Hi, all,
Camps started on Sunday afternoon. Things go pretty well. I'm one of the RAs assigned specifically to the girls in the creative writing camp (they're great--and crazy), but really the responsibility's pretty shared. There's an equestrian camp (Western riding), too, and an entrepeneurial-leadership camp, whatever precisely that is (sounds like marketing your own small business or something). It is not entirely unlike a more relaxed version of OGing. (We all, campers and RAs, actually get free time; it feels luxurious, at least to me.)
Also not entirely unlike OGing, sleeping is a popular-yet-elusive activity, because our busiest timeblock is from 4:30 PM straight through 'til midnight or 12:30. Tonight it was 12:30. I'm'a get to bed so I can be up around eight. I think I might spend my morning free hours tomorrow in a nap.
Perhaps oddly, though it's not bad or anything, I miss everybody. Even my parents, which's not super-freaky or anything--they're cool--but simply not a common thing for me.
I got sunburned today. This is what I get for exposing my shoulders to the sun for fifteen minutes; I can't even remember the last time I did so, so that's all it took.
One of the creative-writing girls tried to read all the Newberys, too (I'd mentioned the Project during an icebreaker game). She recognized all my favorites. That's pretty much spectacular.
Okay, okay, bed.
-Laurel
6.26.2007
6.21.2007
6.20.2007
Quotes from C.S. Lewis (as a way of processing this past semester, the Vietnam Christians' persecution, and things Andrea and I talked about tonight)
"[Though] Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point."
"When [Christianity] tells you to feed the hungry it does not give you lessons in cookery. When it tells you to read the Scriptures it does not give you lessons in Hebrew and Greek, or even in English grammar. It was never intended to replace or supersede the ordinary human arts and sciences: it is rather a director which will set them all to the right jobs, and a source of energy which will give them all new life, if only they will put themselves at its disposal."
"This Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty."
-Mere Christianity
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
-"As the Ruin Falls"
"Sacrifice in its supreme realisation is not exacted of all. Confessors as well as martyrs are saved, and some old people whose state of grace we can hardly doubt seem to have got through their seventy years surprisingly easily. The sacrifice of Christ is repeated, or re-echoed, among His followers in very varying degrees, from the cruellest martyrdom down to a self-submission of intention whose outward signs have nothing to distinguish them from the ordinary fruits of temperance and 'sweet reasonableness'. The causes of this distribution I do not know; but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble, pious, believing people suffer, but why some do not."
"There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by 'judgement' (i.e., social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying from city to city, and may pray to be spared it, as Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads."
"The Perfect Man brought to Gethsemane a will, and a strong will, to escape suffering and death if such escape were compatible with the Father's will, combined with a perfect readiness for obedience if it were not. ...Doubtless we [humans] all spend too much care in the avoidance of our own pain: but a duly subordinated intention to avoid it, using lawful means, is in accordance with 'nature'--that is, with the whole working system of creaturely life for which the redemptive work of tribulation is calculated."
-The Problem of Pain
"All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest; and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not."
-"Learning in War-Time"
-Laurel
6.15.2007
Fortnightly Report (or something)
Have been in Alfred for two weeks now; much of it has gone by surprisingly quickly, considering that I'm not what you'd call busy most days.
I don't know if I've mentioned, but I have a lot of friends here this summer, which's fantastic. Andrea and Emily are living at Language House; Andrea's got an internship in art and also works part-time at Herrick, and Emily worked the reunion crew and is trying to pick up another job now that it's over. With them are Jaime, Krista, and Meredith, all of whom I know, though not quite as well. Tim is around doing grad work. Chris lives just above me, working the setup crew for various campus events; so do Shawn and Alex. In my apartment live Jessica (who'll be my roommate), whom I know the best of the girls, and Jamie and Cory, whom I know from other things. Right now it's just Jamie and me in the apartment. She's on the same work crew as Chris; we others (and two other girls I haven't mentioned because I don't know them well yet) will be summer RAs in about another week and a half. In the apartment across from ours will be Tom, as well as Josh and Dustin. All of them will be RAs as well. So Alfred is hopping!
