Bethel Plans

It's been an interesting break so far. I've been doing a lot of thinking.....mostly about my future.

I was very sad at the beginning of break. I have been for a while actually but it got worse once I was home and had more time to reflect on things. What was upsetting me was the fact that I was planning on jumping headfirst into grad school for a career that I'm not even sure I want. It was bothering me more and more and I couldn't figure out why.

This past weekend I went to my dad's house and as I was falling asleep Friday night I had a realization. I want to go to California.
I was talking to myself (in my head) and I was saying, Yeah Kelly..maybe you think Oswego is where you're going to be next year and maybe you've convinced yourself that Bethel's School of Ministry is Kate's future and not yours but in all honesty, if you knew your mom would be okay with you going, would you go? I knew the answer was yes and that upset me. It upset me because I realized that if I didn't at least try to get in to that school I'd always regret it.

I've been wanting to go to a school like that ever since I got serious about Christianity and I know that this is the best time for me to do it because I will have graduated college, I have no jobs here tying me down, no relationship right now-it's perfect timing I think. And also I think that taking time off like this and growing, having more experiences and meeting new people, will help me figure out if I really do want to go to graduate school. I feel like going to grad school now is just because I lacked no other direction and I didn't want to be poor so I figured, well, teaching will give me some money and it probably won't make me miserable-let's go for that. The relief of figuring that out didn't last long. Within two months I was back to my feeling of discontent.
But then I found out about Bethel and as I was learning more and more about it, my heart would pound whenever I'd think about it or read anything about it.
I talked it over with my dad and he supports me with it. In fact, I think he's just as excited for it as I am.
So now I'm going to apply there and hopefully I'll get in. I'm at the point now that if I didn't get in I think I would be devastated.

But nothing can be as easy as that. I still have to tell my mom what I'm planning on doing. It's going to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I don't know how she's going to react. I'm so scared. I don't know when I'm going to do it yet. Most likely before I go back to school.
Kate's scared to tell her mom too but she's not as scared as me because she's had months to come to terms with it. But actually, I'm nervous for her to tell her mom because her mom hates the fact that Kate's a Christian and she does everything in her power to discourage her so I'm so scared that once the cat's out of the bag, Deanna and I won't be allowed back in Cooperstown. Hopefully we're all just imagining the worst. But it will be pretty bad at first, no matter what.

I'm a Creator...much like my Father

This was a test picture because I was trying to figure out how to add photos. And actually, this picture goes along well with what I want to talk about....

Creation.

Not of the world, but really just creative crafts. I'm sorry but it's just a part of who I am and I like talking about it.

I'm at my dad's office in the airport today and when I was surfing my usual sites I somehow pressed a button wrong and ended up staring at four comments I received in October about my desire to buy myself a new journal. There were four ...not three like I remembered. That's because about two weeks or so after I published that post, another girl named "iHanna" posted her opinion about journal writing. And I completely missed it. I felt awful just because I feel like that's really rude not to respond to comments and I always try to. I wonder how many other comments slipped through the cracks? I'm pretty sure not many because let's face it, I don't have oodles and oodles of fans....yet ;) So anyway, I went to her website to write her a small message of thanks and then took a look around. I'm so glad I did! Her site is dedicated mostly to her arts and crafts projects (though don't quote me on that because I can hardly sum up her entire site from just 15 minutes of perusing). My favorite projects of hers are the things she calls art journals. The idea of it is just so awesome to me. It combines creativity with journals...the ultimate marriage of nonliving things, in my opinion.
I looked at some of her pages and it inspired me so much.
It's funny.
For the past month I've had an urge to do something creative with journals but I just wasn't figuring it out-what exactly I wanted to do. And then this past Monday when we all got together to make Simone's farewell scrapbook I thought, 'Man, this is just so much fun. Maybe I should start a hobby of scrapbooking?' Well, that was a warm and fuzzy idea but it wasn't the nugget of gold I was looking for. Then I saw this idea about art journaling and it was like bells went off inside my head. DING, DING DING!! CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE FOUND THAT CERTAIN THING YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW YOU WANTED UNTIL YOU FOUND IT!

so, yay for me!
I was so excited to begin that I marched myself right over to a gift shop here in the airport and bought some magazines. I've spent the last hour looking through them, collecting ideas and page numbers and now all I need is an actual journal big enough to put my collages into. I saw the perfect kind at Barnes and Noble two months ago when I was shopping for my journal which, conveniently enough, I wrote all about in the post that iHanna commented on. Oh, the circle of things!

Some examples of her work should be below this post...(in the next post titled "Collages Made By Someone Else). I assume I'm not breaking any copyright laws because I'm naming her as the sole author.
(here's hoping)

Collages Made By Someone Else

By iHanna





By iHanna







By iHanna



By iHanna


These and many many more can be found at iHanna's Creative Space. These are her own creations that I just thought were really cool and inspiring.

