It's decided.

I picked up the program change form today... soon I will be Regent's newest MDiv student!

Let the adventures begin...

Not-so-reading week

Hey everyone, sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching and journaling in the last couple of weeks, and it has sapped all of my writing strength. I haven’t even written any poems in the last little while, which is rather scary, because I have a project to turn in about a month from now, and only a couple of poems to my name… it’s time to downsize to haiku…

Danice and I had an excellent time with the MRIs. We are happy to report that we do, in fact, have brains, and we even got to take home a CD full of pictures of our brains to prove it. I tried my hardest to post one on this blog, but you need a special program to show them. So you’ll just have to come visit me, and I’ll show you my pictures. The best part was that we got to do Sudoku during the MRI, while having our brains scanned! That was the decision-making component. Good thing I had all the Sudoku practice during my New Testament survey class last semester…thanks to mom for clipping them out of the Star Phoenix and mailing them to me.

Lots of firsts for me over the last week, which was reading week, but didn’t contain very much reading. It was my first time getting ashes on my forehead for Ash Wednesday. I went snowshoeing for the first time, and I was a natural. I think it’s because I’m so experienced with snow, even though I’m not very experienced with shoes. I also had a first-time experience catering for my church retreat. I say catering, but what I mean is making 25 bag lunches. I discovered that most people don’t really care about food. They care about coffee. And having it ready when they arrive. And they care quite a bit about the coffee in the carafe labeled “decaf” actually being decaf coffee. Oops. They gave me some grace, because I’m not a coffee drinker, and I don’t know the grave importance of these issues.

Also, for the first time, I didn’t come close to fainting when I had blood drawn. I have a fairly severe needle phobia that usually sends my body into shut-down mode – ringing in my ears, eyes blacking out, muscles going weak, a cold sweat all over – everything you see in the movies and laugh at. It’s an irrational fear, as irrational as Danice’s fear of squirrels and mold, and, horror of horrors, moldy squirrels. I have had little success telling myself that it won’t hurt – because it’s not the pain I fear – I have no idea what part of it scares me. It’s an immediate bodily response. This has accounted for some of the most embarrassing experiences of my life, especially several years ago, in my only case of “vicarious” needle phobia, when I nearly fainted watching the removal of my sister Sarah’s IV. She was quite upset when the nurses ignored her and rushed to my aid, helping me into the wheelchair reserved for her… But this week my blood test went fine, despite the fact that the previous evening, I read on the internet that needle / blood phobia (more specifically, vasovagal syncope) is one of the only phobias that can kill you, since it makes the blood from your brain and heart rush to your legs and other big muscles, and can cause cardiac arrest. Not the best choice of pre-blood test reading material. Nevertheless, I made it through. Hopefully it will help the doctor figure out what’s wrong with my upper GI tract.

This whole vocation discernment process has consumed much of my thought this week… I could hardly focus on anything else, which made my school reading a chore. I’ve been busy exploring my motives and gifts, asking the people closest to me to pray for me and help me understand who I am, and spending time with God, sometimes yelling at him and sometimes just straining to listen. I’ve been reading “call” stories in the Bible – Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Saul, David… that has been eye-opening. It’s been a time of vulnerability for me. I’ve fluctuated between the extremes of thinking I’m very “cut out” for ministry, that I would be very effective and wonderful and inspirational – to thinking I’m a mess, and a foolish, silly, sinful, confused little person who couldn’t possibly offer any deepened understanding of God to anyone – and I’m landing somewhere in the middle, which I think is ok. I think if God leads me forward in this, I will need simultaneous reminders of my giftedness and my foolishness to keep me humble and sane.

