He Thought It Was Worth It

Hope!!

From entrepreneur to college lecturer: Ditching a $500,000 salary to teach lit. (CNN Money)

Now I just have to figure out the $500,000 salary part.

The Finals Countdown Has Begun

The Finals Countdown Has Begun

...and is so extreme that it requires caps to describe...

Remaining classes: 4
Class days left: 3
Writing Center hours to go: 5
Final exams: 1
Pages due: 52
Days until the end: 17

Let's do this.

Paperwork Potpourri

Getting ready for international travel (this summer!) is akin to climbing a hill of sand trying to reach a beautiful scenic view, except that in this case, the sand is paperwork.

Have I mentioned that I don't like forms?
Have I mentioned that this is not paperwork-filling-out weather?

Keeping the end goal in sight can be kind of difficult at times. And then I feel like an ungrateful wretch. You can't win. Haha.

In the meantime, reading some one-act plays from New Zealand for fun, re-reading Macbeth, writing papers about women's on-stage violence in the seventeenth century, memorizing lines from Dryden's All for Love, and doing unpaid product tests on over-the-counter allergy medicines.

3 weeks and counting.

Novels' Dangerous Truths

This article presents an interesting perspective on Christianity and literature--not really new thoughts, for me, but worth considering nonetheless: Dangerous Truths and True Dangers: Can - and Should - Christians Read Novels?

The author ends with a list of novels that have informed her search for Truth through both positive and negative models. Here are a few of the books that would fall on my list:

-Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
-Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
-Woman at Point Zero, Nawal el Saadawi
-A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
-Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
-In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
-The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
-Macbeth, Shakespeare
-The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare

What about yours?

It's Raining Pollen

Welcome weird spring/summer weather. Please stop raining pollen on everything. I need to be able to see to write papers, and Kleenex is pricey stuff.

The drug companies that make allergy medicines can't be paying you that big of a bribe, can they? I'm sure I could match them if I took up a collection. (...beyond the obvious problem that letters addressed to the weather probably end up in Santa's mailbag and merely give the postal workers a good laugh.)

If you keep this up, I will have to become smarter, as in remembering to roll up my car windows overnight to keep the pollen limited to the outside of the car.

That is all.

McDonalds March

I think (?) every graduate student has a "McDonalds month" now and then. March was mine. (Substitute your favorite stress-antidote, if you like.)

In a very sneaky, very perceptive advertising strategy, our favorite golden arches sent out a book of really good coupons in January ... starting off with a no-strings-attached free frappe and going downhill into French fry land.

Before you know it, that side trip on the way home or "no time for dinner" run gets easier and easier.

In the midst of midterms, papers, and presentations, and faced with the impossibility of stretching time, my defenses were down.

Oh, McDonalds. Oh, comfort food. Oh, stress.

But that month is over. Your coupons have expired, Ronald; your time is up.

...

...

Chocolate, anyone?

He is Risen

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

-Mark 16:1-8

He is risen indeed.