Westmarked

I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image.

--an anonymous homily, including in the Office of readings for the Liturgy of the Hours, Holy Saturday. The full text is here.

The latest:

With the Eucharist, the Church is born. All of us eat the one bread and receive the one body of the Lord; this means that he opens each of us up to something above and beyond us. He makes all of us one. The Eucharist is the mystery of the profound closeness and communion of each individual with the Lord and, at the same time, of visible union between all. The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity. It reaches the very mystery of the Trinity and thus creates visible unity. Let me say it again: it is an extremely personal encounter with the Lord and yet never simply an act of individual piety. Of necessity, we celebrate it together.

You can read more here.

Has it really been 12 days from my last update? Certainly doesn't feel like it.

Last week we finished up the last major work event of the year (at least, the last one for which I have the slightest shred of responsibility), so all that's left is a reasonably short paper and two portfolio binders before I can kiss CUA goodbye. Well, that, and an absurd amount of time in the office and the halls helping students move out. I'm particularly looking forward to the conversations where we explain to guys that leaving the floor covered in food and stick tack all over the walls will result in charges.

Still, we are officially in Holy Week now, and is my custom I'll be posting links to items of a religious nature. Those allergic to papism, beware.

We'll start with this:

Psalm 24, which the Church proposes as the "song of ascent" to accompany our procession in today's liturgy, indicates some concrete elements which are part of our ascent and without which we cannot be lifted upwards: clean hands, a pure heart, the rejection of falsehood, the quest for God's face. The great achievements of technology are liberating and contribute to the progress of mankind only if they are joined to these attitudes - if our hands become clean and our hearts pure, if we seek truth, if we seek God and let ourselves be touched and challenged by his love. All these means of "ascent" are effective only if we humbly acknowledge that we need to be lifted up; if we abandon the pride of wanting to become God. We need God: he draws us upwards; letting ourselves be upheld by his hands - by faith, in other words - sets us aright and gives us the inner strength that raises us on high. We need the humility of a faith which seeks the face of God and trusts in the truth of his love.

The rest is here.

Passed comps. That is all.

Well, this week went better than I was expecting:

1) I turned in an updated yet not complete version of my revised paper, only to get the distinct impression from my adviser that she no longer cared about it being perfect, or even having the changes she wanted, so long as it was in my portfolio. That is, she's not going to use it to keep my from graduating, and in fact will accept whatever meets a minimum standard.

2) Comps were difficult on day one, but surprisingly easy on day two. I actually finished up early on day two, which was not what I was expecting after the example of day one, which required a much greater level of detail than I was expecting. I'm fairly certain I've passed, which is obviously all I care about; either way, it's over for the rest of the semester, and no longer worth worrying about.

3) St. Patrick's Day, a traditional time of great drunkenness and debauchery on campus (at least, our campus) went fairly well. Ok, there were people who started drinking Wednesday night in order to make sure that they were drunk for the whole day, but our neighborhood in particular seemed comparatively sane. I think we only had one or two drunken incidents per building.

4) Job applications ... okay, still have some work to do on something.

I was also fortunate in that after Wednesday, and a rather depressing opening day of comps, a friend linked me to a video on voice actors in a 40k game. Very geeky, granted, but also short (so it didn't interfere with studying), and funny. You might need to know something about Warhammer 40k to appreciate it--but maybe not.

March is, as predicted, proving just as insane as February. Right now I have three major projects: job searching, studying for comps, and revising a paper on catechesis in the English Penal Law period. To my surprise, job searching is not the project getting ignored right now.

Spring break has been comparatively focused, split between job applications and reading through *checks* 16 volumes thus far. Two more and I'll be done with background reading and ready to move on to reviewing classes. One way or another, comps will be done by this time next week. I have one or two promising job opportunities, and few more less promising, which I should also hear back about in the same time frame. Unfortunately, thanks to the amount of time I dump into your average cover letter, I can really only get out one or two applications a day, and that's if I don't do much more than eat, sleep, and pray. (Lots of praying going on right now.) For that matter, I still don't know if I'm preparing for comps adequately/correctly; I think I'm doing well, but it's not like I have a point of comparison.

