New semester.***
Tonight is the Jon McLaughlin concert, and I'm pretty excited to go. I mean, I'm not like a huge fan of his, but it will be fun just to do something different and exciting for a change. I've been swamped lately with homework (most of which I've actually done), and in need of a little break. However, I must say that some of my reading has been really interesting. In Philosophy we are talking about Plato and Socrates, and I've been getting really into it. My prof is super engaging and into the material, so I think that I'm catching the bug. Throughout most of the class I'm scribbling down notes on what she's saying and adding my comments about the philosophy to remember later.
Next weekend I'm headed to Minneapolis for a journalism convention, and I'm very excited for it. It should be really interesting, because they have a lot of great speakers and conferences (plus the Star Tribune just went bankrupt, so I wonder if they will talk about that at all, the conference being in Minneapolis and all). Somewhat, though, I'm just excited to get off campus. Luther is a great place to be, and activities planners do an awesome job of getting fun things to come to campus (the concert tonight), but Luther does have the unfortunate geographical hindrance of being in the middle of nowhere. I miss cities sometimes, and being in Minneapolis will be a pleasure. You can be both anonymous and intimately connected in a city--something that is hard to do at a small college in a small town.
Last weekend I had a prospective student stay with me, and it was a great experience. He was a really cool guy, and we got along well. I found myself explaining Luther to him from my perspective, and I realized that I actually quite like Luther. Sometimes it takes articulating your own confused thoughts to someone else to help you figure out what you really mean. I started writing in a journal a few months ago, and that's helped me so much to figure out my feelings towards some really confusing parts of my life. Our minds are so cluttered at college, and in our hectic society in general, that we sometimes lose sight of the big picture. We read an article in my Comparative Politics class today about how Prince Charles just turned 60 and is still waiting to be crowned King of England after his mom, Queen Elizabeth II dies or gives up the throne to him. The article praised Charles for being an uncommon example of patience and stoicism. She made the point about our modern society, about the petty irritation we feel when we lose a few moments waiting for a computer to warm up, that we are so extremely impatient. She asked, what are we rushing our lives toward?
What are we rushing to get to? I'm surrounded by people freaking out about papers and assignments and getting a good GPA, about getting into grad school or med school, and spending all their time closeted in their rooms getting the willies trying to do everything at once. I just wish people would slow down a bit, and realize that this is the best time in our lives. We are healthy, young, and we aren't old enough to be cynical about love and life. We should all make stupid decisions, and experience life, and not worry about how this or that might affect our chances at a good job and the good life. We are all rushing towards the same, inevitable end. I just hope that when I'm on my death bed, I can say that I enjoyed life, not hurried through it.
Take it easy,
Danny
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