It's officially the end of semester tomorrow and I'm feeling quite relieved. The beginning of semester was a crazy, anxious, stressful time and I'm very happy that settled down eventually. At least now my stresses are mostly about uni work, and occasionally about money, but not about uni work AND money AND sleeplessness (caused by aforementioned uni stresses and money stresses).
I still have plenty of work ahead of me, and the so-called 'break' between semesters is when I've agreed with my supervisor to get all my coursework finished, so it will be quite busy. However, it will leave me with no other distractions next semester, thus I'll be able to concentrate exclusively on my thesis... that's a little scary!
I had my last Greek class today - I don't need to do it next semester - and I feel bad that I hardly devoted any time to it this semester. I do enjoy studying the language and I want to be good at it, but I had so many things to do this semester that it was severely neglected. I think my final mark is something like 82%, but that's only because my teacher is quite generous in her marking. I certainly haven't consolidated the grammar properly and it's all rather confused in my head. At Campus Bible Talks yesterday I met a girl who wanted to learn Latin but couldn't fit it into her timetable, so she's been teaching herself. She studies Latin (with absolutely no assistance) on her own for half an hour every morning. I felt ashamed - I've been enrolled in the subject and I haven't done as much study as she does! Surely I could manage half an hour a day?
And speaking of allocating half an hour a day... I haven't been anywhere near my Bible for weeks - and if the weeks were added up it would work out to 'months'... but weeks sounds better! My prayers have been short and thoughtless, and rarely about other people (or God, for that matter). It's pretty disgraceful really, given that it's been a mere six months since I had an experience of God that was so awesome and real that I felt like I'd had the conversion experience I never had the first time, having come to know God in a 'slow and steady wins the race' kind of way as a teenager. It was life-changing (I wrote about it very very briefly here) and despite my current apathy I'm still feeling the results of being turned around by God last November - but it didn't take me long to fall into old habits and behave like God is irrelevant, did it? It's definitely time for this situation to change!
Getting up earlier to pray never works for me; I just end up turning off the alarm and then feeling guilty. Saving it until I go to bed is equally disastrous. (I think the moral there is that it's not good to try to listen to God, and talk to him, in the sleepiest part of the day.) However, I've devised a cunning plan... although I don't have classes as such, I still drive to uni every day so I can do some study away from the distractions of home, and so I don't associate home with constant stress and anxiety. I park a couple of streets away from the campus, outside the home of friends, and it's nice and quiet in the street. I think I'll park there, spend some time with God and then walk over to the campus. It's not like I have to be on campus at a certain time, so I have no real excuses - although I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something! Anyway, that's the plan for the moment.
I still have plenty of work ahead of me, and the so-called 'break' between semesters is when I've agreed with my supervisor to get all my coursework finished, so it will be quite busy. However, it will leave me with no other distractions next semester, thus I'll be able to concentrate exclusively on my thesis... that's a little scary!
I had my last Greek class today - I don't need to do it next semester - and I feel bad that I hardly devoted any time to it this semester. I do enjoy studying the language and I want to be good at it, but I had so many things to do this semester that it was severely neglected. I think my final mark is something like 82%, but that's only because my teacher is quite generous in her marking. I certainly haven't consolidated the grammar properly and it's all rather confused in my head. At Campus Bible Talks yesterday I met a girl who wanted to learn Latin but couldn't fit it into her timetable, so she's been teaching herself. She studies Latin (with absolutely no assistance) on her own for half an hour every morning. I felt ashamed - I've been enrolled in the subject and I haven't done as much study as she does! Surely I could manage half an hour a day?
And speaking of allocating half an hour a day... I haven't been anywhere near my Bible for weeks - and if the weeks were added up it would work out to 'months'... but weeks sounds better! My prayers have been short and thoughtless, and rarely about other people (or God, for that matter). It's pretty disgraceful really, given that it's been a mere six months since I had an experience of God that was so awesome and real that I felt like I'd had the conversion experience I never had the first time, having come to know God in a 'slow and steady wins the race' kind of way as a teenager. It was life-changing (I wrote about it very very briefly here) and despite my current apathy I'm still feeling the results of being turned around by God last November - but it didn't take me long to fall into old habits and behave like God is irrelevant, did it? It's definitely time for this situation to change!
Getting up earlier to pray never works for me; I just end up turning off the alarm and then feeling guilty. Saving it until I go to bed is equally disastrous. (I think the moral there is that it's not good to try to listen to God, and talk to him, in the sleepiest part of the day.) However, I've devised a cunning plan... although I don't have classes as such, I still drive to uni every day so I can do some study away from the distractions of home, and so I don't associate home with constant stress and anxiety. I park a couple of streets away from the campus, outside the home of friends, and it's nice and quiet in the street. I think I'll park there, spend some time with God and then walk over to the campus. It's not like I have to be on campus at a certain time, so I have no real excuses - although I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something! Anyway, that's the plan for the moment.
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