I should really start writing these entries more often, and a little more in the moment, because now, instead of something more interesting, you're going to get semi-journalism again, and rather narratively-imperfect semi-journalism at that. But here're some of the things I've been up to:
The Bicentennial
I went to the Alfred [Community] Bicentennial on June 2, having coerced Joe (who was in town that weekend), Emily, and Tim to come with me (Andrea was at a wedding as part of her internship-thing). We really were going to walk all the way to Alfred Station for it, despite the heat of the late-afternoon, but we met Peter (IV staff) on the way, and he gave us a lift in his minivan for the rest of the way. He was not only going to the bicentennial, but singing in its choir. So we hung around, saw Otto and Sandra and talked to them, hung out with Chris (who's been really hard to find sometimes), got some dinner, et cetera.
We watched the finishers come in from the Bi-Mile-Ennial Run, which I believe had started at the traffic light in Alfred (the second-place girl finisher was, like, ten years old!). We watched the parade, which did feature a really old car, but which, I have to say, was not as cool (or as long) as the one for the Traffic Light Festival three years ago. We watched a bunch of speeches, because the Town Board had gotten up the celebration, and that meant everybody on the board wanted to speak (or be in a skit that Sherry Volk had written). Apparently this is Alfred's bicentennial year, so until June 8th, 2008, there'll be periodic celebrations and educational programs.
Joe, Andrea (who'd come back and joined us by this time), Emily, and I went back to campus for a while thereafter, because bands had started playing, but we weren't interested in anything but the upcoming fireworks, scheduled for later that night. I tried to take a brief nap or do things in my room, since I'd gotten a headache and itchy-and-watery eyes (I appear to have developed allergies this spring, but they are responding well to cheap antihistimine), but one of the guys upstairs was playing music super-loudly (my room was vibrating). Rather than go upstairs and beg him to sto-o-o-o-o-op, I eventually decided to take some aspirin and antihistimine and walk back to the bicentennial festival, taking my camera with me. Some of the pictures I took (click to enlarge, though some of them are better small!):
So I got there and hung out with Chris and Tim until the fireworks, which were pretty cool. (Tim, in typical fashion, zeroed right in on a high-school boy sitting nearby with a Rubik's cube, and they got into all of that while they were waiting for the pyrotechnics to start.) I didn't even have to walk the two miles back to Alfred when everything was done: I rode in the back of the ambulance with Chris, Tim, and Pat Bancroft. ...And I wasn't even on a stretcher!
The Chicken Barbeque
Next morning, both because I wanted to and because I didn't have time to wait until Wellsville Bible's service (which Joe, Andrea, and Emily were going to), I went to Mass at St. Jude's. I'd expected not to have any friends there if Chris didn't show, but as it happened, Mellie Mae (from folk dancing; she's in town until the end of this month) was on her way there, too, so we went together. ...Fr. Gene gave a homily that started by talking about the importance of reason and examples of Catholic figures who combined logic and faith (don't ask me who, for I've unfortunately forgotten)--and suddenly turned into a thing about godly themes in the Harry Potter series. This was kind of fantastic, in the sense that it was random (I never did figure out what the connection between those two sections was!) and funny.
The big event for the day, though, was in Rochester: the CCHS Annual Community Music Festival and Chicken Barbeque, where I saw 'Nanda, Glenn, Erik, Matt, and later Aneya. I didn't actually listen to many of the bands, nor eat any chicken, but it was great to see people. After the festival, I helped Glenn and the rest of the cleanup crew, and then we went to Jitters 'cause it seemed like the most logical place for me to get some dinner, seeing as I'd managed to miss out on the barbeque. Matt and Aneya also came before too long, and then, when we got kicked out 'cause they close early on Sundays, we went to the Tim Hortons down the street, where 'Nanda and Erik joined us as well. At ten that night I set back off for Alfred, discovering that it was now pouring rain; I drove through that all the way back to the apartment.