The most frustrating part is knowing that I’m the only one who can put all the pieces of me together. The people I love offer me different views of myself, their perceptions of me and my abilities and passions, but I’m the one with the most angles on myself. I’m the one who experienced that strange sudden mind conversion that is starting to seem to me like a call, because of how irrational and unprecedented it was. And it’s frustrating not being able to prove it, or explain it completely. But of course, I have the Holy Spirit to help me, and he is not to be underestimated. And I think that slowly and fumblingly, I’m learning to listen, and seeing broader ways God wants to shape me, things he wants to deal with in my life whichever direction I choose. This excites me and gives me hope in the midst of the confusion.

Please keep praying for me, if you think of it.

A new poem for you

Snowfall, Nov. 27th 2006

Unsummoned,

the first wet flakes

drifted lazily through streetlight glow,

finding their rest on green hedges,

apparently oblivious to the

incongruity.

They whispered

in their descent: we are manna,

crumbs for starved souls;

and so they tugged at our threads and

drew us speechless from our homes

to be filled.

We forgot the cold,

swept out into a pale sea of grace.

The sky wrapped us gently in orange,

as the moonlight pooled

in our midnight angels of snow

and sand.

Rapt in unearthly glory,

we reluctantly returned inside; we nestled

‘round the extra log on the fire; the

final drops of some icy spell melted down

our faces, and we succumbed to

warm dreams,

while just beyond

the frostbitten panes, it fell

and mercilessly it fell

until the trees cried out

under the weight of God’s terrible beauty

and snapped.

Crashes, MRIs and Mastering Divinity

I took this picture this afternoon… I assume you heard about the plane crash on the beach in Vancouver? Just kidding. This is actually the set of a movie being filmed here – they were filming on a street three blocks from my house all last week, and then they moved to this elaborate plane wreck set. It’s a movie called “Passengers,” starring Anne Hathaway as a grief counselor for the survivors of this crash. Somehow, I can’t really picture Anne Hathaway as a grief counselor, but maybe it’s just me and my memories of “Ella Enchanted” and “Princess Diaries.” Granted, I didn’t see her more serious role in “Brokeback.” Go see the movie in 2008 to see if she pulls it off.

So next week Danice and I are both going to get our brains checked out. Someone found out that we were serious mental cases and ordered MRIs for both of us. Aha, kidding again. We volunteered for MRIs. One of the perks of this UBC careers website is that all of the UBC researchers use it to find research subjects. So Danice and I will be participating in a study that traces neural pathways in decision-making. I think having an MRI sounds fascinating. (Maybe I could convince them to take a look at my stomach after finishing with my brain, and they could tell me what the heck is wrong down there.) Anyway, we’ll get a whopping $20 each. We’re also signed up for a behavioral psychology study ambiguously entitled “Negotiations” with no further description. I hope it’s not like those crazy behavioral studies I learned about in school, where every time you made a mistake in the game they set up, they pretended to give someone else an electric shock. I’d like to think that’s illegal by now. Although it would be very Alias-ish if that did happen. All things considered, what a great way to make a very small amount of money! I will have to let you know how our experiences as lab rats turn out.

This has been a weekend to remember. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Valentasia at Danice’s old church. This is a tradition for them, and I believe every other church should follow suit: all of the men in the church get together and prepare a fabulous breakfast for all the women in the church, and they dress up and serve them and play live romantic music… yep, it’s the best thing ever. And then I went to Regent for the annual “Taste of the World” event (or, as Danice calls it, “Eat the World”). It’s a huge potluck where all the students bring food from their home countries. You can skip the Canadian and American tables… it’s the Indian, European, Asian, Australian, African and South American tables you really want to hit up. Mmmmmm. Imagine a plate full of samosas, curry, sugar cane, trifle, tilapia, perogies, vegemite and haggis… But what do you bring to represent Canada? It’s hard. As one Canadian student wryly implied in his contribution of take-out Chinese to the Canadian table, we do tend to eat other countries’ food. Really, all I could think of bringing was maple syrup, nanaimo bars, Timbits, bannock, or French Canadian food. So Danice and I decided to get creative and bring Moose Droppings. Don’t ask. (But we have leftovers, if you’d like some.)


