Giggledy Giggledy

Nineteen days since the last update! How very remiss of me. I shall do my best to make up for it--but then, of course, nothing terribly earthshaking has occurred in the past three weeks or so... well, nothing apart from the last two weeks of holidays (ha!) and the first week of school; what an odd sensation to be on the second week of school already. One keeps on getting reminders that one is graduating soon--between all the career fairs and DONATE TO THE UNIVERSITY NOW! reminders that one keeps getting in the inbox, it's slightly eyebrow-raising how much attention is suddenly being paid to one by the University. But then of course it looks good for the University if one donates, and if one finds a job soon after graduation (the nature of the job doesn't seem to be a concern, only that there is a job). Which is really why I'm running through one of the University's job-searching aids at the moment, or I would be running through it if I could access it; apparently high traffic volume has brought it down because that particular aid ceases functionality in a little less than half an hour's time. Which shows both the last-minute tendencies of students at large, the poor technical/ server support for the aid, and the incredible... lack of consideration? lack of something, certainly... that causes the University to want people to have decided on the career they intend to enter by January when graduation is in June. Surely a choice of career is momentous enough that one is expected to take a little longer to decide on it? (And of course, the lack of technical support has forced them to extend the deadline by a couple days. You'd think they'd expect this sort of thing by now--unless they did, and that is why the extension was so promptly performed.)

I've said before that it's silly how people are expected to take so little time to decide or learn important things--driving, I think, for example, and now apparently job searching. And frankly I don't know what kind of job I want, only what kind I don't--which is to say, I'd rather not do anything involving the persuasion of other people to get something they don't need or want, I'd like something where the outcomes are tangible and easily measured, and... that's about it. Really.

So... the last two weeks of holidays? Weren't holidays at all, at least not in any sense other than name; I woke at 8am daily and headed to the lab, started processes running by 8.45am, and thereafter reappeared at the lab every one-and-a-half hours to check on things and keep them running; and this went on 'til 5.30pm, Monday to Friday; interspersed with all that were meetings with the supervisor and the projectmate, during which we generally established how little we knew and how extremely poor our grasp of the technical knowledge required and all that kind of thing; and every now and then were Campus Crusade activities, notably the conference that took up a whole two days and left me drained--really, the stuff we went through in that was pretty intense... Somewhere in those days I also picked up three books from the library--possibly the first three books I've ever borrowed from the library, which says something about the workload of the previous semesters and/or my usage of my free time (or both, of course). And two weeks on, and their return due date is the 8th of February, I've only almost finished one of the three.

(Unsurprisingly, I had a nightmare involving discovering that half the books in my room were borrowed from the library and having to cart the lot off to the library to return.)

I have a cold; it's probably due to the weather, which has been unremittingly rainy for the past few days; my laundry is constantly soaked, and I've resorted to simply taking in the items I plan to wear the next day and wind-drying them in the room overnight. At the moment I'm wearing two shirts--one thick and short-sleeved, one thinner and long-sleeved--and the ceiling fan is at position 2 and the standing fan has been turned off. The room is unprecedentedly warm, but at least I'm not sniffling and sneezing every two or three minutes. And I'm now sweating, either, which says something.

I wonder what it is with standing up in churches. It's quite common these days that when the sermon is over and everybody is supposed to be praying or meditating or something, the pastor or preacher starts asking people to stand up if they've made a decision to _____ (and the blank is of course filled with something appropriate to the sermon), and everybody is told to not look around to see if anybody else is standing but to just stand themselves. I always find that sort of situation extremely disturbing. What's the objective of it, after all? It might show the preacher that their sermon has had an immediate impact, perhaps; but the same could be accomplished by going up to them after the service and saying how nice the sermon was. Perhaps it's supposed to show one's own certainty of the thing to be done; but then if one is certain already, how does standing cement that certainty? And who is one trying to show the certainty to? Maybe, in the cases of decisions with obvious outward actions, the standing is to enable follow-up--maybe their cell group leader can then talk to them about it and encourage them to go on. But then it means that cell group leaders would be obliged to look around so they knew who'd stood up and then they'd need to put in the effort to actually follow up; not to mention that I'm relatively certain that the injunction to stand up is only obeyed by a very specific kind of personality, and that people who obey the injunction will continue standing up for future injunctions. So in the end the whole stand-up-if-you've-decided-to-_____ thing is massively... illogical. And irrational. But still practiced, for whatever reason.

After a great deal of talking with the roommate, I'm rather firmly convinced that his girlfriend is of a very similar temperament to mine, which is slightly unnerving.