"Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise"

Sometimes when we sing, we don’t really think about the lyrics, or at least I don’t anyway.  Then, that one time comes around when I actually do pay attention, and my mind is completely blown away. 

Be Thou My Vision.

My vision.

But what does that mean?  This reminded me of all those times in school and work I’ve either had to write or have read “Mission and Vision” statements.  The mission of the company, organization, or group is defined as the fundamental purpose.  It answers the “W” questions.  Why are we here?  What is the purpose?  Who will be affected?  When will we be done?  The vision on the other hand is the “how.”  How are we going to accomplish this?  It’s the future, the inspiration, the framework.  It’s the guidebook, the manual, the roadmap.  Call it whatever you like, but one thing remains the same, without the vision, the mission doesn’t stand a chance. 

Be Thou My Vision.

For my mission to succeed, I must have a vision.  And only one vision can support the mission of life.

So there I am.  Standing in church this morning singing that oh so familiar line, Be Thou My Vision, and that epiphany that I had been hoping for in Calculus hit me smack in the face in the form of God.  Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

In any situation, in any dilemma, in any joy, in any trouble, in any relationship, in any decision, in any anything and everything!  Be Thou My Vision.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall… Still be my vision, O ruler of all.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

Thou my best thought, by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word

I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one

Be Thou my battle-shield, sword for my fight

Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight

Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower

Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise

Thou mine inheritance, now and always

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart

High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won

May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heav'ns Son

Heart of my own heart whatever befall

Still be my vision, O ruler of all

Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true, and with thanksgiving I’ll be a living sanctuary for you.

A series of events*

I actually began this list a few days ago, but life got in the way of finishing, so here’s a recap of the significant** events in my life over the past week.

Registering for classes

For those of you who have never done this, let me tell you, it is NOT something you should be looking forward to.  Essentially, you are given a time slot to register based off of (theoretically) the number of credits you already have.  So I, having more credits than a typical freshman yet less than an average sophomore, get to register right in between these two groups at 10:30 on Thursday morning.  Since I’m a declared biology major, and a freshmen, I’m already seeded into some of my classes, however because of AP credits some of those classes need to be dropped.  So at the beginning of the week I figure out what I want to take next semester, sort out my schedule, and decide where the rest of my life will go***.  However all those seniors and juniors and middlers**** and real sophomores and super crazy freshmen with even more AP credit than me***** get to register before I do.  So I spend the week watching the classes I want to get into slowly fill up, and I hope and pray that at least 1 slot stays open so that I don’t have to go through that entire process of making decisions all over again and fit them all into a week that can’t possibly have enough time in it.  Then the day comes when I actually get to register, albeit right in the middle of my chemistry class.  So there I am, fervently refreshing my browser every 10 seconds so I can get on at the EXACT second it will allow.  And finally it pops up and I can enter my changes to my schedule in and hit submit.  This is the scary part.  Because you don’t know if you made some itsy-bitsy error and messed the whole thing up, and you don’t know if in the time it took for you to enter in all the changes something filled up, so not only does it not let you into a class but it drops a different class you need and now you’re screwed out of chemistry altogether******.  So needless to say, I was a little nervous.  Of course I got the screen telling me I’d made a mistake, though thankfully I didn’t mess it up too bad.  I was able to fix it and eventually get into all but one of the classes I wanted.  My schedule for next year is as follows:

