Just Staying Afloat (or: Where Are The Lifejackets?)

It's barely been two weeks since classes started and already I'm feeling overwhelmed. Perhaps some summary is in order...

No single one of my classes are particularly bad (although one comes close), but this is definitely my hardest semester to date. Most of my classes are moderately difficult, moreso than in the past because there's a lot more information to memorize verbatim and a lot more work to do outside of the class than the "here's what you need to regurgitate on the next test" that we've grown accustomed to over the last three years. I have two bad points in my schedule, but otherwise it's ok for the most part. The first is that I have the 727 Sim (moved up to the much-nicer -200 this year, so that's a plus) at 7:30 on Monday mornings, which history tells us is not a time where one is likely to find me with the alertness needed when something goes wrong. The second is that on Wednesday mornings, I have to get from the airport to the Electrical Engineering building in 10 minutes (a little over 2 miles by my estimates), so I've had to explain to my Accounting professor that I'm going to be a few minutes late that day because there's simply no way to make it on time.

That said, I do have one class that seems like it might be somewhat fun. The first clue of that was when the professor announced a specific half of the class had been flagged for extra security at the airport and asked us to figure out why (myself included). Turned out that she'd Googled all of us and decided who to flag based on the results (in my case, it was because she found my blog and from reading it discovered that I liked computers and when to the Middle East). Because the field of Aviation Security (the name of the class) is changing so rapidly, our 2004 textbook is pretty much outdated and we spend a lot of time in class discussing the issues involved, related current events (like the 10-year-old who announced he had a bomb on a United flight a couple days ago, I'd give you a link, but I can't find a good one), or watching the
Mythbusters clip on what would happen if someone fired a gun inside a pressurized airliner. So yeah, it seems like this is going to be my easiest class of the semester.

In other news, the Lappy's still in Kentucky waiting for parts (they replaced the motherboard and then discovered there was something wrong with the new one, so now they're waiting for yet another one to come). We discovered it wasn't the processor that was defective on the Compy after all, Newegg actually sent me two defective motherboards in a row. I just got the third one a couple of days ago and it seems to be working ok so far. By tomorrow morning I should be able to say with confidence that it isn't defective in the same way as the other two (although it does have one little oddity of its own, but not something of any significance). Because of how long the overclocking process will take once I determine I have a good motherboard (and installing/configuring my software), I think it's going to still be a couple of weeks before the Compy is fully operational. Thankfully, Adam and Eddie have been very generous in letting me use their computers when they're not on them, so I'm not completely cut off.

Drama seems to be in ample supply around here, and we all know how I feel about drama (I loathe it). My memory could be bad, but it does seem like there's more of it this early on in the semester than there has been in previous years. Ugh...'nuff said.

On a better note, two old friends of mine are now Freshmen here! When I lived in Minnesota and went to Grace Church Roseville, my family was in the same cell group as Ben's family and we'd sometimes go biking together, so it's really cool to see him. The other one, Ruthie, is the younger sister of my friend Abe from my church in Wheaton and I frequently call her by the nickname "Pineapple" she earned in Junior High (she was obsessed with them for a while). So yeah, that's been fun to have them around, especially because Abe is the only other person here that I knew before Purdue.

On Saturday we kidnapped Amy Chen and took her to Steak 'N Shake for her birthday. Overall it wasn't an overly traumatic experience for her and we didn't even need to use the saran wrap we brought in case she put up a fight (although it would be kind of silly for her to resist when I storm into the room with 10 people behind me and announce "you're coming with us."). Apparently Dustin, Edgar, and Greg pulled a copycat kidnapping later that evening, but they didn't think to turn on the child locks (naturally, I did) and their quarry almost escaped because of it (I am the Master for a reason :) ).

I've recently started Kay Arthur's LORD, Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days (Precept Ministries, w00t!) as part of my quiet time and it has been my daily dose of sanity in all this business. It is basically a month-long study of the Lord's Prayer and it's really sweet. The last few days have been spent looking at how the Lord's Prayer (and others in scripture, featuring examples from Isaiah, Daniel, etc) start with worship and today's partially focused on just how much of a privilege it is for a believer to address God as "Father" when praying (which I knew before, but it helped me understand on a much deeper level). I'm probably going to suggest that the Cary Action Group do this book as our study for the semester (Adam and I have a very strong desire to make prayer a huge focus of the Quad this year, so it seems appropriate).

Anyways, it's time for class...