One crazy-awesome thing that came out of that day, besides seeing people, was this, which was posted up in the band room. If you have not seen this, you are hereby ordered to print it off and peruse it at your earliest convenience. Thank you.
The Dome
The following Saturday was the alumni reunion. Since, however, I had opted not to interview for a reunion work crew job (largely because the "prize" was literally to work for about thirty-three hours over the course of two days--the fifteen hours off were for sleeping and showering--plus a couple of additional hours on Sunday), I was free. This turned out to be a good thing, because Brian and Rafi Pryntz-Nadworny, who'd come to folk dancing until their move to Rochester, were in town. (Brian's the dad; Rafi's one of his four sons. Diana, his wife, was with the two younger boys back in Rochester, and Avi, the oldest son, was off with other friends.) They have this house, see, that they've mostly built (though parts still aren't completely done, which's why Brian was down here for the weekend) out of a former geodesic dome, and have built it to be as ecologically-sound as possible, solar power and composting toilets and everything. So Rafi wanted to get together, and I thought that'd be cool. Since neither Tom nor Albert (who, being folk dancers, know the P-Ns already) was in town, and it seemed odd to go by myself (I don't know, it just did), I asked how he felt about Tim coming, since he'd met Rafi before. Rafi was cool with that, so Tim grabbed his ukelele, and we went to the Dome.
And we were there for hours and hours. The Dome is cool. Their property is cool. They're cool. We toured the house (apparently Brian will give tours to anyone who'll submit to taking them, as Rafi indicated). Tim played the ukelele for Rafi. We three (so to speak) walked around the woods and climbed a tall tree. We juggled in their backyard (Rafi started teaching me Diablo, which I guess is also called Chinese Yo-Yo, and is kind of cool.). We sat in said yard and talked (Brian joined us) for a long time. We had dinner. Brian and Tim tried to do some kind of duet thing, piano and ukelele; while they were messing around with that (they didn't seem to get incredibly far), Rafi showed me the sketches he'd done for a class at MCC. We all talked some more. Finally it was approaching eleven and Tim and I decided we ought to leave (I had to set up for an IV thing at ten, so I'd wanted to be in bed around midnight or thereabouts, and the Dome is out in Belmont).
I got back to the Openhym parking lot, noting with some pleasure that my parking space was still vacant (now that it's summer, I never have to search!), and got out of the car. I could hear, over by Alumni Hall, a loud and rather off-key rendition of "American Pie"--the alumni were having some fun, apparently. I couldn't see them, because they were inside one of the various white canopied tents that had sprung up virtually overnight. I rather wanted to go and gawk at them, but realized that if Chris or Barbara or someone was working that tent and had seen me, there was a chance, however slight, that they might try to get me to sing. Um, no. I went back to the apartment.
The InterVarsity Alumni Service and Lunch
There isn't really a lot to say about this per se, but since IV went out of its way to get alumni here this year (there'd been something like forty-five at a dinner they'd had the night before), they decided to run a church service on Sunday, like the ones we've had every week, and a lunch thereafter. So they did. And it, like all IV church services, was cool. It was alumni-filled, so there were even more children there than usual. We had an actual alto(!) up front with the worship team, courtesy of Amy Gennosa, who together with Shelly sounded really great. A former IVer who's now a pastor, Nick Keaney, gave the sermon (though he also accidentally made off with Jessica's power strip, which I lent him for the slide show he'd brought along; I should probably try to get that back before Jess moves in next week!). He was friendly and good. Josh and Laura came for the service (yay!) and we said hello afterward. During lunch, Andrea and I sat with Shelly and her family and with Grace and Amy, who're both teaching and were funny and complained about their students. I saw Shelly's baby, who's only about a month old; she is predictably-small and cute. All was well.
