Whirlwind
That would pretty much describe my life these days. A swirling, devouring vortex of stuff that hits me all at once like a freight train, leaving me sucking wind. All I can do is watch it happen, pick up the pieces, and go forward.
It's funny. Since I was a kid, the most common thing I dreamed about was tornadoes. Probably because it was at the ripe old age of five years that I became a Weather Channel freak and watched them on the TV constantly. But I never actually saw one face-to-face (although I had a few close calls - i.e., tornado warnings. They never panned out). It wasn't until I closed my eyes at night and passed into that hazy realm called R.E.M. sleep - you know, the place where you dream - that they came to life. Tornadoes. Vivid and threatening as the real thing.
Fast forward seventeen years. Still have yet to meet a tornado. But right now, I'm counting my lucky stars, since life itself seems to have transformed into its own funnel. Who knew life was as unpredictable as Mother Nature?
On the heels of my summer internship at FBC, I dove straight into Early Experience, student-teaching at Mauldin High School. It's been a valuable experience, and I really like my mentor teacher; she's extremely understanding and sympathetic. But it's a daunting realization. Like your journey to adulthood has officially begun. You know it has been on the horizon all of this time, but only now do you get the tangible proof that its coming. Ready or not.
Four weeks of EE and ED Practicum seminars at Furman spilled over into Freshman Orientation Week (not that it directly applies to me anymore. Being a senior and all...), and before I could even take a breath, my final year was upon me. I predicted last spring that fall term would be epic, and I'd be lucky to get through with my sanity intact. I was right. It's as crazy and ridiculously tough as I thought it'd be, and then some. Thankfully, the whole going insane part hasn't come true yet. Who knows what I'd do if that happened? I'd probably climb to the top of the Bell Tower, scream my lungs out to some invisible force in the sky like a B-level movie actor, and plunge headfirst into the putrid cesspool that is Furman Lake. Yes, setting foot in Furman Lake qualifies you as insane.
I'm reading eight books and 20+ page [Adobe] articles in just one of my English classes, have a separate list of books to read both for information's sake (which I'm much more inclined to do when I'm not so 'under the gun') and for a presentation and inquiry essay for my ED Practicum, a host of annotated bibliographies that I haven't even glanced at yet, a community profile on Mauldin that's due in the next few weeks, an eight-page paper I'm working on right now, and I just had the first of my Environmental Science exams this morning. And that's only the present. In the near future...well, I'll get into that later. Let's just say it will involve teaching. Actual teaching.
All this means that I've had to sacrifice quite a bit in order to get a handle on things. One of those activities was BCM. This was a slow and painful sacrifice. Think "Road to Golgotha" painful ... okay, maybe not counting the lashings from the soldiers. My ED-51 class is on Tuesday nights. No TNT. And things just kept piling up. Last Monday, I made one of the hardest decisions I have ever experienced. I resigned from BCM Leadership Team. It wasn't something I wanted to do; I never imagined it would come to that. The big culprit was my schedule, but there were a few other matters that led to my decision. I'm not going to detail them here because I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. I'll just say that some people and things weren't what I thought, that I can't be friends with some people because they misinterpret it to mean something else that is flat-out wrong and doesn't make one bit of sense, and it just hurt and shocked me deeply the way it unfolded. I know that's pretty vague, but it's the only way I know how to describe it right now.
*sigh*
Sorry if I'm boring you with all this. You're probably thinking "So quit wasting your time with this blog and get to work, you bum!" I guess I just needed to vent a little and put some things in perspective. If this is what a tornado feels like in a figurative sense, I hope I never experience the real thing.
It's funny. Since I was a kid, the most common thing I dreamed about was tornadoes. Probably because it was at the ripe old age of five years that I became a Weather Channel freak and watched them on the TV constantly. But I never actually saw one face-to-face (although I had a few close calls - i.e., tornado warnings. They never panned out). It wasn't until I closed my eyes at night and passed into that hazy realm called R.E.M. sleep - you know, the place where you dream - that they came to life. Tornadoes. Vivid and threatening as the real thing.
Fast forward seventeen years. Still have yet to meet a tornado. But right now, I'm counting my lucky stars, since life itself seems to have transformed into its own funnel. Who knew life was as unpredictable as Mother Nature?
On the heels of my summer internship at FBC, I dove straight into Early Experience, student-teaching at Mauldin High School. It's been a valuable experience, and I really like my mentor teacher; she's extremely understanding and sympathetic. But it's a daunting realization. Like your journey to adulthood has officially begun. You know it has been on the horizon all of this time, but only now do you get the tangible proof that its coming. Ready or not.
Four weeks of EE and ED Practicum seminars at Furman spilled over into Freshman Orientation Week (not that it directly applies to me anymore. Being a senior and all...), and before I could even take a breath, my final year was upon me. I predicted last spring that fall term would be epic, and I'd be lucky to get through with my sanity intact. I was right. It's as crazy and ridiculously tough as I thought it'd be, and then some. Thankfully, the whole going insane part hasn't come true yet. Who knows what I'd do if that happened? I'd probably climb to the top of the Bell Tower, scream my lungs out to some invisible force in the sky like a B-level movie actor, and plunge headfirst into the putrid cesspool that is Furman Lake. Yes, setting foot in Furman Lake qualifies you as insane.
I'm reading eight books and 20+ page [Adobe] articles in just one of my English classes, have a separate list of books to read both for information's sake (which I'm much more inclined to do when I'm not so 'under the gun') and for a presentation and inquiry essay for my ED Practicum, a host of annotated bibliographies that I haven't even glanced at yet, a community profile on Mauldin that's due in the next few weeks, an eight-page paper I'm working on right now, and I just had the first of my Environmental Science exams this morning. And that's only the present. In the near future...well, I'll get into that later. Let's just say it will involve teaching. Actual teaching.
All this means that I've had to sacrifice quite a bit in order to get a handle on things. One of those activities was BCM. This was a slow and painful sacrifice. Think "Road to Golgotha" painful ... okay, maybe not counting the lashings from the soldiers. My ED-51 class is on Tuesday nights. No TNT. And things just kept piling up. Last Monday, I made one of the hardest decisions I have ever experienced. I resigned from BCM Leadership Team. It wasn't something I wanted to do; I never imagined it would come to that. The big culprit was my schedule, but there were a few other matters that led to my decision. I'm not going to detail them here because I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. I'll just say that some people and things weren't what I thought, that I can't be friends with some people because they misinterpret it to mean something else that is flat-out wrong and doesn't make one bit of sense, and it just hurt and shocked me deeply the way it unfolded. I know that's pretty vague, but it's the only way I know how to describe it right now.
*sigh*
Sorry if I'm boring you with all this. You're probably thinking "So quit wasting your time with this blog and get to work, you bum!" I guess I just needed to vent a little and put some things in perspective. If this is what a tornado feels like in a figurative sense, I hope I never experience the real thing.
posted by david @ 9:28 PM
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