meals and a midterm

An incredibly boring post.

This morning I ate breakfast in my room. My father had given me a Krispy Kreme donut (he brought back a dozen from the donut shop in OKC during my siblings' basketball tournament), and I’d saved it for today. The sugar melted in my mouth, and the gooey dough oozed over my tongue. At eight-thirty, I padded down the hall to Jenny-and-Tara’s room. Tara and I studied together for Romantic British Literature—mostly Wordsworth, especially “Peter Bell” and the Lucy poems. We walked to RBL together and arrived as Dr. de A was handing out the exam. I sat in a chair on the edge of the room and wrote in my bluebook, balancing it on my notebook on one knee. I don’t think I did very well. The essays fell flat somehow—I knew what I needed to know (for the most part), but I couldn’t figure out how to write eloquently. One of the essays didn’t have a proper conclusion. To make matters worse, I left before the full time was up instead of staying until the professor told us to leave. So I didn't even take advantage of all the time to go back and finish the conclusion and polish the essays. That makes it worse—knowing that I could've done better, but didn't.

After the midterm, I hurried to the cafeteria to pick up lunch. The cafeteria was dreadfully crowded: they’d had a fire alarm, and the building had had to be evacuated. In the end, I managed to grab a sandwich and dash over to First Seminar. In FS today, Dr. T assigned us to bring flashlights, matches, and cigarette lighters. We spent the whole class period thinking of weird things to do with them—such as creating a religion that was based on fire (the team I was on made up a religion in which all the "true believers" used matches or cigarette lighters, and everyone who used electricity (lightbulbs and flashlights) were heretics), complete with sacred rites that we were supposed to come up with in class (thankfully the team I was on made up a rite that couldn't be done in class!). The other team made up a religion that consisted of darkness: fire was bad, and their goddess was Nox. Their initiation rite was to douse matches in a bucket of water. Sounded like a pretty dismal religion to me. The religion my team made up was fairly primitive—I contributed snatches of the Celtic fire-worshipping religion that I’d picked up from Sutcliff (the yearly bonfire, from Samhain, etc.). It was all rather ridiculous. The professor also assigned us to come up with some way to communicate with our flashlights as a group—a “symphony of light”, he called it. My group lined up. One person would stand by the wall as leader and shine his flashlight in random patterns on the floor. The first person in line would follow the leader’s flashlight beam till it reached the wall. One of the boys jumped jerkily after Rachel’s flashlight like a big cricket. Kathryn, who was in our group, hopped delicately from spot to spot. After FS, I practiced my flute.

On my way back to my room, I stopped in at Jenny-and-Tara’s room to ask Tara how the exam had gone. She said she hadn’t budgeted her time very well: she was still working on her last essay when people were leaving. “How many essays did you write?” I asked in wonder. “Three,” she replied. “What?! I thought we were only supposed to write on two of the three questions!” I said. Tara pulled out the assignment page. “Oh. You’re right. We were.” She sighed. “Well, I think it’ll be ok. Maybe Dr. de A will just count the first two.” Jenny bounced in. “What’re you talking about?” she asked. “On the RBL midterm today, we were supposed to write on two questions, and I wrote on three instead,” Tara explained. “Overachiever,” Jenny growled jokingly.

In my room I wrote e-mails and cleaned up. Dark clouds began to roll up from the southwest, and the sun set through a crimson crack. As I walked to the cafeteria for supper, a pair of twelve-year-old girls perched on the cafeteria porch squealed, “Buy Girl Scout cookies!” Inside the building, a row of Girl Scouts sat outside the cafeteria, twittering noisily, like sparrows, with boxes of cookies lined up in front of them. Rachel and I ate supper together. We laughed about Honors papers. Before supper I’d spent a little time looking over Dr. A’s comments on my paper about the writers’ community. I was a little crestfallen: she’d pointed out the tension between individual, creative expression (i.e., writers having to drop everything in order to set down a poem when “the Muse” visits) and group schedule. I suspect that part of it is due to difference in our writing styles: she seems to be much more spontaneous, writing poetry in the middle of the night or whenever the inspiration takes her, while I, on the other hand, often just jot down a few notes and piece the poem together at a later, more convenient time. My style would fit into a schedule; hers would not. Rachel said that she’s been having difficulty thinking through all the “facets” of her paper. “Maybe your brain is so tired from last semester that it’s refusing to consider all the facets again!” I joked. We both laughed, remembering Dr. G’s insistence that we examine all the facets of a question in our papers.

After supper, I opened my mailbox (wonder of wonders!) and found three “World” magazines in it. I was occupied reading the earliest of them (they dated from the last week of February), when A.C. knocked on my door. She glanced skeptically at the magazine, then asked me to rub her back. I perched on a cushion she brought, on her haunches as she lay stretched on the floor, and massaged her back. She walked part of the way to the chapel with me when I went out to RUF. After she turned back with one of her friends, I caught up with Anne, who was walking slowly, savoring the warm evening. The wind seethed in the bare sycamore and sweetgum trees, but the air was damp. Clouds scudded past overhead, their underbellies tinted pink, as though their grey flanks had been muddied by the city lights. Anne and I stood on the chapel steps, relishing the evening, until Jenny joined us. We trooped up to the second-floor RUF meeting room, and as we arrived, I heard a siren going off in the building. “What’s that?” someone asked, startled. “It’s the severe weather alarm. There’s a storm coming,” Esther replied. Anne and Jenny explained Springfest to Rachel and me (Rachel’s church’s Bible study was canceled tonight). Springfest is “a week of parties”, Jenny said, which happens after spring break. Kathryn, Rachel, and I giggled about FS together.

During RUF, Mr. K preached about Isaiah 36-37, and how we should trust God because He shows His love for us, and how God uses our prayers as a means to accomplish His purposes. After RUF, I chatted with Mandi about her siblings’ school (she's college-aged but lives at home and teaches her little siblings), with Jessica and Kathryn about classes, and with Jenna about the Bible study supper tomorrow night (girls’ and boys’ Bible studies are meeting at Jenna’s house for a meal). As I returned to my room around nine-thirty, I sniffed the moist air. It smelled faintly smoky. Above, the moon rode clear in the blank sky, with stars sparkling around it like faint ripples—as though the moon was a stone dropped into a black pool. No storm after all. No rain. In my room, I skimmed “World”, showered, and now may go to bed. I can hear bursts of laughter and giggles from a room downstairs, and the thumps, groans, and roars of a movie. Last night, the movie was so loud that it sounded like thunder. Cars swish past outside, and the wind tugs at the casement.