Other Stuff
Besides the big things, mostly I've been reading, cooking, running errands, writing e-mails, talking to people, and taking long, iPod-accompanied walks. I've spent a decent amount of time at 12 Park with Andrea and Emily, mostly cooking, though we've also started (with Krista, also in the house) studying 2 Timothy on Thursday nights. It's so pretty here. I love it, though I am a little inclined to roll my eyes at myself, since I'm not much busier here than I was at home, but don't feel very guilty here about being so lazy, as I did there.
In closing, though, I did have one particularly interesting day this week: yesterday I went to Binghamton. There's a whole story connected to this, and it gets a little personal, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Rather than start from scratch, I'm going to take the liberty of adapting a description I've already written of it (so this might look familiar to at least one reader!), and end this entry from there.
I drove out to Binghamton University; my parents suggested that I see the campus and the apartment complex I'll be living in, since I still don't have work this week. Well, I got a late start and got delayed near Elmira because I hit their massive construction just past noon, so I ended up getting to campus just before 2 PM.
I went into the library first to see if I could find the English offices and ask the secretary who my advisor was (since I know practically nothing about the program; they haven't disseminated a lot of information yet), and then maybe figure out where my classes might eventually be. I also wanted to find the Writing Center to see about maybe getting a job there come this fall, since I wasn't picked for a TAship. Well, no dice either way. The Writing Center was closed (though I could see inside, and it's decent-looking), and the English grad office was there, and was open, but absolutely nobody was inside--and it wasn't lunch break, either.
So I gave that up for the moment and went looking for the student-ID office to see if I could get mine. After exploring the student center and another building (it wasn't in either one), getting to know each place as I was searching, I eventually made my way around the construction outside (I should mention that there was construction) to the correct office. They told me that I couldn't get an ID until August.
Okay, then. So pretty much all of my actual on-campus objectives had fallen through, but I'd been there for about two hours and had seen the important buildings. I figured that, before I left campus completely to go look at the apartment, I should give the English department one more shot.
The thing was, from the time I'd come into the library until about this point, I'd felt (as though I were in a book) kind of like a small person in a big place, wandering around, not feeling like the mature graduate student I was trying to be...intimidated by the blocky brick buildings, feeling directionally-impaired, worrying about graduate curriculum, et cetera. (The idea of graduate school scares me. The thought of literary theory classes scare me. The thought of deciding whether or not to get a Ph.D scares me.)
When I found myself staring at the hills and thinking of how much they looked like the hills around Alfred, and thinking to myself, if nothing else, at least I've got the hills, I realized that maybe this was the wrong attitude to take. Suddenly I remembered, since I'd sort of forgotten, the fall semester and us praying before SonLife that I'd end up in the right graduate program, in the place God wanted me to be. I remembered that I'd only applied to two programs and had only gotten into one. If God is faithful, and I've got reasons to believe He is, then this campus was where I was supposed to be. And suddenly I wondered, how would this campus look different if I looked at it as though it were where I was supposed to be? Because I really hadn't, so far.
And as I walked back to the library to give the English department another try, I thought about IV-Binghamton and that maybe I was supposed to be with them, and that maybe I was supposed to be in the English grad program. It did make things feel somewhat better.
...And then I looked through one of the windows into the library and saw someone I thought I recognized, sitting at a table with a laptop. I stared for a second, almost lost my nerve, then went inside and walked up to her.
"Hi. I'm sorry about this," I said, meaning that I was sorry for the potential awkwardness if I was wrong, "but is your name Carrie?"
She looked at me. "Yes," she said.
"You're Carrie Moorhead!" I blurted out, surprised and happy, and reintroduced myself. Carrie had run the track that I was in at Basileia last year--and she also runs Binghamton's chapter of IV. I've been trying to get a hold of her, but hadn't heard back from her yet.
