About the College Student

It's a little bit funny, sometimes, to think I live in a climate where underground tunnels between buildings are necessary. Downtown Minneapolis got it right, maybe, when they built the skywalk (an above-ground system of hallways connecting buildings). At least you can experience the beauty of day from above ground through the windows that way. Either way, in Minnesota winter, it's just too dang cold to be outside for more than five minutes. Especially when it's under 10 degrees with a windchill that brings it to 35 degrees below 0.

As I tunneled over from the cafe to the library this morning, I noticed a Coca-Cola machine with a sticker on it that read, "Open bottle carefully." I thought it was kind of funny that the school felt it necessary to remind college students that their pop would be shaken after tumbling down the chute, but then I had a picture of a sticky mess of caramelized drink in that hallway made by a delirious student wanting the immediate satisfaction of caffeine, and realized they probably had good reason for putting up the sign.

I have noticed lately that college students, though considered 'adult' and 'independent,' aren't vastly trusted by the general public, especially by those who run educational institutions. When I first realized this, I was a little offended, I guess. But then, just as with the sign on the pop machine, I thought that maybe it is for good reason.

College students, almost by definition, are irresponsible, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Hey, we have a lot going on at this stage. We have to balance homework, relationships, social functions, and if our parents don't have the desire or means to give us everything, gainful employment. For the most part, we're all generally sleep deprived and, if my own recent experience is any indication, bewildered. Maybe from lack of sleep or maybe from the sheer volume of what we cram into our heads, but I think all college students develop some form of attention deficit during the learning years.

 I have a writing professor who always tells her students that we know nothing, that we're not good at what we do, and that we can't be. This is always offending, but I understand. After all, I, only six years older than students in high school, think of them as inferior in art and thought, even if they're decent at anything for their age. Yet, when I was in high school, I thought I was kind of on my way to something. I thought I was okay. So I forgive my professor, because I know she's right, even if I feel that my effort warrants thinking there is some form of possible talent on my part.

It's true, we're inexperienced and still learning. I just wish we could be told when we're doing well. I think people forget to tell us we're doing well at this stage. Life is an unending venture of trying, failing, and finding success, after all. Is there ever the fabled satisfaction of a job well done?

I guess this comes from feeling a little on the end of worthless these days. How should I feel that going on is worthwhile if I'm only ever told what it is I'm doing wrong, and not what I'm doing right? How do any of us decide it's worth it to go on? To prove someone wrong? That is true for some, I know.

These are the years that we learn whether we're worth our salt. We work hard, strive, seek, and keep getting batted away. It's not failure, but it is something like trial. When we make it to the end, at least we know what doesn't work. Maybe life will prove what does.

Morning Mocha

Coffee and I have a love/hate relationship. It beckons to me from distant places, and I follow its call like a little lost lamb. Once the craving hits, it can't be satiated by mere substitutions. My cafe drink of choice is the mocha, and it has to be dark chocolate. I love my mocha, and my mocha, well... it tries. It brings me momentary satisfaction, but often only to let me down in the long run.

I suffer from migraine headaches, which I'm beginning to find are more common in people these days, especially in young people close my age. Millennials, we are too heavily caffeinated a generation.

If caffeine helps when you have a headache (even a little one), if you get headaches after a few days without caffeine, if you get headaches regularly, then you may also suffer from migraine (as if you haven't suspected, because you're one smart cookie). These are questions my father-in-law (who is a doctor) asked me when he heard me complaining far too often of my headaches. My mom gets migraines, my sister gets migraines, and I never thought that I suffered from them, too, but as it turns out, I do.

The only way to deal with migraine headache is to try to find what creates it (i.e. caffeine) and basically stay away from that thing. People, even doctors, will talk about "triggers" (red wine, chocolate, red meats), but I've heard mixed commentary on whether triggers really exist or not. Caffeine withdrawal is what normally causes migraines, which I've found by experience when, say, I drink coffee or Dr. Pepper every day for three or more days, then don't drink any caffeine for a day or two. Those are the times I get the worst migraines: first the dull headache, then tightness in my shoulders, nausea that radiates through my fingertips and pounds to my head until it feels like my head will split open. Such an awful experience, and if you can relate, I feel for you.

My husband works hard at keeping me away from caffeine entirely. He implemented a similar tactic that I took in high school, for health purposes rather than avoidance of migraine, but I didn't realize then how much I may have been helping myself.

