college paper before, and have not even started the research yet.

-If you think of me the next few weeks, please pray that God would give me grace and the time and mental acuity needed to get all this done in addition to my regular homework.

Anyway, all this combined with my upcoming lack of time to work on things made me feel quite exhausted by last night. I had no idea how I was going to get everything done, (and still am not sure if it's possible) but I decided that, today being Sunday, I would take a day off from schoolwork and rest. It has been so refreshing to be able to do something other than schoolwork for a day, without feeling like I should be working on it! It also has given my brain a chance to recooperate and for the first time in a week, my mind doesn't feel so busy! :) It made me really think about God's wisdom in commanding a rest. He didn't suggest it, He commanded it. That way there's no getting around it. We have to rest, even if we think we don't have time to.

My "rest" day also gave me extra time to get alone with God and get a proper perspective. God knows all the things He has brought into my life, and He has given me enough time and strength to get it all done. This morning the Holy Spirit brought to my mind a verse that I cannot find the reference for at the moment. "As thy days are, so shall thy strength be." I have all I need, it's just a matter of using what God gives me wisely. Besides, it's only schoolwork. A bad grade won't be the end of the world. (though it may seem so at the time.) :)

In short, I have learned anew today that God knows what He's doing. :)

"Faithful is He that calleth thee, who also will do it."
I Thessalonians 5:24