Hello friends!
It's me, Rachel, back in cyberspace after a 6 week hiatus. I thought that I would wait until next summer, because I seem to be a summer blogger, but maybe this is a once in a while sort of thing...
What have I been up to? Well...
1. I took the GRE. In true Rachel fashion, I waited until the last minute to sign up, and was forced to take it when I did not want (aka 3 days after I signed up and two before returning to Le Moyne), after not having prepared for the exam, or at least not in the way that I would have liked. I don't recommend this.
2. I came back to Le Moyne, and went through RA training. Magically, I was not terrified, not until it was Behind Closed Doors day, and even then it was a much subdued version of what I thought I would turn into. I survived the week, enjoying the whole thing immensely. Then school started.
3. I am still in denial about being in school, which is a bit of a problem considering I am already 4 weeks into the semester and I have a 30 page physics paper, a 12-15 page religion paper, lab reports and problem sets and take home tests to get through with at least a mild level of success. And then there are graduate school applications, volunteer program applications, the GRE subject test in chemistry. No big deal or anything, right? :-P
4. I spent time talking to every person I could about how I really felt about this summer, and am beginning to distill it into what I feel like I should take from the experience. And even now, after exhausting everything, I am still completely unsure where I should be going with everything.
5. I seriously considered, and am still investigating, the prospect of medical school. I've never wanted to be a doctor, because I don't believe I have the stomach, but I want to make sure, because it could be fun. One never knows, although I don't have an especial love for anatomy, and I did not enjoy dissections. But if the end goal is something that will make me happy, then I have to take the paths necessary. We'll see. I'm not at all convinced that I was made for med school, but I'm not convinced of much anymore.
6. I had a great conversation with Dr. Craig about grad school, which makes me feel a lot better about the undertaking. He said that what you have to do is look at the end result which you can see yourself happiest in, and then go from there. The happiest, for me, would be at an undergrad institution teaching, doing a little bit of research. It's no stress. Not like Harvard. Harvard was high stress. That said, getting there won't be easy, but the path is necessary.
7. I have decided that I need to take some time off and volunteer. Now, this is the point where someone from the peanut gallery will say, "What's the best way to make God laugh?" - "When you make a plan!" I'm here to say that I am taking this as it comes. I have chosen to apply to Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest, JV International, Franciscan Volunteer Ministries, and the Working Boys Center in Quito, Ecuador. And I am also going to apply to graduate school, which is almost a crapshoot at this point, and see who takes me, and where I want to go, and if they'll let me defer. And then I will hopefully also get into one of these volunteer programs (or more, if I am lucky) and spend some quality time with my bad self and this world. I need some me time. This is my me time. And I will be the first to tell you that the best laid plans are often subject to complete change, but I truly believe that this is what I am meant to do. I need to see more of this world.
8. To that end, I am preparing for an Alternative Break trip to Nairobi, Kenya, over winter break. I am thrilled beyond thrilled that I will get to go and fall in love with more children of this world. I love love love the babies. :-)
I wish that I could say things with more certainty. All I know right now is that I have no idea what I will be doing on May 23, 2011. That's exciting and terrifying.
In my religion class, we talked about hope today. I know this is compounding an already long post, and I know that my readership is not the highest ever, but I will leave you with my answer to "How do you hope?" It's a portion of a letter written to a Young Activist by Thomas Merton.
"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
"You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.
"The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
"The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more, and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
"The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration and confusion. . . .
"The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand..."
Peace and all good,
Rachel
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