In high school, I would allow myself only one pop each week, two under special circumstances (I wasn't a coffee drinker in those days, but I did love my Red Bull). I rarely, if ever, experienced migraines, so when they manifested in more recent years, I was shocked to find that migraine is basically a life-long condition. It wasn't until college that I found the magical powers of a morning coffee and started feeling the effects of long-term caffeination. So my dear sweet husband now allows me only one or two caffeinated beverages a week, because avoiding the addiction is the best way to avoid the withdrawal.

So, it is Tuesday, once again, and here I sit with my weekly mocha. The added benefits to drinking less caffeine of course are that it's easier on the budget and the waistline. On Tuesdays my husband and I get up and out the door earlier, and surprisingly, it's actually the weekday I  look forward to the most. I get my blog, I get my mocha, and the day starts off well.

Life is good when you don't have to give up something you love in its entirety. In exchange for my caffeine addiction, I get comfort from being enslaved to it (those who drink caffeine every day and suffer from migraine must drink coffee every day).

 It's about compromise.

Grappling Understanding

It's not quite 8:00 yet on a Tuesday morning, and here I am. This is the one day each week I take the time to sit down and write whatever I have a mind to write. No theology papers, no forced, edited, tweaked, deconstructed and entirely re-written essays or short stories. Just my thoughts, my experiences, my own judgment.

Today I have to write a paper on what I believe about God's character, His works, and His Trinity. I know what I believe about these things, but I never realized how much theology has to say about just these aspects of God. For centuries people have put a lot of thought and time into trying to explain God. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

The Trinity. Three in one. It's hard to grasp, yet Christians insist it is the true nature of God, and we try to explain it, attempt to understand. In the end, only to find it's impossible to fully understand.

God is Father, God is Son, God is Spirit (or as my theology book put it, an inversion: Father is God, Son is God, and Spirit is God). All three separate, all three equal, all three one. It's paradoxical. It doesn't make sense to our little human minds. It's been argued that it's not even biblical. But it is, isn't it? It certainly explains how Jesus spoke of God and himself. If it's part of God's nature, why is it so hard to understand? Why can't we just know?

It's part of God's nature for us not to understand. He's so big, so much more than we are. How could we begin to understand the mind of the one who created the universe. It's impossible. We are just the tiniest reflections of the Creator, and we are consistently imperfect creatures trying to reflect on the nature of One who holds all things together and abides outside of time. It's crazy to even try to understand.

But we have to try, don't we? Our knowledge grows with trying. And though the more we know the more we realize we don't understand, still the closer we come to Him in our attempt to know Him.

God is good. All powerful. Gracious, loving, merciful. He is patient and constant. He is eternal, infinite. This is what I know, and as I explore and falter, it's all that matters. To know Him.

A Coffee Break Study of Nature

Writer's block. A masked man with a gun to your head when you don't have the answer.

Eventually he goes away, right when you expect to be shot through the head, usually. Still, it's paralyzing.

I took a break this morning when I got to campus at 7:30, bought a mocha and sat in the campus cafe to sip my drink and nibble my strawberry Pop-tart in peace. It's funny how if you go to a coffee shop without a laptop these days, or at least a book, you get funny looks. One sir even stared directly at me as he passed after saying hello. It's mysterious, I guess, to just sit and take in life.

I just needed time before retreating back inside myself and relinquishing the precious knowledge of anything I've learned about writing, about theology, about analyzing style. Time to clear out the corners of the mind and find all that's there, if possible. With a laptop in your lap, a cellphone in hand, a book to hide behind, it's hard to take in the world around you without distraction. So I sat, undistracted, and watched.

It is said that writers pay closer attention to nature, have more reverence.  I don't know if that is necessarily true, or if we just document our observations more than most. This morning, at the window in the cafe with my coffee, I was a student of nature.

I watched the birds in their flight patterns, swell and dive, swell and dive, two by two. I contemplated the ice cracking and melting and running, forming puddles. I saw the few people here this early take slow, safe steps, cautious on today's ice layer.

Sitting as a silent observer, I overheard the different volumes of the baristas, listened in on the topics of their discussion. What's important to strangers. We're all a little bit the same.

This morning, I took the time to soak in the mysteries and revelation of the flitting birds, the tedious steps, the words that say nothing but reveal more of us than we know.

I watched the trees, reaching up, always reaching up. Even when the snow and ice weigh down as if to break their strength they remain firmly planted, reaching. But even strong trees sometimes fall. Yet they maintain their upward stretch until their time is over.

I want to reach up like the ancient pines and great oaks. Up, beyond the trees and clouds and stars. I want to stop being so conscious of the ice sheet on the ground, afraid of falling, and focus on what is all around. In front, behind, above. Reaching for the answer, the reason, the strength against the things of this world that weigh down. Always up.

