Monday, November 2, 2009I have my Management 1oo status report this Thursday.
For some strange reason, I'm oddly terrified.
Iunno what it is. I mean, my partner and I finished our outline last Wednesday and our Powerpoint yesterday afternoon. We have the next two days to work on it, I'll be practicing my speaking part obsessively, in the shower, walking down Locust Walk, in my sleep, etc. But for some reason I still feel like I'm so ill-prepared, if that's even a word.
I feel like it's because little things are going wrong.
For one, my Powerpoint keeps freezing up. It happened once last night at around 1:30AM when I was twirking some slides based on my TA's advice. Apparently, I'd changed a lot since my last save, because when Powerpoint froze and messed itself up, it had to restart, and when it did, Auto-Recovery glitched and didn't do much for me. At least I knew which things I had to fix even better the second time around.
For some reason though, Powerpoint freezing up really gets me down. It makes me feel like I'm really not making much progress on this presentation. Every time it freezes, I get discouraged from opening it back up again and having another go.
I feel like I'm totally losing morale.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't feel comfortable rehearsing an oral presentation until I have it outlined in print first. As such, until my Powerpoint and Word Document are directly in line, I don't feel comfortable rehearsing the actual delivery of my presentation.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy.
But to get away from the complaining and from the anxiety, I'm going to reflect upon God's goodness today.
I usually don't like to bring up individual grades when I talk about what God's been doing in my life, because I think God deserves credit for so much more than just a letter grade. However, I have to openly rejoice in the fact that I landed a solid A on my East Asian Diplomacy midterm. Considering how I spent our one-day Fall Break studying for it, I really was ecstatic when I found out I did well on the exam. I think the reasons for this are twofold:
1) I absolutely adore that class.
East Asian Diplomacy is fascinating to me, and the course explores a period that is so controversial (Opium War, Sino-Japanese War, World War II) between Korea, China, and Japan. What's more, the professor is so quirky, and he always challenges us to think about more than just "culture" when it comes to the do's and don'ts of diplomatic relations.
2) I want to see if I can handle a dual degree.
So I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but I am absolutely in love with East Asian culture. God has particularly given me a heart for China, but East Asia in general just absolutely fascinates me. Consequently, God's really placed it on my heart to try for a dual degree with business and then East Asian Languages and Civilizations in the College. But of course, that second degree means a pretty intense courseload for quite a few semesters. I was quite concerned that I wouldn't be able to handle it, and I wanted this semester to go well so that my parents and I could be put at ease about my ability to handle the inevitable monstrosity that is 6 or 6.5 credit units (current dual-degrees, please do not laugh at my noobness. ><;) So as much as I hate to really celebrate my grades too much, with this A, I feel like I'm a step closer to confirming my own competence.
And while it's not my own competence that will ensure my success in a possible dual-degree, I do feel like it'd be quite a stretch to expect God to do all the work for me. After all, faith without actions is dead.
Other tidbits of praise:
1) I had the most delicious pasta at Houston today.
I've never done pasta before, but I got the penne in alfredo florentine, with chicken and mushrooms. It was absolutely yummylicious and I ate it for linner at around 3:30PM after making $20 from two Wharton Behavioral Labs.
2) I made $20 at Wharton Behavioral Lab.
Again, it seems like a really trivial matter to be thanking God for, but before my hyperactive conscience reprimands me about how you can't serve both God and money, I'm really thankful for this opportunity to get some more spending money. Even though I haven't actually spent any of it, it's kind of the closest thing I'll have to a job during freshmen year. I hate spending just my parents' money, and I figure this will teach me to be more fiscally responsible and start budgeting the moolah I make. I'm even considering opening my own bank account with PNC.
3) I got a package from home.
My parents have been calling incessantly for the past few days asking whether or not I'd gotten the package they sent on Thursday, even though we had agreed that I would just call the house when I did receive it.
Seriously, it was the cutest thing. I got out of the shower, saw a missed call from Daddy, called him back, told him on the phone that I hadn't had the chance to check my mailbox yet, told him I would call him after I did, and as soon as I got off the phone with him, my Mommy calls. When I pick up the phone, she immediately starts gushing with questions about how I liked the scarves and socks she had sent me. I waited a while for her to pause and take a breath before I finally interrupted and said that I had just gotten off the phone with Daddy and had told him I hadn't yet checked my mailbox.
The funniest thing to me was that my dad had been standing next to my mom the entire time.
After I finally hung up with Mom, I decided for everyone's sake I should hurry up and get downstairs to see if the 5PM mail had come yet. I speed-dialed my mom's cell phone before I even got into my room to open the package.
I got four pairs of what appeared to be gender-neutral socks to me. On the phone, my mom fretted about whether or not I liked them, adding that my father had been the one who had picked them out on his way home from work. She asked about the two silk scarves that she had bought me from China, and the warm leggings that my considerate third aunt had purchased for me when my mom went back to our hometown in China last month.
It was just so nice to get a piece of home, even though all of the things were newly-bought and I could hardly say that my passport, the cause of my mother's incessant worrying, held much sentimental value of home. But just hearing my mom's excited voice and the parents' sweet and heartfelt "I love you and miss you"s made me all the more anxious to get these next few weeks over with so I could spend Thanksgiving with the family that I am oh-so-grateful for.
God is such a good provider. Every perfect thing comes from Him.
So thank the Lord for status reports.
For A's on midterms.
For pasta from Houston.
For sources of income.
And for family.