"Oh!" she said. "You left me a message on my Xanga! I was supposed to e-mail you!" And she gave me another of the chairs at the table, and we talked for a long time. I heard about lots of things, including what it's like to be a full-time IV staff worker, as opposed to a volunteer like Sandy. I heard about IV-Binghamton. There's apparently another girl in the graduate English program who's in IV, and apparently she's really cool. I even got more specific directions to my apartment complex, which's apparently in the same plaza as the gym of which Carrie's a member.
After a while, then, we said goodbye and I went to check back in at the English-grad office. The secretary was back, so I learned my advisor's name (all English grad students have the same advisor, as it turns out). Then I went back to my car and drove to the apartment complex. The apartments are very nice and not nearly as comparatively-overpriced as I had expected, considering, and I signed the lease and am set. Then, after a wrong turn while I was trying for 17W, and the rush hour interestingness that followed from that, I went home.
I'd gotten to thinking, during that sort of epiphany moment I'd had: maybe I'll have only as much success at Binghamton as I let God give me.
-Laurel
I don't know if I've mentioned, but I have a lot of friends here this summer, which's fantastic. Andrea and Emily are living at Language House; Andrea's got an internship in art and also works part-time at Herrick, and Emily worked the reunion crew and is trying to pick up another job now that it's over. With them are Jaime, Krista, and Meredith, all of whom I know, though not quite as well. Tim is around doing grad work. Chris lives just above me, working the setup crew for various campus events; so do Shawn and Alex. In my apartment live Jessica (who'll be my roommate), whom I know the best of the girls, and Jamie and Cory, whom I know from other things. Right now it's just Jamie and me in the apartment. She's on the same work crew as Chris; we others (and two other girls I haven't mentioned because I don't know them well yet) will be summer RAs in about another week and a half. In the apartment across from ours will be Tom, as well as Josh and Dustin. All of them will be RAs as well. So Alfred is hopping!
I should really start writing these entries more often, and a little more in the moment, because now, instead of something more interesting, you're going to get semi-journalism again, and rather narratively-imperfect semi-journalism at that. But here're some of the things I've been up to:
The Bicentennial
I went to the Alfred [Community] Bicentennial on June 2, having coerced Joe (who was in town that weekend), Emily, and Tim to come with me (Andrea was at a wedding as part of her internship-thing). We really were going to walk all the way to Alfred Station for it, despite the heat of the late-afternoon, but we met Peter (IV staff) on the way, and he gave us a lift in his minivan for the rest of the way. He was not only going to the bicentennial, but singing in its choir. So we hung around, saw Otto and Sandra and talked to them, hung out with Chris (who's been really hard to find sometimes), got some dinner, et cetera.
We watched the finishers come in from the Bi-Mile-Ennial Run, which I believe had started at the traffic light in Alfred (the second-place girl finisher was, like, ten years old!). We watched the parade, which did feature a really old car, but which, I have to say, was not as cool (or as long) as the one for the Traffic Light Festival three years ago. We watched a bunch of speeches, because the Town Board had gotten up the celebration, and that meant everybody on the board wanted to speak (or be in a skit that Sherry Volk had written). Apparently this is Alfred's bicentennial year, so until June 8th, 2008, there'll be periodic celebrations and educational programs.
Joe, Andrea (who'd come back and joined us by this time), Emily, and I went back to campus for a while thereafter, because bands had started playing, but we weren't interested in anything but the upcoming fireworks, scheduled for later that night. I tried to take a brief nap or do things in my room, since I'd gotten a headache and itchy-and-watery eyes (I appear to have developed allergies this spring, but they are responding well to cheap antihistimine), but one of the guys upstairs was playing music super-loudly (my room was vibrating). Rather than go upstairs and beg him to sto-o-o-o-o-op, I eventually decided to take some aspirin and antihistimine and walk back to the bicentennial festival, taking my camera with me. Some of the pictures I took (click to enlarge, though some of them are better small!):
So I got there and hung out with Chris and Tim until the fireworks, which were pretty cool. (Tim, in typical fashion, zeroed right in on a high-school boy sitting nearby with a Rubik's cube, and they got into all of that while they were waiting for the pyrotechnics to start.) I didn't even have to walk the two miles back to Alfred when everything was done: I rode in the back of the ambulance with Chris, Tim, and Pat Bancroft. ...And I wasn't even on a stretcher!
