The Unexpected

Much to my surprise, I am learning to like, and indeed love, many things that used to make me cringe. Years ago, I would have been depressed to spend an entire weekend writing a paper -- particularly one on persistent vegetative states. I used to avoid thinking about brain damage and its consequences, but now that I'm approaching the issue as the focus of an ethics issue, it's intriguing. This doesn't mean that I'm about to finally sign my advance directive -- I'm still too squeamish for that -- but much to my surprise, I'm finding the philosophical issues fascinating.
It used to be that I'd get very excited over the idea of going out with some cute guy. I'm almost embarrassed to say that the emotional high point of the week was receiving four ethics documents via email.
I used to be very much the bright-lights-big-city sort of girl, but now I'm making time each day to stare at Puget Sound, play with a puppy, and eat a quiet meal. With the stress levels so high at school right now, these are self-protective behaviors, along with the daily aerobic exercise.
How terribly wholesome. I'm sure these changes aren't entirely permanent.

Fall Semester is Finally Over

It's been a while since I posted, and I really have a great excuse: post-scholastic trauma disorder. I had no idea that finishing off a semester would be so exhausting. Although I only had two exams during finals week, the last exam was the toughest.

The Ethics exam brought our class together in a way that the group projects never did. We were meeting on a regular basis, comparing notes, looking at the mid-term exam answers, arguing about exactly what Aristotle said, in contrast to what Plato and Kant said, and generally working ourselves into a collective intellectual froth. Fortunately, Father Pratt let us bring a 4-by-6 card into the classroom for the test. I filled mine up with outlines for the essay questions, reminders for the definitions, and lots more in a font labelled "teeny-tiny." The only thing I had not figured on was writer's cramp, something that doesn't usually happen at the computer. I lost about five minutes of exam time trying to convince my right hand that it didn't want to cramp up before I finished writing the essays. I drove home that night with my left hand, and spent the days before Christmas recovering from the mental and physical stress.

Amazingly, I got an A in the class. Plus, the professor liked the term paper, but wants me to do some more work on it, for further use.

Since then, I've been to Seattle for two different Christmas celebrations, and I've hung around the house, catching up on bills, baking Christmas cookies, watching movies, and doing the cleaning that was suspended in the final weeks of fall semester. Fortunately, most people don't drop in when you live this far out of town, so the mess has been missed.

Spring semester is loitering on the horizon, of course. Books have already been assigned by two of the professors, so I've purchased them and tried to start on Mary, Queen of Scots, but my enthusiasm has been a little low. Perhaps older students need a deadline to get the reading done.