Puddlegum

My thoughts have been running all over the place of late. I am finally getting some distance from Love Triangle Shenanigans that consumed much of December and January. An over ambitious spring break trip is right around the corner. Graduation looms. Teach for America just shipped me a bunch of reading material. So I guess I am just going to talk about a bunch of random stuff.

I wonder if I am going to be any good at teaching. Here I am, 2 months from a BS in Mechanical Engineering and I am turning away from the field in which I have more than a year and half of work experience. Did you know that as a teacher for Teach for America, I still have to interview for a job with a school district? This information shocked me. What do I have to talk about? I don't know anything about teaching! Well, scratch that, I know how to be a sucky teacher. That's easy. Just stop caring about the students, speak unintelligible english, never be available outside of class and you pretty much have suckying down pat. But being good...well that's a different story. So maybe it will go like this:

Principal person: So why do you want to be a teacher?

Me: I think I can make a difference in teaching. Teaching allows me to serve a need through skills that I have.

Principal person: It says here that you have a BSME...why didn't you go into education?

Me: Well, uhh, because I thought the classes would suck?

So yea, I don't think that would go too well.


I was back in GR this past weekend, and so went to church at Mars Hill. It amazes me that Mars, and home in general, can be so filled with these emotional cues and yet be so seperate from anything I am going through now. I mean, I don't know anybody at Mars Hill anymore. Home is now a place my parents live. I don't even like my bed....yea. But what I really wanted to talk about was the sermon that Rob gave. He talked about the Lent season. Apparently, there are 'standard sermons' for each weekend in Lent. The first weekend is "The Temptation of Jesus".

In general, I have not really gotten 'into' Lent. I don't really see the point in giving up some thing for 40 days, and really that is about all I knew about it. This idea of a standard sermon, however, really struck me as meaningful. It was like I was suddenly part of this world wide community, all of whom are experiencing a similar thing, for similar reasons. It's kind of like when you take communion and you pause and think about how many millions of people have taken communion down through history and that at that moment, you are partnering in this recognition of the divinity of this man who came and loved so freely. There is something in that, being part of that group.

And this brings up all sorts of other questions. My parents don't really 'hang out' with other people all that often. How do they 'do life' with out a strong community around them? All people have something in common, in that we were all created by God, we are all human. How much similarity is enough for community? Why do we insist on seperating ourselves so much, into economic, gender, race, relgion, profession?

Finally, a piece of inspiration from the incomparable Catch-22:
"Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was."