I also wish, of course, that I could simply apply for the right job and get it, rather than apply for a dozen or so jobs and pick between, maybe, two acceptances. Since job applications are, in effect, graded on a curve--with only the best getting the passing grade--there's much more uncertainty there. If someone could just clue me in on a job which no one else will apply for (which I will still like and can do), I'd really appreciate it.

I shouldn't make things sound so hopeless. If things were hopeless, I wouldn't have to worry. Rather, things will be exhausting. Thus continues my slog until April. Oh, will I enjoy April.

Of all the days for me to wander onto Martin's website to check: July 12, 2011.

Now I just need HBO, and my life will be complete. Well, I suppose a paying job might also be helpful.

There have been 25 days of the month thus far. On maybe five of them, I did not have a work event happening sometime in the late afternoon/early evening. When I supposed to study for comps again?

I should be grateful most of those events were at least mildly enjoyable. My last post covered one of them, for example. I also managed a reprise of Andrew's "life in the marine corps" lecture--which wasn't an easy feat given he was in Korea at the time. There was a momentary "oh #$*" moment when Andrew contacted me an hour early and we realized we'd gotten the time difference wrong (he'd forgotten to account for daylight savings time), and that he'd have to leave for his flight 20 minutes after our official start time--but we managed to wrangle up some people to arrive early and ask questions, so it was padded out to about 45 minutes in total. Still gave me a near heart attack when we first realized the problem.

Still, February has been a really crazy month, and life will likely remain crazy until I get past comps, a little less than three weeks out now. I haven't started studying for comps yet. Have I mentioned that?

My one consolation is that April, at least should be a somewhat sane month, with one term paper and some miscellaneous practical assignments being my only worries re: classes. Work isn't exactly going to die down, but I don't think I'll have the mad rush of events over the next two months like I had at the last one. At least, I sincerely hope I won't. Between work, comps, classes, job searching, and a 5-10 page revision to my first 30 page paper which I've been sitting on for a year and a half, something will have to give soon. I'd prefer it to be something other than my diploma.

In some ways, that's how I could describe my entire chosen career path; as a teacher I will be spending lots of time with people, a part of creation with whom my standard relations can best be termed as "mixed." (To be fair, the only parts of creation I would say I get along well with are cats.) Still, there are some parts of teaching where I would expect to be at least decent: parts where I have a considerable levels of knowledge, experience, etc.

I also work with a resident's association, and they had a Valentine's Party to put on, and no good ideas of what to do. Then one of them suggests: "How about dating advice with Will?"

Please remember that I have never dated. Note also that basically everyone on the association, and everyone in the building, knows this. The entire executive board enthusiastically jumps on the idea. We wind up with me talking for about 45 minutes to a full classroom of residents.

For some reason, they actually seemed to like it. I suppose I should find that comforting. Or maybe I shouldn't; I though I was just sharing--in my standard disjointed, tangent-prone style--common sense observations. If they found what I said enlightening ... that doesn't bode well.

Anyway, I suppose I should just be happy I didn't completely humiliate myself. Avoiding humiliation was basically my goal going into the event, and I managed to achieve that. What else I achieved, I guess I'll get to see over the course of the semester.

I know this is already making the internet rounds, but this is too cool not to mention: One man against forty. Since the one man is a Gurka, I suppose it should have been sixty to be fair.

On a completely unrelated note--well, related in the sense that the first story indicates how minor the second one really is--I recently participated a podcast for the anime blog I'm a part of. So, if you're interested in learning how much my actual voice is just as stiled and obnoxious as my written "voice," this is one way to find out.

I also want to mention there's potentially world changing events going on in Egypt right now, but the situation is so fluid I'm not going to pretend I can say much meaningful about it. This is something potentially game changing, however, and I hope people are watching it.