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In The Valley

Merry Christmas! I hope that the holidays were kind to you. They were beyond kind to me and I’m humbled at the gifts I was given. I got a big box of food from a local church. That may have been the best present of them all to be honest. As a continually broke college student food is a great gift. I got to spend four days with my family in sunny Arizona and that was a welcome respite as well.


School does not start until January 20th of next year so I’m in this period of waiting, wishing and whatever…and it’s not the worst place. Being done with finals and having my final grades in (GPA of 3.42 thankyouverymuch) is a great feeling. I’ve resolved to take the breath I need to while still moving and shaking – I fear what would happen if I was to screech to a stop. And so I’m in the valley waiting for the next mountain to climb.

There’s plenty of climbing to be done. Given my degree program (Secondary Education with English) I have an array of tall ranges to scale. There’s around 25 or so classes that remain and a majority of them are my literature and teaching classes. Thankfully the heavy climbing won’t be until Spring of ’15 as I have a slate of general education classes must be satisfied. There’s a music class, a meteorology class, a essay writing class and a biology class.

Two of them are what I would call fun classes with music being the high point of the two. I have a deep love for music and even played piano in elementary school. On the nerd scale the meteorology class pushes the needle above 11. I follow a bevy of weather nerds on twitter and their exuberance for the science has me all kinds of interested in learning about their craft.

The essay class and biology class are less exciting. Biology fits into the science requirement. I’m not going to lie – science is my second least favorite subject. Science has always befuddled me because of the vast amount of facts, figures and assorted details. It’s also not the best place for a literature nerd to hangout. There’s all kinds of chemicals we’d end up mixing up with our creative juices. Best for us to stay with our books, typewriters and stacks of thesauruses.

And so the days will be filled with working, writing, starting the process of pulling school supplies together, waiting for school loans to come in and more working. When the school loans hit the valley will vanish in a quick sprint from basecamp to the next way-station.

That’s when business picks up. Until then, I’m content with my valley of respite. I hope you, dear reader, find some respite during this holiday season. Because I suspect 2015 will be a very busy year where rest will be a hard thing to find.

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