The Comfort of Familiarity, or How Sophomore Year is Easy

The difference between freshman and sophomore year is the familiarity with which each day passes.  Last year, fall semester was one of the most novel, most empowering and exhilarating experiences I could remember.  Every week of the semester I learned something new, did something different, participated in an event that I'd never done before, or exercised a freedom I'd never before had.  I learned to schedule, to plan, to take charge of each minute of my life, responsible for the manner in which I spent it.  The experience was so novel, so unique, that so often I found myself pouring my overwhelmed thoughts to a blog post, to a journal entry, to my mom, just to be able to synthesize and evaluate it, to take it to heart and to apply it the next time.

This year, on the other hand, is solid and familiar and easy.  Living in a dorm, walking across campus to class, scheduling out homework times, meeting up with groups for projects, studying for tests...  I've done it all before.  It's like reliving freshman year with all the knowledge and experience of having completed it already; only my classes are harder.  There was nothing baffling at ROTC, nothing new in the dorms.  It's been easy and repetitive- little wonder I've had little need to journal!  My life has taken on order and regularity.  I know what I do each day of the week, what I have time to add and what I can afford to miss.  I know which afternoons I'm busy and which afternoons I'm free.

Monday is a busy day.  With hour-long squad meetings at 4 and work at the observatory at 7 until 11, there isn't time for much more than a couple hours of homework.  Tuesdays too are busy- ROTC lab lasting from 2 to 4 and with ROTC class going from 4:30 to 6, the remainder of my evening goes into finishing the Engineering homework due each week on Wednesday morning.  Wednesdays are my sigh of relief day.  At long last I've reached the hump in the week, and I've a day on which my responsiblilites end at noon. I can go to the gym, get ahead on homework, get off-campus chores done, or kick my feet up and relax a bit.  Thursdays are my enigma day- they never feel busy until evening rolls around and I realize I've been busy all day.  With 2 labs, I spend most of the day beneath the fluorescent lights of a classroom, and spend my evenings perfecting the math homework always due bright and early Friday morning.

Unlike last year, however, my weekends now are often filled with activity.  Last year, I worked studiously Saturday, after spending most of the morning in a deep, weekend sleep, on hours' worth of homework saved explicitly for those empty weekend days.  And then Sunday, after church, I'd drive down the street to the wonderful, two-story Barnes and Nobel and indulge in multiple happy hours sitting on the hard floor with my back pressed against the bookshelves and my feet tucked out of the way of the occasional passerby, reading the first few chapters of book after book, creating long mental lists for myself to someday read in their entirety.  This year, however, I don't do homework on the weekends.  This year, a significant portion of my weekends are spent in Chicago, where I get to spend two smiling days with my wonderful boyfriend Cody after a fortnight or so of text messages, phone calls, and stunningly horrible-quality Skype conversations in which often both picture and voice pixellate and distort so as to be unrecognizable.  Instead, we get a special 48 hours or so together, in the flesh, face to face, though not quite eye to eye as his chin can rest on my head.  It's been almost a year since we met, last Thanksgiving, when I spent the holiday far from home at a friend's house in Chicago.  Almost 12 months and countless text messages later, we can finally watch Fight Club together again, the movie which brought us together, henceforth our Thanksgiving tradition.  Yes, I'm very much looking forward to this Thanksgiving.  In the meantime, I've another week and a half of following my schedule, of filling my social life into the patterned skeleton of scheduling I've developed for myself this sophomore year, of PT and lab, of classes and homework, of gyms and laundry, of work and of play.  And afterwards, a mere two weeks until my third round of college finals, my third week of exams, and my second December as a college student.  Yes, sophomore year is not too hard at all.

Four Months Pass Once More

It's August now, and time still passes as indifferently as before.  I still look back and wonder where the time has gone, wonder how I managed to fit so much life into a time that passed in almost the blink of the eye of hindsight.  From December to April I looked back on four quickly passing months of my second semester of college.  And now I look back on four quickly passing months of my first summer break of college.  What have I done in this time?  I've been to three different countries, entertained two sets of friends, and moved once.  And now, with only two weeks until the start of a new school year, I can look back on it as more or less complete.

