It's only logical that with five days to go, I would be sneezing and wheezing like there's no tomorrow. Surprise: five tomorrows, all of which I would like to take full advantage of. Starting yesterday, I woke up in a daze of sniffles. I had three hours of Torah, an hour of seminar, and then three more hours of halacha, plus lunch and dinner plans with other parties. After the first three hours, I was completely drained. I couldn't focus my eyes, which made reading difficult, as well as thinking, communicating, and generally being a human. I felt really bad for my study partner, but I had warned her. Somehow, we got distracted from the fourth chapter of the Book of Jonah and went to look at biblical history as documented in Genesis onward. In one sentence, we're told a father lived for less than 100 years and his son, to 962. We traced the order of our patrilineage (and humanity), from Adam to Noah to Abraham, etc. - a good chronicle refresher after so much in-depth, detail-oriented studying for the last three weeks. Back in class, we posed our analyses as questions about the meaning and morals behind the Book of Jonah, which we had just read on Yom Kippur. This concluding activity to the minicourse made me feel like I accomplished something in the course in terms of Hebrew and text studying.
I gave up on going to the next class, with a headache and wanting fresh air. Unfortunately, yesterday was brutally hot, so I felt like my entire body was boiling and sticky. It was highly unpleasant. My friend Mitzi met me on Emek for some Burgers Bar, splitting a schnitzel wrap and sharing life advice. She's got a gig at Columbia this year, offering her sagely wisdom to the Orthodox community there, and if you happen to be one of her students, you're just the luckiest.
I raced back to school to lead the final study group session for my program. Of the six of us, only half could make it, but we recruited some random participants to come into the mix too. To hear about each of our growth and accomplishments over the last few weeks was, as always, a good way to open up a session. I've concluded that in my time here, I haven't necessarily changed, but I have grown to recognize how happy I am about myself, and where I am, Jewishly and otherwise. I've identified the biggest personal stumbling blocks from being any happier or more successful, and now I have the mindset to approach the next challenge with a better self-understanding. In a small group, we studied a short passage of sages' advice, saying that too much talking and studying leads to sin and lack of worldly understanding. This saying is quite validating for someone who is choosing to not spend all year, every day, in the beit midrash study hall of Torah, and instead, moving to Chicago to be a business consultant.
I retreated home to deal with my cold for the subsequent three hours, and made little progress in that field, but despite my drowsy despair, I was overwhelmingly happy about the program I'd chosen to do here and the people I was with.
No comments:
Post a Comment