Praise the Lord. :)
For some strange reason, I'm oddly terrified.
Iunno what it is. I mean, my partner and I finished our outline last Wednesday and our Powerpoint yesterday afternoon. We have the next two days to work on it, I'll be practicing my speaking part obsessively, in the shower, walking down Locust Walk, in my sleep, etc. But for some reason I still feel like I'm so ill-prepared, if that's even a word.
I feel like it's because little things are going wrong.
For one, my Powerpoint keeps freezing up. It happened once last night at around 1:30AM when I was twirking some slides based on my TA's advice. Apparently, I'd changed a lot since my last save, because when Powerpoint froze and messed itself up, it had to restart, and when it did, Auto-Recovery glitched and didn't do much for me. At least I knew which things I had to fix even better the second time around.
For some reason though, Powerpoint freezing up really gets me down. It makes me feel like I'm really not making much progress on this presentation. Every time it freezes, I get discouraged from opening it back up again and having another go.
I feel like I'm totally losing morale.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't feel comfortable rehearsing an oral presentation until I have it outlined in print first. As such, until my Powerpoint and Word Document are directly in line, I don't feel comfortable rehearsing the actual delivery of my presentation.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy.
But to get away from the complaining and from the anxiety, I'm going to reflect upon God's goodness today.
I usually don't like to bring up individual grades when I talk about what God's been doing in my life, because I think God deserves credit for so much more than just a letter grade. However, I have to openly rejoice in the fact that I landed a solid A on my East Asian Diplomacy midterm. Considering how I spent our one-day Fall Break studying for it, I really was ecstatic when I found out I did well on the exam. I think the reasons for this are twofold:
1) I absolutely adore that class.
East Asian Diplomacy is fascinating to me, and the course explores a period that is so controversial (Opium War, Sino-Japanese War, World War II) between Korea, China, and Japan. What's more, the professor is so quirky, and he always challenges us to think about more than just "culture" when it comes to the do's and don'ts of diplomatic relations.
2) I want to see if I can handle a dual degree.
So I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but I am absolutely in love with East Asian culture. God has particularly given me a heart for China, but East Asia in general just absolutely fascinates me. Consequently, God's really placed it on my heart to try for a dual degree with business and then East Asian Languages and Civilizations in the College. But of course, that second degree means a pretty intense courseload for quite a few semesters. I was quite concerned that I wouldn't be able to handle it, and I wanted this semester to go well so that my parents and I could be put at ease about my ability to handle the inevitable monstrosity that is 6 or 6.5 credit units (current dual-degrees, please do not laugh at my noobness. ><;) So as much as I hate to really celebrate my grades too much, with this A, I feel like I'm a step closer to confirming my own competence.
And while it's not my own competence that will ensure my success in a possible dual-degree, I do feel like it'd be quite a stretch to expect God to do all the work for me. After all, faith without actions is dead.
Other tidbits of praise:
1) I had the most delicious pasta at Houston today.
I've never done pasta before, but I got the penne in alfredo florentine, with chicken and mushrooms. It was absolutely yummylicious and I ate it for linner at around 3:30PM after making $20 from two Wharton Behavioral Labs.
2) I made $20 at Wharton Behavioral Lab.
Again, it seems like a really trivial matter to be thanking God for, but before my hyperactive conscience reprimands me about how you can't serve both God and money, I'm really thankful for this opportunity to get some more spending money. Even though I haven't actually spent any of it, it's kind of the closest thing I'll have to a job during freshmen year. I hate spending just my parents' money, and I figure this will teach me to be more fiscally responsible and start budgeting the moolah I make. I'm even considering opening my own bank account with PNC.
3) I got a package from home.
My parents have been calling incessantly for the past few days asking whether or not I'd gotten the package they sent on Thursday, even though we had agreed that I would just call the house when I did receive it.
Seriously, it was the cutest thing. I got out of the shower, saw a missed call from Daddy, called him back, told him on the phone that I hadn't had the chance to check my mailbox yet, told him I would call him after I did, and as soon as I got off the phone with him, my Mommy calls. When I pick up the phone, she immediately starts gushing with questions about how I liked the scarves and socks she had sent me. I waited a while for her to pause and take a breath before I finally interrupted and said that I had just gotten off the phone with Daddy and had told him I hadn't yet checked my mailbox.
The funniest thing to me was that my dad had been standing next to my mom the entire time.
After I finally hung up with Mom, I decided for everyone's sake I should hurry up and get downstairs to see if the 5PM mail had come yet. I speed-dialed my mom's cell phone before I even got into my room to open the package.
I got four pairs of what appeared to be gender-neutral socks to me. On the phone, my mom fretted about whether or not I liked them, adding that my father had been the one who had picked them out on his way home from work. She asked about the two silk scarves that she had bought me from China, and the warm leggings that my considerate third aunt had purchased for me when my mom went back to our hometown in China last month.
It was just so nice to get a piece of home, even though all of the things were newly-bought and I could hardly say that my passport, the cause of my mother's incessant worrying, held much sentimental value of home. But just hearing my mom's excited voice and the parents' sweet and heartfelt "I love you and miss you"s made me all the more anxious to get these next few weeks over with so I could spend Thanksgiving with the family that I am oh-so-grateful for.
God is such a good provider. Every perfect thing comes from Him.
So thank the Lord for status reports.
For A's on midterms.
For pasta from Houston.
For sources of income.
And for family.
Praise the Lord. :)
9:38 PM |