The Chicken Barbeque
Next morning, both because I wanted to and because I didn't have time to wait until Wellsville Bible's service (which Joe, Andrea, and Emily were going to), I went to Mass at St. Jude's. I'd expected not to have any friends there if Chris didn't show, but as it happened, Mellie Mae (from folk dancing; she's in town until the end of this month) was on her way there, too, so we went together. ...Fr. Gene gave a homily that started by talking about the importance of reason and examples of Catholic figures who combined logic and faith (don't ask me who, for I've unfortunately forgotten)--and suddenly turned into a thing about godly themes in the Harry Potter series. This was kind of fantastic, in the sense that it was random (I never did figure out what the connection between those two sections was!) and funny.
The big event for the day, though, was in Rochester: the CCHS Annual Community Music Festival and Chicken Barbeque, where I saw 'Nanda, Glenn, Erik, Matt, and later Aneya. I didn't actually listen to many of the bands, nor eat any chicken, but it was great to see people. After the festival, I helped Glenn and the rest of the cleanup crew, and then we went to Jitters 'cause it seemed like the most logical place for me to get some dinner, seeing as I'd managed to miss out on the barbeque. Matt and Aneya also came before too long, and then, when we got kicked out 'cause they close early on Sundays, we went to the Tim Hortons down the street, where 'Nanda and Erik joined us as well. At ten that night I set back off for Alfred, discovering that it was now pouring rain; I drove through that all the way back to the apartment.
One crazy-awesome thing that came out of that day, besides seeing people, was this, which was posted up in the band room. If you have not seen this, you are hereby ordered to print it off and peruse it at your earliest convenience. Thank you.
The Dome
The following Saturday was the alumni reunion. Since, however, I had opted not to interview for a reunion work crew job (largely because the "prize" was literally to work for about thirty-three hours over the course of two days--the fifteen hours off were for sleeping and showering--plus a couple of additional hours on Sunday), I was free. This turned out to be a good thing, because Brian and Rafi Pryntz-Nadworny, who'd come to folk dancing until their move to Rochester, were in town. (Brian's the dad; Rafi's one of his four sons. Diana, his wife, was with the two younger boys back in Rochester, and Avi, the oldest son, was off with other friends.) They have this house, see, that they've mostly built (though parts still aren't completely done, which's why Brian was down here for the weekend) out of a former geodesic dome, and have built it to be as ecologically-sound as possible, solar power and composting toilets and everything. So Rafi wanted to get together, and I thought that'd be cool. Since neither Tom nor Albert (who, being folk dancers, know the P-Ns already) was in town, and it seemed odd to go by myself (I don't know, it just did), I asked how he felt about Tim coming, since he'd met Rafi before. Rafi was cool with that, so Tim grabbed his ukelele, and we went to the Dome.
And we were there for hours and hours. The Dome is cool. Their property is cool. They're cool. We toured the house (apparently Brian will give tours to anyone who'll submit to taking them, as Rafi indicated). Tim played the ukelele for Rafi. We three (so to speak) walked around the woods and climbed a tall tree. We juggled in their backyard (Rafi started teaching me Diablo, which I guess is also called Chinese Yo-Yo, and is kind of cool.). We sat in said yard and talked (Brian joined us) for a long time. We had dinner. Brian and Tim tried to do some kind of duet thing, piano and ukelele; while they were messing around with that (they didn't seem to get incredibly far), Rafi showed me the sketches he'd done for a class at MCC. We all talked some more. Finally it was approaching eleven and Tim and I decided we ought to leave (I had to set up for an IV thing at ten, so I'd wanted to be in bed around midnight or thereabouts, and the Dome is out in Belmont).
