the small things

I've been majorly stressed out the past week or so, and I keep having to remind myself to not growl at people. I don't remember ever having been this stressed out in my life before. And it's not going to end here -- as my professor has said a number of times, "I thought graduate school was hard. And then I got a job."

But a few things have been going well, too, and I wanted to celebrate them with you.

First, I got to hear "Hold Me Now," by the Thomspon Twins, on the radio today. It made me genuinely smile -- as opposed to all the fake smiles I keep forcing out of myself -- for the first time in I don't know how long. And it also made me realize one of the things I enjoy so much about 80's pop music: even when it's frustrated or unhappy, it's really not that frustrated or unhappy. Much as I enjoy the angsty music of the late 90's and 00's, it's refreshing to hear someone complain in song and still make it snappy.

Also, it's been raining a lot lately, and I've been loving it! I feel almost like Heavenly Father has ordered it just for me, knowing how it would ease the stress I'm already feeling too heavily. It makes homework so much nicer when I can do it sitting in a chair in front of my open window, listening to rain pattering down outside.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are the comments I received on my abstract for a paper in my Scholarly Writing class. All semester long we've been working on revising the same paper, one that we had already written before the class started. I am working on one about the characterization of King Alfred and King Ethelred in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which I wrote for my Old English class last semester. This Scholarly Writing class is one of the most useful and demanding classes I've ever had -- after about three weeks, I began to sneer at my paper rather than looking at it, feeling certain that I and my mediocre writing abilities would never be able to shape it into anything remotely resembling the level of writing I will need to build a career in academics. But when I took a look yesterday at my professor's comments on the abstract I turned in a week ago, she had written at the bottom that she thought I should send it in someplace. I had to re-read the sentence a couple of times before it sunk in: "She thinks this is good enough that I could actually send it in to a conference!" It gave me warm fuzzies all down my spine for a good 15 minutes!

The preacher lights the coals -- he knows I'm gonna stay. (12 points)

The last two quotes were from, first, Muse's "Apocalypse Please," and second, the Platters hit "Twilight Time." (Ha, ha! Get it? Twilight time!)