Junior Year

Yeah, I'm in 11th grade. I'm a little shocked that high school is going by this quickly. It seems like I'm still recovering from my freshman year. And now all of a sudden I'm a junior.

I guess we humans are so surprised at the passing of time that every single expression of the feeling is cliche. I can't say "wow, it's going by so fast" because that's what everyone says. "It seems like yesterday" is really accurate, but all the meaning is completely worn out of it. I guess something more original would be "I feel like I'm reading the book that Lucy found in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the one where you can't turn the pages back to look over what you just read". And even that's unoriginal, because I'm calling on Lewis to describe it for me. Man, I guess I'm just an unoriginal gal today.

So...today was my first official day in 11th grade. Technically, I started last week, but now I'm actually putting myself on a school schedule (i.e. I get up at 7:00 am instead of 8:00 am). As of now, just after lunch, I'm not as busy as I thought I would be. I wrote down the hours per week I would do school work and then divided it by 5, and I figured out I had 7-10 hours of school work a day, depending on whether or not I had papers due. Uh, I guess I over-calculated. Now that I'm actually in the thick of things, I'm not as overwhelmed as I had originally anticipated. Which is good. Very good.

I am very suspicious that once school really gets going I will have less and less time to blog. So I'm squeezing one post in today. Adios!

School Year Resolutions

To be honest, the school year's start seems to have more of a sense of change and beginning than the calendar year's start. I mean, on January 1st, the only thing that changes is the year. When school kicks in, your entire life kicks into a whole new mode. And that's why I tend to make School Year Resolutions. I actually have a lifestyle change with which I need to align myself (horrors of horrors...I almost wrote "a lifestyle change that I need to align myself with", but luckily I caught that preposition at the end. Winston Churchill would have been ashamed).

I love writing lists. Therefore, I am going to put my resolutions in a list, which is the commonly accepted format for resolutions.

1. Don't regularly stay up any later than 10:00 pm
2. Get into the habit of regular devotions
3. Get responsibilities done as soon as I can, not as late as I can
4. If I can't find time to study, then I also shouldn't find time to watch baseball or hockey
5. Perform some form of exercise every other day (yoga, running)
6. Prefer fruit to sugary snacks
7. If my schedule's too tight, I need to skimp on free-time, not schoolwork

A lot of those resolutions are more like reminders, and I think all of them were ones I needed to acknowledge last year.

I find my brain power is greatly reduced if I keep on getting to bed late. I actually found that out this summer in a debate mini-camp with my public speaking group. Let me tell you, I went to bed early that night because I didn't want a repeat of the bleariness and brain-fog (which, dare I add, does not help in debate).

I'm sure that by reading through my blog you have discovered I am a worrier, a stresser, and an anxiety-er. I find that regular devotions really help me get my focus back on the eternal. I'm a big-picture type of person, and I think best when I have a broad view, so when I'm busy pondering God rather than the messy details of my life I become less frustrated.

For #3 on the list, I'm actually not a huge procrastinator. However, I have become wonderfully talented at making excuses...

...such as, wasting a couple hours watching sports. 'Nuff said.

Ah, now here's an interesting topic. Exercise. I love running, but it takes so long to get ready, get out, run, come back, shower, and get my mind on track again. Yoga is much more do-able in a tight schedule, I find. I can do it for fifteen minutes in jeans and a t-shirt and then go back to my work.

Um...I was going to offer more commentary/footnotes/long-windedness on my list, but it's about time to get a-move on in the real world. Oh well. Be happy I actually posted something.