I got back to the Openhym parking lot, noting with some pleasure that my parking space was still vacant (now that it's summer, I never have to search!), and got out of the car. I could hear, over by Alumni Hall, a loud and rather off-key rendition of "American Pie"--the alumni were having some fun, apparently. I couldn't see them, because they were inside one of the various white canopied tents that had sprung up virtually overnight. I rather wanted to go and gawk at them, but realized that if Chris or Barbara or someone was working that tent and had seen me, there was a chance, however slight, that they might try to get me to sing. Um, no. I went back to the apartment.
The InterVarsity Alumni Service and Lunch
There isn't really a lot to say about this per se, but since IV went out of its way to get alumni here this year (there'd been something like forty-five at a dinner they'd had the night before), they decided to run a church service on Sunday, like the ones we've had every week, and a lunch thereafter. So they did. And it, like all IV church services, was cool. It was alumni-filled, so there were even more children there than usual. We had an actual alto(!) up front with the worship team, courtesy of Amy Gennosa, who together with Shelly sounded really great. A former IVer who's now a pastor, Nick Keaney, gave the sermon (though he also accidentally made off with Jessica's power strip, which I lent him for the slide show he'd brought along; I should probably try to get that back before Jess moves in next week!). He was friendly and good. Josh and Laura came for the service (yay!) and we said hello afterward. During lunch, Andrea and I sat with Shelly and her family and with Grace and Amy, who're both teaching and were funny and complained about their students. I saw Shelly's baby, who's only about a month old; she is predictably-small and cute. All was well.
Other Stuff
Besides the big things, mostly I've been reading, cooking, running errands, writing e-mails, talking to people, and taking long, iPod-accompanied walks. I've spent a decent amount of time at 12 Park with Andrea and Emily, mostly cooking, though we've also started (with Krista, also in the house) studying 2 Timothy on Thursday nights. It's so pretty here. I love it, though I am a little inclined to roll my eyes at myself, since I'm not much busier here than I was at home, but don't feel very guilty here about being so lazy, as I did there.
In closing, though, I did have one particularly interesting day this week: yesterday I went to Binghamton. There's a whole story connected to this, and it gets a little personal, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Rather than start from scratch, I'm going to take the liberty of adapting a description I've already written of it (so this might look familiar to at least one reader!), and end this entry from there.
I drove out to Binghamton University; my parents suggested that I see the campus and the apartment complex I'll be living in, since I still don't have work this week. Well, I got a late start and got delayed near Elmira because I hit their massive construction just past noon, so I ended up getting to campus just before 2 PM.
I went into the library first to see if I could find the English offices and ask the secretary who my advisor was (since I know practically nothing about the program; they haven't disseminated a lot of information yet), and then maybe figure out where my classes might eventually be. I also wanted to find the Writing Center to see about maybe getting a job there come this fall, since I wasn't picked for a TAship. Well, no dice either way. The Writing Center was closed (though I could see inside, and it's decent-looking), and the English grad office was there, and was open, but absolutely nobody was inside--and it wasn't lunch break, either.
So I gave that up for the moment and went looking for the student-ID office to see if I could get mine. After exploring the student center and another building (it wasn't in either one), getting to know each place as I was searching, I eventually made my way around the construction outside (I should mention that there was construction) to the correct office. They told me that I couldn't get an ID until August.
Okay, then. So pretty much all of my actual on-campus objectives had fallen through, but I'd been there for about two hours and had seen the important buildings. I figured that, before I left campus completely to go look at the apartment, I should give the English department one more shot.
The thing was, from the time I'd come into the library until about this point, I'd felt (as though I were in a book) kind of like a small person in a big place, wandering around, not feeling like the mature graduate student I was trying to be...intimidated by the blocky brick buildings, feeling directionally-impaired, worrying about graduate curriculum, et cetera. (The idea of graduate school scares me. The thought of literary theory classes scare me. The thought of deciding whether or not to get a Ph.D scares me.)