Calm Coolness of Winter: A Reflection

Right now in the Twin Cities, MN it is -11 degrees. The high today is 1 degree above 0. Walking the one minute walk from the Billy Graham Community Life Commons (called "the Billy" by students) to the arts building on campus, my coffee had sufficient time to cool to a reasonable temperature. Question: how did anyone ever see this region as habitable for humans?

Then again, how do people survive the Middle East in their burkas? I mean, it seems to be hot enough there in the desert without them, right? What I mean is, there is probably something to complain about no matter where one lives.

I do have the hope, however, looking ahead, that spring is approaching. With each passing month, the weather will get warmer. For now, we're still in the deathly cold. But soon enough we will get our thaw.

The day, though cold, is beautiful. The sky is blue as the sun rises on the bricks of campus' oldest building, which used to be a monastery. After last semester's tears and hair loss (not major, just stress-related), I am finally able to look around campus and remember the beauty. I like it here.

So I drink my mocha and watch campus come to life from the library. I'm here (at the library) enough during each semester that it's actually a wonder why I don't work here. It's too late to apply now (I checked), but maybe next year. For now, I'll do my homework, people watch a little, write a little, sip my cooling mocha, and enjoy the opportunity to be properly educated. Life, as I see it, is good.

Your Short Story

I hate it when I get a magnificent idea for a topic for this blog while I'm sitting in class and neglect to write it down. I suppose I could write it in the margin of my notes, but at the moment the idea comes to mind I always think that I absolutely need to find a way to sneak my little notebook out of my purse and write the idea in there. My thought journal organizes my thoughts, but man, I really need to learn to write things down wherever there is available space just for the sake of keeping it with me.

That said, welcome to my new topic. That is, what I was learning in my fascinating Writing of Fiction class at the time I thought of (and subsequently forgot) a topic for this blog. Short stories, and the necessity for conflict.

I'm not talking about a page long, I'm talking twenty-six words long. Twenty-six being the maximum number of words we were allowed to write for our story during class yesterday. Does this seem impossible? Well, if you're a writer, you're already thinking up multiple different sentences that tell a story. If not, well, let me explain.

Ernest Hemingway wrote this one: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

See the story? This one sentence all on its own brings the reader to ask so many questions. Most questions trying to answer "why were the baby shoes never worn?" Yes, the questions go unanswered, but there is still conflict, still tension. That is what it takes to make a story.

The child ran out into the street while chasing a ball. His mother looked up and let out a scream.

The dog chewed up my only pair of work shoes for my new job.

He leaned in a little closer and Sara could feel her breath catch, but nothing happened. When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

There was so much traffic on the way home that the ice cream melted all over the trunk of the rental car.

These short lines tell a story. There is no climax, no resolution, yet there is story. The Post Secret website (www.postsecret.com) is filled with these short strings of words that tell stories on post cards sent anonymously. As a society, we have become people who think of our life situations in the form of short story.

Status update: My car battery died last night when I closed for work. Fml.

Anyone with any form of social networking, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc have become accustomed to these little stories. Everyone has become an author, sometimes only of their own stories. We're all writers, even if the traditional conventions of "being a writer" aren't present.

I find the interconnected relationships of our minds simply fascinating. We are so many, yet we are bound to one another by experience, tendency, and desire.

Not Another Abandoned Blog

This may be more for me than it is for you, but I just have to make something clear: this is not an abandoned blog.

I understand what happens when blogs aren't written in enough, when the writer walks away never to look back, or gives up because he or she can't keep up. But this girl is not going to abandon this blog.

Recent readers may have come across this blog and find that it hasn't been written in for awhile and never return. That "follow" button may go unclicked because the content is neither interesting nor frequent, but I'm working on it. Readers will return, or there will be new ones, or I'll just go on to make a new blog (the link of which will be posted on here for anyone who may somehow be interested).

Writers write because the words eat their way out eventually. The need for expression through words is a weight that cannot be bore for long before it becomes crippling. Sometimes so crippling that the words all come out at once and can't be sorted to make logical sense.

So, as I do school and try to work despite the copious number of homework assignments, as I try to balance classes with cooking and cleaning and making money so that my dear husband is not the sole provider, I promise this semester, this year, to make time to write something that is not a required assignment.

As the creator and author of this blog, I will breath new life into it and do my best to make it something that may bring hope, inspiration, and at least entertainment to you. Whoever you are.

Just wait and see.