            General Chemistry 2

            Lab for General Chemistry 2

            Recitation for General Chemistry 2

            Honors Calculus and Differential Equations – Biology 2

            Genetics and Molecular Biology

            Honors Lab for Genetics and Molecular Biology

            Introduction to Experimental Learning

            Enhancing Honors – Science, Technology, and Human Values

            Financial Accounting*******

Barnacle enslaves crab

Yup you read that right.  That is the title of my biology project.  Now, without going into too much detail, essentially it’s about how barnacles of the genus Sacculina parasitize crabs by entering through the crab’s abdomen and laying eggs where the crab typically has her own egg sack.  The crab then cares for the barnacle’s eggs and becomes the life source for the barnacle.  This project however does not simply focus on the biology of what’s happening, no.  It focuses on the evolution of this behavior.  How many papers are out there on this topic??  NOT. MANY.  So we’re pretty much making it up and hypothesizing ourselves (which I think it actually another point of the project.)  Anywho, we have found a couple articles to help us out, so I set out to actually acquire them.  The first article was in some scientific journal in the library.  After much difficulty in learning how to use the call numbers and locate the book, and then realizing that in the 280 some volumes I wasn’t going to be able to find the 10 pages I needed very easily, I was saved by the fact that THE ENTIRE JOURNAL WAS IN GERMAN!  I was disappointed however.  A journal in German really doesn’t help me.  The other article I needed I requested to be sent electronically to me.  The next day I was surprised to see an email informing me that I should be able to access it.  Sure enough I could, however my excitement was deflated by the fact that EVERY OTHER PAGE WAS UPSIDE DOWN.  Ridiculous.

Surprises

Being sick really puts a damper on things.  I am now thankfully getting over that cold or whatever it was, but for a few days there it pretty much seemed like life sucked.  I was supposed to volunteer Friday, and even though I felt horrible I went anyway.  It turned out ok, but on the way home I really wasn’t feeling too great.  Then I remembered that I might have a package.  So I stopped by the post office and low-and-behold I had TWO packages.  This brightened my day considerably; apples and mangoes from my mom and gingersnap and no-bake cookies from my grandma.  Sounds about right!

Science Club for Girls

This is where I’m volunteering.  I love volunteering.  This however has not been the experience I had hoped for.  I signed up with the intent of being a “Science Mentor,” teaching girls in elementary schools about science and careers in the science field.  This is not my job.  I am an assistant site manager at the Amigos school and at the Northeastern site.  I help with set up and take down and organizational stuff.  This week both sites gave me all of the registration info of all the students there and had me enter the info into a computer database.  7 hours later… I emerged, significantly behind in studying/homework, and completely brain fried from mundane boredom.  This was made slightly better by the fact that we played with dry ice that week, and after the club Maureen and I went down to where they threw the left over out and brought it back up to the room to play with it.  Ah, some things never get old.

The rest of my week was devoted to either an essay or studying.  I finished the essay, (still haven’t gotten it back yet) took a math test (think I did ok on that one) and took a biology test (yikes…we’ll see).  Hopefully all turns out all right.  Today in biology we watched a movie.  “The Science of Sex.”  I’m just gonna leave it at that.

I counted today.  There are 15 days of actual school left.  On one hand: yeah! On the other: crap… 

And now consider yourself informed.

*Neither fortunate nor unfortunate.

**Sorta

***Not really, but with the amount of pressure associated with this I may as well be making those decisions.

****We’re on a 5-year program here at Northeaster, so that’s what they call that extra year.

*****I didn’t know that was even possible.  Kudos to them.

******You have to have a chemistry class, lab, and recitation all registered at the same time.  And if one of them doesn’t fit, it drops them all.  And getting back into an already overbooked class after you accidentally dropped it is just about darn near impossible.

*******This was the one thing that didn’t work out.  Instead of getting into the one section of this class for non-business majors, I am enrolled in the online class, which now that I’ve looked into it a little more, doesn’t look that bad and functions pretty much the same as a regular class.

Halloween Weekend

Skipton!

This is Skipton-Lou.  He is a beta fish and the left over of a biology lab, so I adopted him.  I think he likes his new home*, and he’s a good pet. 

Costumes! 

Halloween here is just an excuse to go out 4 nights of the week.  So naturally you need 4 costumes, one for each night.  Nope.  I was a pirate, and only dressed up on Saturday.  My costume consisted of an eye patch I got on Beyond Malibou summer before last (yes, I still had that in my backpack, and if you went on our Hatcher’s Pass adventure before Rachel left, you would know that there are an assortment of other random artifacts in there, yet no first aid kit), a hat made for a 4 year old, a pirate shirt, and my favorite: a sword made out of cardboard and purple duct tape.

Nametags…

We have nametags on our doors.  And I came out this Saturday morning to find two pieces of tape on my door and a crumpled orange ball down the hall… a very sad state of affairs.  Yet do not fear, my awesome RA made me a new one.  So now there is a blue Pac-man ghost with my name on it stuck to the door.  And all is well with the world.

And because I have an essay due soon, way too much reading for biology than thought possible, and an exorbitant amount of math homework, I will now enter into a self-induced coma of studying.  So long my friends.

*Actually I have no idea, he’s a fish…