School ≠ Sleep

If there were ever two more contradictory entities in life for me these past two weeks, they were midterms and sleep. I don't think I have ever stayed up as late as I have consecutively these weeks than ever before; working on everything from English papers to Sociology tests. Please don't get me wrong, I'm more of a night owl myself, but studying and writing papers in the early hours of the morning isn't my idea of a great time...unless of course you add some friends and extensive amounts of coffee, then it can become hilarious. The point however, I have been exhausted these past few weeks.

 Consequently, this has affected my internship at church. The phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" has such a new meaning to me now, because my time spent at church was me scrambling to get things done. Every Wednesday night we have the high school get together for youth group: we have some games, have a talk, and divide them into groups to discuss it. My job is to prepare the church before they get there, create the games, provide a talk if necessary, and kick them all out when we are done. (There is more detail that goes into each activity, I'm just not avid about writing right now, go figure.)

The problems started with our Sam's card not working, preventing me from buying candy and soda for that night. Not a big deal, these kids really don't need MORE sugar. It just so happened, though, that this past Wednesday was my night to give a talk... and I hadn't prepared yet. So from 3 til 6:30, right before youth group starts, I wrote out my talk. But I forgot about the game! Thankfully there are some awesome friends of mine who love games enough to start them in times of crisis, so they saved me and kept the kids engaged until I had to give my talk. Surprisingly it went great! Although, I probably shouldn't be surprised it went well if I believe in a God who can overcome anything, even something as minute as a talk to high school kids. I received some nice compliments on keeping them engaged and presenting a lot of good issues, so I was excited, and relieved!

The rest of the week I found myself dozing off in classes, both in school and at one of my internship classes at church, so it wasn't only Wednesday night that I felt repercussions of all of my lack of sleep and piles of work. Thankfully I completed all of my assignments, and I have to say, I don't think I did too bad on them either. My cart may be way in front of my horse in saying that, because we haven't got our grade on our English papers yet, so if you are reading this Professor Williams, have some grace... (Insert smiley face here.)

Now I imagine some of you out there are probably saying, "That's what you get for allowing work to pile up on you." I have to agree, life gives plenty of chances for letting work slide, and offers great, feeble shelving units to pile more and more hefty activities onto. These past few weeks have just been one of those life moments where work outweighed the amount of time I had. In hindsight, I need to prepare in advance if I know there are going to be conflicting projects. I must say, though, I was quite productive; procrastination was not even in existence!

That's been my past few weeks; it's been hectic for sure, but despite the work load it has productive. I'll leave you with a quote from an inspirational figure, Mr. Berra: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

God bless!