What a wonderful week!

Journal

A frustrating week of dis-ease. As I’ve resolved to scale down my life and evolvements, I’ve had less places to be and people to deal with but mentally I find myself just as active. This week I’ve studied The Rule of St. Benedict for my Religion of the Middle Ages class. I’ve also collected resources for my history research class- I’m a history major, btw. I had to turn in a couple of papers this week, one a three page paper on St. Benedicts rule and the other a historiography and refined thesis for my research class. These assignments weren’t easy for me. They call for an economy of writing which is not my “style” of writing. I tend to be a story teller and creative writer. I also prefer, some of you may pick up on this, stream of consciousness writing (my journaling is particularly done in a stream of consciousness style) so my writing is wordy, long winded, verbose, self-indulgent, excessive at worst. So precise/concise academic writing is a challenge to say the least! But I showed up for the task.

Monday I forced myself to gather my resources for the research class, type the citations, analyze and come up with a paragraph explaining the work and how I would use them for my overall thesis, a thesis that’s vague at best! I spent most of Tuesday properly writing my citations and constructing the historiography. The historiography is supposed to be one page, I got it in at a page and a quarter. This is a major achievement for me. I’ve been know to turn in 3-4 pages when a professor has only asked for a page! So I performed the tasks to the best of my abilities, at this point, and I turned it in- on time. Turning in paper work at its due date has also been a challenge for me. One can argue that either the content of my work is very good or I’m just one hellofva charming guy to get to the first official quarter of a graduate program with these study habits! Who knows? Alls I know is this is where I am being challenged to step up my game.

Wednesday and Thursday was all about the St Benedict paper. I’d written a very rough draft of the paper over the weekend- again, a major accomplishment so Wednesday was pretty much about constructing the paper. Thursday morning/afternoon was spent editing the paper. I actually went through the paper sentence by sentence which is something else I’ve never done before. Turned the paper in to turnitin.com and meeting my deadlines.

Completely these papers, responsibly within the guidelines, and turning them in wasn’t the only aspect of taking myself out of my comfort zone, not allowing distractions to misdirect my focus was another aspect of committing to difference choices.

Another choice I maid this week was to step down from my leadership duties of my church. I am very active in my little church. I usher on Sundays, attend standing committee meetings, my partner and I are responsible for the church’s café/snack shop on Sundays, and I conduct a fitness/nutrition program twice a week. These are simply my church duties. Also included are spousal duties and up until January, work. I’ve also had a couple of close friends from the past reenter my life, one friend going through a tough period of growth, and yet another friend with whom I’m having a strained relationship. I maintain my fitness program, as if I were maintaining life support, so I workout lifting/cardio at least 6-7 days a week on an average of two hours a day. All of the above, within this paragraph, doesn’t even involve school! And that’s the point I’m making, in the past all of the above would have alternatively overshadowed school or at least distracted me from school- especially when a brother was challenged to step his Academic writing skills up a notch! Let’s see?

Do I sit quietly, facing my inner-securities, and go over and over the same paragraph of a term paper for 20-30mins? Or do I rescue a friend in crisis, do I spend a day or three finding the proper sources for my research paper or do I just pick 2 or 3 at random, spend an all-nighter the day before the papers due, making the resources work and throwing together a paper because I chose church “responsibilities” over school? Do I sit in stillness and “just be” reading n junk, and remain still and focused as I deal with the guilt of the co-dependent who is choosing self over friends, the partner whose spouse if doing real work- manual labor, while I just stay home and read? Or do I try and fit a job into my tight academic schedule, due to ego/pride, even though it’s quite apparent (and my advisors have insisted that school must come first. And what about my background surrounded by anti-intellectualism within my church, community, the hood, the attitude of the populations I served in my prior career (community activism, program directing, and counseling), hell, even the anti-intellectualism of family, some of my friends, and definitely my spouse!!!!

How do I sit comfortably within the uncomfortable and approach graduate school unlike I’ve approached school in the past? How do I make me a priority, when as a co-dependent I’ve always made others my primary focus and responsibility? Hmmmmm? Perhaps I approach my challenges day by day, task by task, challenge by challenge? Which is what I did this week! So therefore, what a wonderful week indeed!! Score one for the hot mess of a brotha!