Over-reacting, perhaps?

The North Park University Men's Soccer Team really is something to watch. This weekend, I watched as we brutally outplayed Hope College and Calvin College [teams that are both ranked quite highly in the national ratings of NCAA D-III]. The games were immensely intense. Seriously, you would not have known you were watching 2 christian colleges competing; at the end of the Hope game there was a little brawl after both teams knocked the referee down and started kicking the [choice word] out of him. I didn't have to pay for a seat, but if I did, I would've only needed the edge; it was *that* cool.

Anyway, this week several peers suggested that I may have over-reacted about the events of Wednesday [after which I felt extremely humbled, recognizing God's sense of humor]. Here's the story:

I was quite displeased with the first diagnostic essay I turned in to my dialogue professor. But, because of time restrictions, I had to turn it in and accept the fact that the professor would not find a favorable first impression of my writing. Oh well. So, for a week this sat on my mental backburner, as it bothered me. On Wednesday, the professor returned our essays. Mine had some good suggestions, constructive and encouraging; I was somewhat settled by this. After he handed everyone their own essays, the professor proceeded to hand out another paper to everybody --- MY essay [anonymously labeled]! I was disconcerted beyond belief. I hated this thing, and I knew it was bad, and not truly following the assignment. Well, for the 15 minutes, the class divided into two groups and discussed this paper, pointing out the bad parts and the [few] good parts. It was literally depressing, and I felt it hit hard. I knew it was bad, I knew that it didn't really stay true to the assignment - but I really didn't need everybody else reminding me of that and disagreeing with some of my choice words, structures, etc... One of the worst parts of it was that he re-typed the paper, and made some grammatical errors that were not in my original version.

So, I made my frustrations known to many people within the next few days, and they all wanted to assure me that the professor picked my paper because it was probably one of his top papers, and other cliches' of the sort...

Later on Wednesday, I got my jazz knowledge/experience handed to me on a big, shiney, silvery platter by my band director as he singled me out in front of the entire band about 5 times for mistakes and mishaps and basically made me look really stupid - the music is hard! Top-level stuff.

Aside from the thorn in the side that was Wednesday, life has been pretty acceptable.

I've met some great people. Katie, Kassie, Laura, Sharon, and Emily are probably my best girl friends, but there are many wonderful ones here. I've gotten to know Scott, Joel, Robert, Jason, Andrew, Nyenemo, Timothy, Darrin, and Brent quite well, as well.

People have been most impressed with my ability to remember names. So have I. Writing them down in my moleskine helped alot - I have 2 pages filled with names of people I met...I really need to update it, but I've surely met more people than I remember.

God is good.