I’ve had kind of a surreal weekend in other ways… yesterday, Danice and I repeated a well-worn conversation where she asks why I’m not in the MDiv program and I rattle off my list of reasons. Except this time, I didn’t convince myself. In fact, for the first time, I started imagining myself involved in ministry as a career in ways I’d never seriously considered before, and it was both scary and exciting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It wouldn’t necessarily mean becoming a pastor, but it would mean focusing on careers that are based around a church or para-church setting (eg. missions, camp ministry, outdoor stuff…), since not a lot of “secular” companies care if you have a Master of Divinity. This would be a major shift from where I’ve been thinking of heading with my MCS degree, which was a career in the marketplace, most likely biology, after possibly doing a Masters in Biology. Really, in both scenarios I’d be working for God, I’d be “ministering,” but in very different settings and with a different modus operandi.

It would be hard to go into all the reasons I’m considering this switch, because the dust has far from settled in the chaos that is my mind. Mostly I realized that I’ve been hiding from myself. I’m quite crafty that way. Because I haven’t wanted to do what was expected for a pastor’s kid, because I wanted to be cool and “minister in the secular world” for the principle of the thing, I’ve been stopping my ears to what people have tried to suggest, and closing my eyes to some things that are staring me in the face. I’ve learned a lot about myself since arriving here, and I’ve also seen new applications for skills and passions that I thought were only useful or relevant to biology field work. In fact, while I’m sure I could find a fulfilling career in biology, I’m having more trouble thinking of career paths that excite me in that field than in the ministry field. The decision is really about the degree… I know that I could minister with an MCS degree, but the classes I’d get to take in the MDiv program would give me a more well-rounded preparation for this kind of work, and the program is excellent at Regent, and all of the classes I’ve taken so far would transfer over… I’d just have to stay an extra year.

Anyway, the fact that I can even picture myself as a pastor, of all things, an idea which I had previously shunned from my mind, is evidence that there are changes happening in me… I would appreciate your prayers and any input you may have (encouragement, discouragement…), whether by comments or by an e-mail, especially if you’re someone who knows me well or who has been suggesting this course of action all along! I’m starting to understand what a communal thing this process of vocational discernment is, and I would value anything you offer me.

(Do I look like I need discernment?)

(By the way, this is my 100th blog post. Yay bethblogever!)

I'm on TV! Sort of.

Hey everybody! I'm feeling a little better today. I just wanted to let you know that there's a TV program that interviewed Joyce Heron, the director at Jacob's Well, where I volunteer every Friday. If you're interested in what goes on there, and the values behind this unique place, this is a great introduction. The show is called "Listen Up" - it's some sort of Christian news program that airs Sunday mornings, when all of the Christians are at church. Ha. Anyway, if you skip to about minute 15:00 you'll see the part about Jacob's Well. I was actually there the day they filmed it, so you might see me briefly in the background, putting dishes away, if you look closely. You can find a link to watch the episode by clicking this.

Enjoy!

Why you should learn the morse code and avoid eating only chocolate muffins for supper

Thanks to those who commented on the poem – it’s still a work in progress, but I’m going to submit it. I’ve also recently decided to write a poem every Sunday (every Sabbath) in the tradition of Wendell Berry, thanks to a suggestion by Denice Bezoplenko (I had been wondering why most of his poems had “Sabbath” in their title…). I’ve been learning about the more “positive” side of Sabbath-keeping, that is, focusing on it as a day of celebration and rest instead of just a day to stop working. I think that practicing being creative will be a wonderful Sabbath practice for me, especially if I can combine it with walking and being observant. I may use some of the ideas I come up with in my Sabbath poems to expand and edit more thoroughly during the week, and submit them as my final project in my Christian Imagination class. I’ll see how it goes.