Burning the Midnight Oil

Okay, so I'm still in the 24-hour room. I got here at 10:30 p.m. on December 13th, and I'm leaving here at 6:00 a.m. December 14th. So weird for me! It's such a weird feeling because I've been awake all day and working on schoolwork since 11:30 Saturday morning with absolutely no naps and only a three hour break to go to the BASIC Christmas party. WHY AREN'T I TIRED?? I'm only writing this now because I still have energy to burn and I know if I go back to Scales now I'm just going to lie in bed with my eyes glued to the ceiling. This is definitely not like me at all.
But, I've used this energy spurt (if that's what you'd call it) to my full advantage. I wrote out my entire Biology paper tonight. All ten pages, plus a reference page containing 12 sources and two pages of figures. Oh, and a title page and abstract. It was a lot of work but I just banged it right out. I'm so relieved!
Now that I got this out of the way, I only have one more paper to write and three finals to take (that I'm not really that concerned about). Plus, Shawna wants to get together and study on Monday for our Bio final so that will be good.

Okay enough babel about scholastic crap. I'm sure no one really wants to read it.

Surprisingly enough, I'm not the only one in this room. There are seven of us. And they've all been here since about midnight with me. Glad to know I'm not the only "crazy". But it seems that this one group of people over here to my right went home and slept for two hours and then came back. Now that is dedication! I wouldn't be able to do that. Not even a sliver of a chance.

Okay well, I'm lame I think. It's is the wee morning hours and I need to get some rest already! By the time I get home and get ready for bed I should have a solid two and a half hours to sleep until Church. Woo hoo!
I hope my little eyes will open.
That's why it's good to have a roommate-a real life alarm clock in the most desperate of situations.

Well, I'm starting to get the shakes now, so I think it's time I scoot on back to my home turf. I was really hoping that by 6 in the morning it would be a little lighter out, but sadly no. It's still dark.

I'll have to say a prayer for myself as I walk home. Not because it's dangerous on this campus but really just because I have an active imagination-no matter how long it's been awake for.

Growing Pains

Well.

I've got so much to say. So many feelings to sort out. And, like any other college student at this time of the year, I have absolutely no time to do it.
Thankfully I've been able to set aside these few minutes to blog at least some of what I'm feeling.

Let's start on a happy note.
Last Friday I went Christmas shopping for my two cousins (cousin number 3's coming in two weeks!). I ended up buying my seven year old cousin a tamagotchi. YOU ALL MUST REMEMBER WHAT THOSE ARE...along with all the other nano,giga stuff. Well, I got so excited to find these rare treasures from my childhood that I ended up buying one for myself too. The good news about these things being an almost 1o year old idea is that now, instead of 50.00 they only cost 15.00. So yeah, I became a tamagotchi parent all over again. (Though I can't really say 'again' because I only owned a nanopuppy before-which i definitely prefer) Everything was going smoothly with that little project until Monday night when my battery died. :( Now I have to start all over-bleck.

I felt like I was 12 years old again but I didn't really care. And actually, I was thinking about it yesterday and if I were to step out of my body and "counsel" myself, I would diagnose that my action of buying a toy from my childhood was really a subconscious desire of mine to want to fight time and return to my younger days. With the thoughts that have been running through my head lately, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if that were true...in fact, I think it is true.
See, I might be staying in Oswego next year to get my masters degree and part of that idea makes me sad. Only because, I feel like .....ugh. I don't know if I can word this right.
If it's truly what God wants me to do I'm all for it and I'll go through with it no questions asked. But part of why it's making me sad is because most all of my classmates and friends will be gone. My college class-everyone who was a freshman with me. That makes me sad. In a way I feel like everyone else will be growing up and moving on but I'll still be here.....staving off adulthood even more and just collecting more and more debt.
I talk like I'm the only person who's ever stayed in college longer than four years! I know that's not the case and I know that it's not necessarily looked down upon-and I mean, I am graduating, and I am moving on to something else...it just so happens that my 'something else' is still in the same place.
That's it! That's it exactly! The reason I'm so bothered about this is because my next phase isn't taking me anywhere geographically. Wow, pinpointing the source really helps. I feel a little bit better now.-See, this is why I love to write. If I don't know why I feel a certain way, all I have to do is write about it and eventually the light will hit it.

Writing is my therapy :)

Not a lot of people know this but for the past few months I have been thinking about moving to California next year for a year-long schooling program at Bethel Church in Redding California. A part of me still really wants to do it but the more I've waited on God the more I've come to see that I think His favor is surrounding Oswego. I just loved the idea of getting out. Going somewhere. Being adventurous and stepping out on my own...living on my own for a little while and really learning more about God and the Bible.
I might still get a chance to do that after my graduate program...we'll see. Plus, if I do get into the Grad program here in Oswego then I'm definitely going to apply for the student teaching opportunity in Australia for the fall of 2010. That will be a great experience, and I've wanted to go there for such a long time.
So really, I do have exciting things on my horizon..I guess I just have to wait a little bit longer for them than everyone else does.