So I should be studying for finals.

Blogging has become a wonderful distraction to me.  When I have a lot on my mind I can come write here.   Avid bloggers say “amen”.  In approximately seven hours I sit down for possibly the most important test of my life so far, the Final exam for PH141, a Physics course at Colorado State University.  Having recently decided to follow physics as a course of study, I am now required to get no less than a C- in any physics class I take.  If I do well on this final, it will be no issue.  If I fail, I retake the class.  But my God will provide as he always has. I love being able to trust that; I can’t imagine how much more stressed I would be if I felt like I was controlling my own destiny without any external help.  I just sounded very Calvinistic, didn’t I?  Ok, so my performance IS directly related to how many times I take this fairly impossible class, but I can trust God to make it worth it to me in the case of a retake as opposed to being mad at him for “making me” get a D or whatever.  If I have to redo the course I will come out with a mastery of it that will carry me through other more difficult courses.  A win win, right?  Maybe now I’m just pep-talking myself.

 

Well a wiser student would be sleeping now, because he or she would have finished studying, finished their crib sheet, and written their due-in-the-morning comp paper by now.  But here’s JD, pumped up on caffeine from the delicious raspberry affagato (less-serious coffee drinkers look that one up) he just consumed at the Alley Cat with his friend Ashley when he should have been getting work done, trying to cram all of the above into the next seven hours, hopefully along with a couple hours of sleep to carry him through a couple hours of panicky test taking in the morning.

 

One thing I can say about this lifestyle is, although sometimes lonely and sometimes overwhelming, it is so full.  I mean I am living so crazy, so alive right now that nothing at all could slow me down.  Freshman year of college is over in a matter of hours, and that puts me 25% of the way through my college career, making me statistically more likely to “succeed” in life than the 99% of the world who will never make it through this much of a college degree.  Scary.  Mildly pressuring. Also very humbling. These days I find myself envying the satisfaction of so many of my friends who are doing exactly what they want without any kind of higher education at all.  Here I am learning about big, big ideas that have little to do with music.  I feel like I’m trying to manufacture some kind of artificial interest in the subject maybe?  Even though this is fascinating stuff I’m learning, the passion I have for music and worship makes this degree feel like a petty backup plan in case I don’t “make it” or whatever in music.  But I am counting on, I am counting on God!  This University certainly feels like the right place to be.  Campus Crusade (still hate that name) for Christ needs my help playing drums right now, and there are many lost people (i.e. Keller my roomate) who I have been able to reach out to in ways I didn’t think I could.  That doesn’t mean Keller “got saved”, but now he has a better understanding of what Christians live for and why, whereas before he just thought of it as a pious crutch.  So I’m in my place tonight.  I really should not blog anymore, I should finish this paper and get some sleep. 

 

At 9:00 AM tomorrow my physics final is over.  If I pass, I pass.  The important thing is I will be up all night tonight with my lover.  I will take my test tomorrow with that lover beside me.  I will walk out of the Clark building with that lover.  I will get on my rickety old bike and ride back to Summit Hall with my lover waiting for me there when I get back.  Three, maybe four years from now I will graduate from this loud and often trying place with that same lover next to me.  I will grow old, and my lover will remain ageless.  I will die, and go to be with that one great love I was blessed to have through all my days.  Regardless of how I do on this terrifying test in the morning, on that day my love will still say to me “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

 

So what am I so stressed about?

 

 

~ by JD on May 14, 2008.