Life this week… I haven’t felt very productive. I’ve been sick to my stomach for half of the week, and it’s persisting today. I don’t really know what the issue is. The first day, I thought it had something to do with the previous day’s meals of McDonalds for lunch and double chocolate muffin mix pancakes for supper. However I don’t think the effects of those poor dietary choices would last 4 days. Also, I stayed up all night on Friday, praying for the world. Regent has an annual Pray for the World All-Nighter. It was excellent, but I don’t think it helped my health to disrupt my sleep patterns to that extent. This morning at church I was feeling quite impatient and short-tempered. Not very Christianly of me.

As for the work situation, the typist-for-Jewish-string-theorist thing really didn’t work out…funny story. I called him, and he wanted to meet at The Bay, at Customer Service. Hmm. Assuming his office must be located above the Bay, I met him there. He was an old man wearing a dirty suit and an alligator-skin cowboy hat. I soon discovered that he was not Prof. E. Rabinovici, string theorist, but Prof. M. Rabinovici, former business professor, just how “former” I don’t know. He took me to a seedy internet café so I could show him my skills by using Microsoft Word to try to exactly reproduce text fonts and layouts from cover pages from his books (no clue what this accomplished). He was basically one of the most rude and racist people I’ve met, ordering me around and smirking at me. Needless to say, I declined the job and hoped never to see him again. I have since applied at the coffee shop and a temp agency, and I have yet to hear anything. But it’s good, I see God working through it all. He’s giving me humility and the grace to accept when people want to help me. My landlords heard about my trouble, and very graciously gave me back my damage deposit until I can find a job. And people have been treating me to meals and inviting me over… it’s a good learning experience, being on the receiving end of grace and generosity.

So I’m learning the morse code. Yes, that’s right, the morse code. Why, you ask? To communicate with my roommates, who are also learning it, of course! At any given moment, you can hear beeping dits and dahs coming from our laptops. We’ve become rather obsessed with the TV show Alias, I’m afraid. We have watched two wonderful seasons of it together on DVD. (Oh, you crafty DVD box sets! How you lure us in! How easy it is to watch two, three, four episodes…no commercials…it’s only 40 minutes long…) This inundation of spy and CIA material has led us to believe that the morse code may one day come in handy. For example, if a bunch of spies infiltrate our basement suite, we will simply tap the morse code on the walls of each other’s bedrooms to warn one another. Or if one of us is in jail and the rest of us visit but we’re being videotaped and we can’t say anything that will give our secret jailbreak plans away, we will engage in small talk while tapping our real message in morse code on our arms, like Sydney Bristow. Brilliant. I’m up to 8 letters. (It’s actually really fun, and I think it’s improving my concentration skills! Watch me concentrate now.)

Well, Kate tagged me and now I have to write six weird things about me (man, I wished I’d saved the morse code thing…).

Here are the rules:
Each player of this game starts with the 'six weird things about me' blog post. People who get tagged need to write their own six weird things post and state the rules clearly. At the end of the post, tag six more people and don’t forget to leave a comment on their blog to tell them they have been tagged and tell them to read your blog.

1. When I was biking to school in the Saskatoon winter, I made wristwarmers for myself out of the elastic-y parts of old socks. I still wear them whenever I’m cold.
2. One of my eyes sees things in a more bluish tone, and the other one sees things in a more pinkish tone. I assumed everyone’s eyes were like this until I asked my optometrist what caused this fact of life, and she said, “Huh?”
3. I am generally afraid of garden gnomes and mannequins (I believe I developed the latter fear on childhood trips to the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon).
4. I hold my pencil all wrong. This has been a huge area of emotional bondage for me, ever since several elementary school teachers tried to put triangular rubber things on my pencils to “correct” my grip. Just this Christmas, Abbey (another teacher) informed me that my grip was one of the three “acceptable” or “functional” grips according to teachers today, and brought much healing into my life.
5. I have blond hair under my red hair, yet I have never dyed my hair. And I have one dimple. But you probably knew that.
6. I really like this picture I took, even though it's of a dead seagull. I'm not sure why. It makes me think existential thoughts and reminds me of Romeo and Juliet, or some other great tragedy. Now that's weird.

