Hate it or love it the Zunderdog’s on top

The theory was that living here at school would facilitate a much easier process of learning and study than having to commute in every day. And to a large extent that has proven true. I’m actually keeping up with the work of five classes better than I kept up with that of the one or two I would take while commuting. However, I also have the unstable feeling of one whose feet are not quite planted firmly under the large load he is carrying. There are certain situations which seem to be trying to knock my feet right out from under me, and if I am not careful, I will come crashing down.

• I question the wisdom of singing at three celebrations of the Eucharist every Sunday. It really wipes me out to the point that I have neither the desire nor the ability to get any school work done on Sundays at all. I wake up at 5:30, drive for an hour, sing for 5 hours, head to Mom’s house, and crash like a ton of bricks. Thank God for home cooking.
• Part of the financial arrangement I have with the school requires me to compile and edit the weekly newsletter. This is not a big job, but in recent weeks, there have been some technical difficulties that have caused it to take far longer than it should have. On any given week, it seems, the newsletter could take between 3 and 7 hours. What kills me is that, not only do they want me to email the newsletter to all students, faculty and staff, but they also ask that I make about 35 hard copies of it first thing Monday morning. I have class Monday morning. So I end up doing this Sunday night at about 11:00 PM.
• I have also managed to get roped in to one of the less formal choirs here at school. Not big deal – I only have to sing with them about twice a month. However, this past week, I sang with them on Wednesday evening, and all day (literally I am not exaggerating at all!) on Saturday. As Chimera pointed out to me – was it really a retreat if I came away from it completely wiped out? Shouldn’t retreats rejuvenate? Not to mention that it was a whole day during which I wore out my money-maker (my voice) and didn’t earn a dime. Oh well. “Treasure in heaven” and all that…
• Oh – did I mention I have a LIFE. That’s right folks! For some reason, Zuke has people to see and places to go! I’m holding on to my life as best I can in my present situation. And I’m not willing to give that up just to get some reading done! Of course, perhaps I could cool it with the constant IM’ing, and confine my life to weekends and holidays like normal people. I had just gotten used to the idea that I could go out on any day of the week if I wanted, but that is not wise when you have approximately 150 pages to read by the next day.
• Reading. It seems I am a slow reader. Since I don’t like making copies of the readings unless I absolutely have to, I read what I can in the library and take notes on it. I want something that I can use later in place of the article I didn’t want to spend $1.30 copying. Taking notes on the ol’ ‘puter don’t go so fast though (some of you know how “fast” I type). But it doesn’t help that these friggin’ theologians don’t know how to put together a sentence that makes any sense to anyone but them!
  

There you have it. A few reasons I feel a little off balance. I’m keeping it all together so far, but we haven’t even started with writing papers or exams or re-learning German… On the other hand, this little post took me about 20 minutes to write, and if I were to double space it and add some footnotes, it could be about 2 ½ pages long… Hopefully I will be as efficient when I write my thesis!