The Coming and the Endings

Advent and Finals

Well, my brothers on the front line are in the thick of the most exciting week of the semester while the battle on the home front continues in a subtler way. My last class was a few hours ago, and finals start the day after tomorrow. "Finals". This year it just doesn't strike the same note of danger, terror, and, well, whole-hearted finality. Maybe it should, since it determines a clear cut and preordained percentage of the course grade- but the emotions can only stay on edge for so long, and with exams every few weeks, I've become numbed to the normal dose of pretest adrenaline. Also, in short, it is just another little dance to give them and not a valuable synthesis of understanding.

Our last Saturday physics class was cancelled, so this weekend I went up north at the spur of the moment to watch the Nutcracker. My little cousin danced as one of Mother Ginger's children.

Today I caught up on a lot of lost sleep and spent the morning cleaning up here and there, and playing music. (I intended to do some chemistry homework, but it's probably just as well that I didn't. Preparing for lectures tends to make them insufferably boring.) I dug out the nativity scene's manger and cut up a jar-full of yarn "hay" to put by our little shrine-corner and invite people to make Advent sacrifices to pad the Lord's crib.

Last year I was teaching catechism (with a dear friend) to a generally delightful class of second graders. I was full of new ideas for old lessons, she was full of vigor and also knowledge, and they were full of enthusiasm, so it worked out well most of the time. One not-so-original idea was straw for advent sacrifices- the kids put a little strip of yellow paper in the manger on my desk for every sacrifice they had offered up that week. Some of them wrote down their offerings on the straw to make it a little more tangible.

It sounds silly, but I am still very motivated by childish exterior tracking of progress. The biggest motivation for me to do my studies or other tasks has always been a neatly-written-up to-do list with little checkboxes aside each item. The items themselves have to be broken up into attainable chunks. Just ask anyone who saw my complex to-do list for finals' week last year- a grid with blocks for reviewing the material for each subject, for study-guide finishing, for reviewing with others, for actually taking the tests; blocks for each hour of work-study left for the semester; blocks for meetings and concerts and conversations that needed to take place.

So I guess I can see the motivational usefulness of these kinds of projects.

I tried twice to write the rest of the paragraph that the above sentance starts, about pedegogical scaffolding and weaning off of it to not count sacrifices or think about them for long, but I think my brain is officially shut off now (midnight). I'm sorry that I always post when I'm running on half-steam, so the composition is deplorable and the topics usually rambling.
Adios.