Ok. I tag Christine, Rachel, Tall Jordan, Rochelle, Evan and Andrea. Go to it!

My mother's rosary

elderly slow-lane ladies smile at her
in their usual saggy suits.
she savors it again-
eau de chlorine
with a quick wave to the lifeguard,
not even flinching,
she breaches the pool’s chilly skin

her toes taste the tile and grout
as she dons cap and goggles,
rinsing first to create a seal
pausing to gather resolve
maybe just 30 laps today
(it is, after all, early
and she didn’t sleep well)

then
much less ceremoniously
than Moses,
she parts the waters

hands carve liquid
sinuous curves learned ages ago
feet pound an amphibious pulse
elbow up head to the side inhale
awash in repetition

water spills and sprays, displaced,
twisting in smooth torpedoes
dashing over her every freckled facet
except her masked eyes
(wells of wisdom, brim-full)
though it tries
to cruise their creased corners,
etched by years of laughter

head down three strokes kick exhale
that is not what she is doing.
look again-
she is listening.

lap after lap
mile after mile
bead after bead
listening.
speaking.

and even now,
her underwater prayers
are keeping me afloat

happy belated birthday, mom
special thanks to Rachel for the photo (wish I had a swimming one)

I'd appreciate any feedback on this, any words you think I should change or things I should add/remove - I'm thinking of submitting it this week to a poetry collection at school.

The next best thing to living in communes

Do you hate materialism and consumerism? I know I do. If you’re like me, then listen up. There’s this great new website called LendList. A guy from my school designed it. The site lets you make a list of things you own that you wouldn't mind lending to people you already know, within a certain community (eg. Emmanuel Baptist Church or Regent College or your local birdwatching club). The site lets you search other group members' lists for things you might need, and makes it easy to see the shared resources of the group. The result: we share more, we become less attached to our material possessions (which aren’t really OURS to begin with, we’re just stewards of them), our possessions get more use, we save money and the environment, and we start to depend on other people and build more tightly-knit communities. I hereby challenge my friends and family to take this from Vancouver to Saskatoon and light the fire of lending across the country! Somebody needs to start an Emmanuel sharing group on Lendlist. Just go here: http://www.lendlist.org .

Thank you for your prayers about the whole needing-to-find-a-job thing. As it stands, I’m officially “on call” for a tutoring agency, awaiting new students. Obviously this is not going to be a reliable regular source of income for a while, so I’m looking for other things. The latest possibility (get this): typing out letters for a string theorist from Jerusalem – a professor at UBC. I have very few details about this position. I called him and said, “I’m calling about your job posting…” and he said “I need you! Can we meet tomorrow?” He knows nothing about me, but it is good to feel needed. It sounds like I don’t have very much competition for the position; nevertheless I plan to wow him with my knowledge of Hebrew and the string theory (ha) to “seal the deal”. Assuming I want to seal the deal when I actually learn about such minor employment details as, say, hours and salary. If it doesn’t work out, there’s always Grounds for Coffee. Keep praying!

I’m working on a poem right now. I’m getting pickier with myself so I’m going to start spending more time on revision and editing. I’ll post it on the blog, so check back in the next couple of days.

Image of God going broke

Hello all.

I finished the paper, although it involved some questionable sleep patterns, and I am still paying the consequences in my newfound difficulty waking up in the morning. But yay! It’s done. And I felt pretty good about it (the “picture on the puzzle box” achieved!), though, as I said in my last blog entry, this may not actually mean much in terms of quality.

