It has now been seven weeks since I chose three goals to pursue while here at college, and that means it’s time for another update. This past week has been more hectic than most before it. For starters, I drove home Friday night to spend the weekend at home and to hunt at least once during bow hunting season this year. I drove back up here to school on Monday (Halloween) so that I could finish some homework, only to be bombarded with even more homework the next day. I never would have thought that I would be driving all day on Halloween, but thus is the life of a college student. Through everything that I had to do, I think I still made some progress towards accomplishing my goals.
I’m normally able to get a jump on my homework and studying, but driving home for the weekend pretty much crushed any hopes of getting ahead on anything. Also, It’s pretty hard to get ahead on homework when you already have a lot of it to do in the first place. These past couple of days have definitely put my time management to the test because the only way that you can do homework all day is if you take breaks from doing homework. Also in order to cram everything in, you might have to multitask, like I did this weekend. While I was at home this weekend I was on the couch typing out notes for statistics, and eventually completing a series of problems for the same class. While I was working on those problems, I had my sister quiz me for my upcoming biology test using flashcards I had made the day before. I’d say it’s definitely not the ideal way to study, but when you honestly don’t have the time to do it any other way, multitasking just may “fit the bill”. I don’t plan on multitasking like this very much, but I think it’s definitely a good skill to have going forward in college.
When it comes to my goal of being more open to others and talking to a new person every day, I have made some progress as well. This past week I contacted my advisor, Russ DeFonce, so that we could meet to set up my schedule for the spring semester. This may not sound like much, but it was different for me because I was reaching out to somebody that I’ve never met and I was setting up a meeting with them. I met with Russ and talking to him was one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do. He was so down-to-earth that it was like talking to somebody that I’ve known for a while. It eventually required a couple of meetings in order to get my schedule straightened out, but those meetings were painless. Once again being proactive and reaching out to somebody was much easier than I thought, which seems to have been a theme so far in college.
Although I had a lot of homework over the weekend, I was still able to find time to slip in a healthy chunk of relaxation. This chunk came in the form of hunting Sunday morning. Hunting is definitely one of my favorite activities, and it is one of the few activities that can put me into a good state of flow. That being said, hunting was the perfect activity to work on my goal of clearing my mind and focusing on the positive. It is almost impossible to hunt if you’re constantly thinking about something else, so a clear or optimistic mind is a necessity. Sitting extremely still in a tree stand in the middle of the woods for several hours is honestly one of the best ways to clear your mind. It makes you sensitive to every little sound and movement in the woods. You would never know how noisy squirrels or falling leaves are unless you sat in the woods while being completely silent. Even though I had a lot of homework, nothing mattered except for enjoying the outdoors and giving myself a chance to harvest a deer.
When I think of the beauty of the woods unfolding itself to anyone who is patient enough to sit still for an extended period of time, I think back to a quote by Henry David Thoreau. He says, "You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns." In my opinion, Thoreau couldn’t be more correct, because I have witnessed the same thing while hunting. This brought me peace and relaxation in a hectic weekend and I can’t wait until a get to hunt again during Thanksgiving break.
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