After fourish month hiatus, I felt like it was time to return to my neglected but not forgotten blog. A wide array of variables resulted in nothing getting posted here over the course of the summer, but I haven't been entirely absent from the blogging sphere. Back in June a new blog titles The Conciliar Post went live and I have penned two full articles for that blog since it got up and going. The CP is a series of writings collected by Christians of various denominations across the States on anything and everything from ethics in the workplace to relationship advice. If you're interested in checking out the thing you can traverse the interwebs via this.
Anyway, now that the sales pitch is aside, I shall get to the meat of this post.
This past summer has been a rather unusual one for me. Not only did I find myself with a car and driver's license for the first summer of my life, but I also had my first go (and hopefully last) with summer classes. A week after the spring semester finals were completed with my usual grace and humility (read whining and moaning), I began an online course in Nutrition alongside an physical course in Political Science. Both courses led by helpful and engaging profs and managed to prove both mildly interesting and fairly informative, but they were still school and they were still taking place during the summer. During this time I was also working a very modest 8 hours a week as a math tutor still and the consequence was that my weekdays were not exactly the dog days of summer freedom that I have grown to appreciate over the course of my life. However, I knew this was going to be the case and chalked it up to this whole adulthood thing that I am still getting used to.
I was determined not to let my education and employment get me down however and I managed to make several trips to visit friends and attend graduations in another city. Oh, and I played quite a bit of video games too... still haven't shaken off that childish past time quite yet. All in all, the first two months of my summer were a slightly less demanding and hectic version of the school year and hold a relatively straightforward "meh" rating in my memories.
The second half of my summer was significantly more eventful and nomadic. Less than a week after I finished my summer term, my family set off in our caravan for not one but two family reunions out on the great plains. Unfortunately for us, the day before we were to depart, a storm passed through our neck of the woods and managed to drop a particularly vindictive piece of said woods upon our house. With a tree sticking out of our room, a vehicle shorted out by electrical damage, no power, and a street covered in wood chips, we spent our last day at home attempting to patch things up to the best of our ability before abandoning the premises for a week. Thankfully the storm didn't end up delaying our vacating as we feared initially but we are actually still waiting on a final fix to the hole in our roof...
Vacation consisted of two weeks with more relatives than I can recall ever seeing gathered in a single place before... at the very least since my older brother's wedding six years ago. My dad's parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and we were able to gather almost all of their children, all of their grandchildren, and all of their great-grandchildren under one roof for a whole week (there were something like 35 of us I think). It was a magnificent experience that will continue to live on in my memory for a long time, but even that big party wasn't quite the size of my mom's grandmother's 90th birthday celebration a week later. While the full gathering for my mom's family reunion was not nearly as lengthy, it was more than twice the size with somewhere between 70 and 80 of my great-grandmothers descendants gathered on a single farm property.
Less than 24 hours after returning home from our adventures out west, I headed a few hours out east to visit some friends for a week. On the drive over however I discovered that a tree branch had apparently fallen upon my poor vehicular unit. Said branch had apparently hit with enough force to leave a crack in my windshield in addition to a dent in my roof, but the crack was small enough to begin with that it did not immediately catch my attention. After being on the road for two hours, however, it took up about half of my windshield. Unfortunately I didn't think to get a picture, but the crack was a pretty intimidating thing to behold when driving 60 miles an hour down the highway. Thankfully my friends on the other end of my destination we able to help meet get my vehicle to a very friendly and efficient window repair shop several days into my visit and the whole things was solved with minimal effort and only a couple hundred dollars out of pocket. (Oh cars...)
After returning home from that trip I was back on my family's turf for a few days before heading up north to the not currently frozen wild lands of Wisconsin for a long time friend's wedding. I car pooled with a handful of other excellent friends and while I felt like I had spent enough time road tripping to last several summer by the end of it, I enjoyed myself very thoroughly.
After the wedding I was home for two and a half days before driving down south to the watery lands of Missouri for a four day canoeing trip with some of my church's youth group. Another epic adventure for the records, I managed to canoe for hours and hours with only occasional whining and a single flipping of my canoe. I also learned how to canoe by myself standing up in the middle of the boat so that was pretty awesome.
After an entire 48 hours of rest back at my primary place of residence, I headed east again for a several day conference visit with friends again before heading slightly more east and kinda north for yet another friend's wedding. The day after wedding number 2 for the summer I had to head back home speedy quick so I could make it to a third wedding that evening. (This one was only 45 minutes away from home so it was practically in my backyard compared to my trips this summer).
Since wedding number three I have remained pretty stationary. The last two weeks have taken longer to pass than the entire month of July it seems. I acquired my textbooks for the fall, gathered the necessary educational resources for maximum learning potential, (read pencils) and played more video games. Last week I participated in two days of training for my position as a math tutor, and while the training was not actually mandatory (I've been tutoring for three semesters and two summers already at this point), I was told that I would get paid if I chose to show up. After very little deliberation, I determined that two days of pay and two free meals were worth sitting through a handful of tedious training exercises.
That pretty much brings us to today. At some point in the next week or so I have another blog post I want to write, but I figured a filler post to make up for the silent summer was called for. Tomorrow I begin my fifth regular semester of college. I still feel like a newbie, but when I consider the fact that I am actually 20 credits into my junior year already, I don't think I can really claim new student status any longer. Looking forward, I am estimating two more semesters after this one before I can actually call myself a college graduate.
I don't know how I feel about that yet.
Either way, this semester looks to be the most challenging and complicated yet. With only one class on Mondays/Wednesday, three on Tuesdays/Thursdays, and two online classes, my schedule is completely different from any of my previous escapes into higher education.
In case anyone is interested, this semester I'm taking six classes:
BUS A311 or Intermediate Accounting I
BUS A325 or Cost Accounting
BUS B399 or Business and Society
BUS D300 or International Business Administration
BUS K321 or Management of Information Technology
SPCH S223 or Business and Professional Communication
Gone are the days of Geology and Sociology. My last two general education classes were vanquished over the course of the summer months, and I only have upper level business and accounting classes left to go. This is both highly intimidating and extremely refreshing. While I expect this semester to be extremely challenging, I look forward to actually learning more about the field I actually plan on going into. This is the semester where I will likely figure out whether or not this whole Accounting degree idea was a big mistake or the right choice.
No pressure.
In any case, after all the curve-balls and new experiences I've seen over the summer, the fact that my life is going through a rapid series of growth spurts is really hitting home. I can't even begin to guess where I'll be two years from now and I expect the coming months will hold plenty of change and new adventure for me.
Here's to Fall 2014 and the class of 2016!
Pax
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