When I found myself staring at the hills and thinking of how much they looked like the hills around Alfred, and thinking to myself, if nothing else, at least I've got the hills, I realized that maybe this was the wrong attitude to take. Suddenly I remembered, since I'd sort of forgotten, the fall semester and us praying before SonLife that I'd end up in the right graduate program, in the place God wanted me to be. I remembered that I'd only applied to two programs and had only gotten into one. If God is faithful, and I've got reasons to believe He is, then this campus was where I was supposed to be. And suddenly I wondered, how would this campus look different if I looked at it as though it were where I was supposed to be? Because I really hadn't, so far.
And as I walked back to the library to give the English department another try, I thought about IV-Binghamton and that maybe I was supposed to be with them, and that maybe I was supposed to be in the English grad program. It did make things feel somewhat better.
...And then I looked through one of the windows into the library and saw someone I thought I recognized, sitting at a table with a laptop. I stared for a second, almost lost my nerve, then went inside and walked up to her.
"Hi. I'm sorry about this," I said, meaning that I was sorry for the potential awkwardness if I was wrong, "but is your name Carrie?"
She looked at me. "Yes," she said.
"You're Carrie Moorhead!" I blurted out, surprised and happy, and reintroduced myself. Carrie had run the track that I was in at Basileia last year--and she also runs Binghamton's chapter of IV. I've been trying to get a hold of her, but hadn't heard back from her yet.
"Oh!" she said. "You left me a message on my Xanga! I was supposed to e-mail you!" And she gave me another of the chairs at the table, and we talked for a long time. I heard about lots of things, including what it's like to be a full-time IV staff worker, as opposed to a volunteer like Sandy. I heard about IV-Binghamton. There's apparently another girl in the graduate English program who's in IV, and apparently she's really cool. I even got more specific directions to my apartment complex, which's apparently in the same plaza as the gym of which Carrie's a member.
After a while, then, we said goodbye and I went to check back in at the English-grad office. The secretary was back, so I learned my advisor's name (all English grad students have the same advisor, as it turns out). Then I went back to my car and drove to the apartment complex. The apartments are very nice and not nearly as comparatively-overpriced as I had expected, considering, and I signed the lease and am set. Then, after a wrong turn while I was trying for 17W, and the rush hour interestingness that followed from that, I went home.
I'd gotten to thinking, during that sort of epiphany moment I'd had: maybe I'll have only as much success at Binghamton as I let God give me.
-Laurel
6.11.2007
On funny non-Bono Irish guys -- or at least one of them, anyway
While you're waiting for me to post something more original, go read the SU commencement speech this year, as done by Frank McCourt, whom I've never read, but I should:
http://sunews.syr.edu/story_details.cfm?id=4130
Thank you.
-Laurel
http://sunews.syr.edu/story_details.cfm?id=4130
Thank you.
-Laurel
6.02.2007
A 'Fred for All Seasons
Am in Alfred for the summer-RAing job, not that said job starts until the 24th, and am quite happy about it, even if things are a little cramped storage-space-wise, here in the apartments. Stories and giddiness soon to follow, I'm sure, and probably eventual stress overflow as well, simply because life brings that.
Oh! And I figured out what that July-21st exclamation mark on my calendar is: it's the release date for the last Harry Potter book, and I think I marked it that way so's not to look like a dork by marking it distinctly. Um, so much for that.
'kay, bedtime.
PS to homestars: coming to the chicken barbeque on Sunday. See you then.
-Laurel
Oh! And I figured out what that July-21st exclamation mark on my calendar is: it's the release date for the last Harry Potter book, and I think I marked it that way so's not to look like a dork by marking it distinctly. Um, so much for that.
'kay, bedtime.
PS to homestars: coming to the chicken barbeque on Sunday. See you then.
-Laurel