I didn't know, until two days out, whether I would even be traveling with the Army this summer.  After finding out in June that I would likely NOT be going to Angola as I'd assumed since winter of last year, I spent weeks wondering just what my fate would in fact be.  As it turns out, I was fated to go to Romania.  I spent just under a month living in Romania with twelve other cadets and our two cadre officers.  During the week we stayed at a hotel in a city called Buzau teaching English to Romanian paratroopers and special forces soldiers.  On the weekends, we were able to make ventures beyond the city limits of Buzau, spending a few nights in Bucharest, a night in Brasov near one of the so-called "Dracula's Castles" and a few nights in Constanta, a beach city on the shores of the Black Sea.  The experience was not so kind to me at the time as I had hoped it would be.  I had a crash course on Army travel, and learned a lot about what I don't like about soldiers- the stereotypical crude male.  But, tempered by the soft brush of memory, the experience has become much prettier as the little annoyances fade into oblivion and the better memories of travel and companionship and new experiences take the fore.

I flew back to Florida briefly for a quick stop at the old house, where Galen met me.  Shortly thereafter, the two of us flew out to San Diego to meet up with the rest of the family for our every-so-often Tolsma family reunion.  We spent the weekend in a nice hotel seeing aunts, uncles, and cousins we hadn't seen in months to years.  It would have been a very pleasant experience had it not be for the robbery.  My computer, my mom's computer, and most of the other small electronics in the room, were stolen from my mom's and my hotel room the last night at the resort.  Our wallets, with all our IDs, were stolen with only a day to spare before our flight out to Korea.  It was a bit of a nuisance procuring new military IDs, and the information lost on my computer particularly will never, ever be recovered.  But we've learned to move on, to learn from the experience, and to trust in God's providence to get us through the experience.

Living in Korea is going to be a different experience than anywhere we've ever lived, and this move has proved different from any move this family has ever gone through.  For me in particular, this move is represents the first move in which I am uninvolved, the first move where I don't feel as though the destination is "home."  These few weeks have been a limbo phase for all of us.  Waiting for our household goods, waiting for our car, it's hard for my parents and brothers to make this house home so far.  And waiting for college, it's hard to me to be patient to get back to the life that I'm beginning to make for myself, to friends and classes, dorm rooms and cafeteria food, my wonderful boyfriend and the Army.  Good things and bad, I'm looking forward to it all and am ready to get back to my life again, to unpack my dorm room, to get myself settled, and to drive my loyal PT Cruiser again.  Four months down, I've made it to August.  Where has the time gone?

Leaving Paradise?

Who wants to leave paradise?  This has been a fantastic summer thus far, and I'm so happy with my time since school got out.  I've loved being home with my family, loved having friends and family visit.  I went on my first cruise and toured an underwater cave in Cozumel, Mexico.  I watched my brother graduate high school.  I lay on the beach and soaked up the sun.

On Wednesday, I was finally able to bring Cody home to meet my parents, and to show him where I live and the beautiful South I love so much.  I've enjoyed having him here with me so much, these past few days, it's really made me happy.  Happier than even this awesome summer had already made me.  I'm so glad he was able to come down, so glad to have him here with me, so glad to spend eleven days with him, day after day after day.  Thank you for coming, Cody.

I do wish I had more confidence in the rest of the summer, however.  I've yet to find out from the Army if I'm going anywhere this summer, or when or where that might be, exactly.  And I was supposed to leave in less than 10 days...  The stress of uncertainty is too much, so I've been ignoring it now pretty entirely.  I hope it all works out...  The stress of moving to Korea is less my burden to bear than it is my parents' though.  I'm not really moving, I'm just visiting.  But for their sakes, I pray for a safe move, that all the details fall smoothly into place, and that they like their home in Korea.  And I pray too that Galen find college to be all he'd hoped and more, that he comes to really enjoy his time at Calvin and that he does well.  Gah, the future.... I don't want to think about it when the present is so perfect.