Now that that’s over, I must say, I’m loving school. I loved school even today, though it was Monday, and I had an 8:00 AM class. I had Systematic Theology. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this class before the semester started; it conjured up ideas of serious information overload, a dry, boring progression through a series of things we think we understand but probably don’t. I mean, it’s the study of God. We’ve can’t really hope to systematize it. Anyway, as I said, I love it. Mostly because of my prof, John Stackhouse. He’s the wittiest, most hilarious, humblest and most humorously self-deprecating prof I’ve had, yet he’s really wise about everything theological, he explains it all clearly and answers questions brilliantly. He’s committed to making the class very practical, so we can actually discuss these issues with our friends, Christian and non-Christian. This morning we spent three hours on the phrase “Let us make mankind in our own image” from Genesis 1. This could initially sound like a nightmare, but in reality, it set my mind on fire (in a good way), as we debated whether or not there are Trinitarian implications, talked about the annoying generality or plasticity of the “image of God” concept today, and whether it’s more about “being” or “doing”. He made connections with bioethics, end times issues, and environmental issues along the way, each one leaving my mind reeling, trying to follow how these conclusions influenced my understanding of the rest of life (especially the biology part!). I never thought theology would be so thrilling. Maybe I’m just a big geek. Or Stackhouse is just that good. Check his blog out if you have time: http://stackblog.wordpress.com.


The biggest development in my life in the past week has been the sudden need for money. No, I’m not looking to make any major purchases, other than groceries. What happened was that I had a misunderstanding regarding a scholarship that I thought was renewable every semester, but is not, because I am an MCS student, not an MDiv student… which really makes me frustrated, but I’ll talk about that another time. What’s important now is that I need $1000 to pay for rent and groceries this semester, and a plane ticket home. This is (thank God) the first time I’ve had to trust God this way. And him and I have had some good conversations since the initial disturbing revelation; I’m feeling much better about where he might be leading me in all of this, especially if it involves working, which it most likely will, unless an anonymous donor leaves a $1000 cheque in my mailbox or a money tree grows in my backyard. Work would be ok, though - since I started at Regent, part of me has really regretted not getting to spend more time outside Christian circles, where a lot of what I’m learning can be lived out. And every once in a while I long for the chance to be productive in ways other than reading books and writing papers.

One of the confusing things about this process so far is what it means to really trust God in a situation like this. I don’t want to just take over and “make it work”, just take control and find a job. I want to give God the room to lead me, even to do something surprising if he wants to. It’s hard to know what to start doing and how soon. Last week I let people know about my dilemma, waiting to see if anyone knew of a job opening. This week I’m starting to look, but still trying to let God lead the process. This is trickier than I thought. I keep wanting to grab at anything I see, for security, instead of prayerfully considering where I should be. I need the right balance of patience and action.

Grounds for Coffee, a coffee shop 9 blocks away, better known for its world’s best cinnamon buns (they really are the best!) seems to be desperately seeking help, according to one of the employees. Perhaps God has some interesting irony up his sleeves in assigning Beth - the girl who messes up recipes for such complicated dishes as wieners and beans and fried rice, who doesn’t currently have an oven in her house, and who dislikes coffee - the job of making coffee and baking the world’s best cinnamon buns. I wouldn’t put it past God.

Pray for me – not only that I’ll find the right job, but also for wisdom in organizing life after I have a job, that I’d still be able to find time for schoolwork, relationships, creativity and breathing. I will keep you updated.

That girl needs therapy

I am eating my words from a post last November, about how school in Saskatoon is never canceled because of snow. On Wednesday, my Saskatoon friends endured the worst blizzard in 60 years. It took my mom the same amount of time to get home from downtown as it usually takes to get to Regina – 2 hours compared to the normal 15 minutes. Some people apparently had to spend the night at Costco. I hear they pulled out all the samples to feed them :)... I’ve been telling people that I left just in time, ha ha, good thing I’m back in Vancouver. But secretly I would have liked to be there. It seems like a relatively major event to have missed out on. And I like being able to brag about surviving things like that. I found myself watching the Weather channel for updates on Saskatoon (the Weather channel!) just to feel more included in it. Anyway, I’m glad everyone made it through. Including me.