Homecoming

I had a final during the last time slot of the last day of testing.  It was my hardest of the semester, and studying for it proved more difficult than I had anticipated.  Who wants to study when all around you happy students pack to go home with smiles of excitement and relief, celebrating the completion of their first year of college, or the half-way milestone.  I sat in my more-or-less empty room, surrounded by the few things I'd packed into the one suitcase to go home, and read laboriously over pages and pages of engineering notes.  The exam itself was comparable to a lobotomy; my eyes throbbed and my head ached from the glare of the fluorescent lights on white paper and the strain of three hours of testing.  But then it was all over.  My summer could begin.

I spent the first four days of my summer vacation in the Chicago suburbs with my boyfriend and his family.  It was such a relief to relax together, both finished with school and preparing for our various summer adventures.  But for those few days, we had no stress, no commitments, no worries.  It was summer and we were together.

Coming home was also nice, in it's own way.  The joy of family, the comfort of home, the familiarity of an old routine...  Due to a mix of guests, friends and family, the routine was not long lived, but it was comforting while it lasted.

My brother graduated from high school yesterday.  Which marks a year since I did the same.  I'm so proud of him, graduating magna cum laude, and so happy he had friends to celebrate the event with afterwards.  I wish him all the best making such friends next year at Calvin, and I hope he has as good a freshman year there as I did, full of adventure and trial and reward and success and failure and unexpected turns of events that keep him on his toes.  Graduation is an exciting time, and freshman year goes by so quickly.  With all the new experience to learn, all the new things to do, it's over before it really begins.  I hope he's ready for it.

A cog was thrown in my own summer plans when the Army trip to Angola fell through.  With less than a month to go until the big trip was supposed to occur, I got an email saying the trip was a no-go.  Talk is in the air of a trip to Romania instead, but the potential still exists for no trip at all.  And there's nothing I can do but sit and wait and wonder, and twiddle my thumbs aimlessly and hem and haw and do my best to plan one way or another.  If I go, will the dates be changed?  And how will that affect the precise plans my mom has spent hours formulating for the reunion in San Diego and the move to Korea?  If I stay, do I get any compensation for my time and effort?  Where will I go?  Will I need shots?  A visa?  More paperwork?  If I stay, can I make plans for the suddenly open weeks, or will it be too late?  Bah, I hate not knowing the answer, with the time so close.  Lessons in patience, in trust, and in the way the Army works.

The summer is almost 1/3 of the way over, and I don't even know what the next 2/3 will look like.  But no matter what happens in the intervening months, whether perfect or a mess, I look forward at the end of August to returning to Grand Rapids, moving Galen into his dorm room, and reuniting with Cody before my own third semester of college begins.  I can't wait to see what the next few months, and this next year, have in store.

Time Passes Indifferently

Christmas was 4 months ago now.  On Christmas I sat in my Florida paradise and looked forward to the next half of my freshman year.  There was so much more life to be lived, so many more opportunities to explore, experiences to have, at Calvin College in the coming semester.  My first January interim, the trials of a Michigan winter, beginning a new round of classes, with all the work and learning that implied, friends to grow closer to, a room to myself, holidays and work days, spring break and long weeks with no break at all.  April seemed such a long way off, separated from the present by so many hours, so many experiences, so many plans.  And looking back, I am once more struck by the ease with which time passes.  All the things I looked forward to and all the things I dreaded, all have now passed into mere memory.  Some of those memories are pleasant: my first date with my boyfriend, Interim break, the first day of spring classes, spring break in Florida, days off at Easter.  Some of these memories less so: the spring FTX, interim finals, snow storms, long weeks of trudging through classes, early morning PT.  From where I sit now, the end of Freshman year is so close.  The last week of ROTC is next week, classes wrap up in a month, finals are over in just a week more.  I have a summer of fun and adventure.  A cruise, a trip to Angola, a family reunion, moving to Korea.  Friends visiting in May, boyfriend visiting in June.  Weeks in the sun and weeks in uniform.  And then a flight back to Grand Rapids in August with my brother, to start the cycle all over again.  And when August rolls around, in another 4 months, that is, I'm sure I'll be looking back at this very blog post wondering what happened to all that time.  Because those four months will pass just as quickly as these have, and I'll be sitting at the end thinking, "well, it's all over now.  Where has the time gone?"