Currently in Vancouver we are experiencing what us experts in the Bible school world like to call a “chiasm”, or “inclusio”, or perhaps “envelope structure weather”. First there was the unceasing rain in early November, if you remember, when we had to boil our drinking water. Then was the incredible snowfall. Then, right before I left for Christmas, a windstorm. As soon as I got back, we had another windstorm. Then it snowed again, and the snow is still on the ground. Now I predict… torrential rainfall. (Not a bad prediction in Vancouver even when there’s no chiasm to hint at it). Like any good chiasm, the center is the most important, and the center was Christ. Well, Christmas, anyway.

Man, I keep telling myself I write too much about the weather, but it’s so hard when it keeps increasing its own interestingness. Enough. Let’s talk about what I’m listening to right now, which my new CD of a cappela choral music called “Cloudburst”. If you don’t think you’re interested in a cappela choral music, you are wrong, and you have not listened to Eric Whitacre’s music. At least listen to “Sleep” on his myspace – http://www.myspace.com/ericwhitacre. This guy is from Nevada, he’s 36, and his music is brilliant. It makes me feel things I rarely feel listening to music – it’s almost ecstatic at times, pure, surging …with clashes strikingly made and deliciously resolved, triads piled on top of each other into shimmering clusters, beautifully made voice-leading, the way he lands on words… ok, I admit, I copied that last part from the CD booklet… I wish I could write reviews like that! But it’s all true. Thanks to Alexa for sharing your passion for Whitacre with me.

I’ve been writing this paper… have I ever mentioned that I hate writing papers? This is one reason why I don’t think I’d make a very good pastor. They pretty much write a paper every week. It’s not that I get bad marks on them, it’s more… the process. I think I do papers sort of like I do puzzles. Normally, I like puzzles, but normally I don’t have deadlines for finishing them. Like the box cover of a puzzle, I have this picture in my head of how my paper should look in the end. All of the pieces are floating in my head, and I have to write them and figure out where they fit. First I work on one paragraph, trying to shape that piece, then I get frustrated or bored with it and start working on another one, then another one, in completely separate parts of the paper. It’s like when you start to put the sky together in a puzzle, and get tired of blue, so you work on the edge pieces for a while. I never finish one paragraph before starting another, and I often cut and paste things around, moving bits that seem to fit better elsewhere. I never start at the beginning and write until the end – how can you start at the beginning with a puzzle? There is no beginning. Thank goodness for computers. If I had to write papers 50 years ago, I would need a lot of scissors and tape.

The point is: this is frustrating. It takes way too long. Especially with this particular paper, because there are so many details that the professor wants me to cram into my own self-constructed "picture" of the paper, like extra requirements on top of making the puzzle pieces fit together, and it's hard to reconcile both my requirements and his, while remaining under the strict word limit. I get so tired from thinking about what which word out of so many words to write next that I’m forced to spend half of my energy on keeping myself from frantically finding anything else to do besides writing the paper. But here is the more crucial problem, which I usually try to avoid thinking about… I don't know if my "box cover picture" of the paper is actually right, because I don’t know where it comes from. I'm not sure if it's actually a good paper. For all I know, some evil scientist has programmed my brain with this “wonderful paper” picture that’s actually very awful, but I obediently churn it out, to his mad scientist delight. All I know is that once I reach the magic moment when the paper looks like the picture in my head, I never want to look at it again. I don't want to consider whether other people (like my prof) will like it, I don't want to edit it, and I don’t want to read it once it’s marked, because I’m afraid I will suddenly come to my senses and realize that my mind was tricking me all along.

I'm probably boring you all tremendously. I’m sorry. To sum up, I hate my method of writing papers according to my brain’s mysterious preprogrammed standards, and if anyone knows a paper-writing therapist, I’d love to set up an appointment.

I’ve probably just been a student for too long…