There is not enough time in my life right now.
Perhaps I am, three and one half years in, learning what it is like to be in college.
I have 12.5 credit hours of class per week, but since the .5 is a PE credit, it doesn't reflect actual class time. So I am in class for 13.5 hours per week.
The official estimate is that we should spend three hours outside of class studying for every one hour we spend in class. While this might actually be necessary for me this semester, I've never done it before, so we'll settle on two. I need to spend 24 hours studying per week.
My manager continues to only pretend to hear that I need fewer hours. I work 22-30 hours per week. We'll settle on 24.
I teach Sunday school, which also requires me to be in Church. I won't pretend I spend any significant amount of time preparing for this. Two hours per week.
That's 63.5 hours per week, just from my schedule and associated regular responsibilities (75.5 if I spend the suggested three hours studying). On top of that, I am required to write an article for an academic journal, which is a bigger single assignment than I have ever previously had, by March. I am preaching in church Sunday, and in chapel next month. And I am possibly working with one of my professors to refine a paper from last semester, because she thinks it might be polished into something worthy of publication.
Somehow, they expect people to apply for graduate school amidst this mess?
It is not even close to possible for me to stay on top of everything. I have yet to complete a single assignment for the new semester, and have done only one required reading. Never have I felt so stretched out--and stressed out.
As I drove earlier tonight through the reflections I'm now rehashing, my source of stress quickly shifted from the time to the money.
The only significant time sink I can ditch is work. Unfortunately, while my savings might be able to feed me for the rest of this semester, I'll be unable to spend any on anything else. I might have more money if they didn't keep adding new books for me to buy and obscene graduation fees to pay. I will have no bar nights with friends, no bike to ride to campus, no movie or game rentals, no visits to the coffee shop, and no completion of my nearly-complete David Sedaris collection. In a sense, my current schedule is almost a blessing, because if I lighten it I'll have nothing to do with any leisure time I finally gain. I can survive without my job, but only in the literal sense (and perhaps the spiritual sense, as my work is certainly ethically questionable).
Then my thoughts shifted again. Even I am not selfish enough to dwell on myself for too long.
I will be fine. I have an extensive support system, from my parents, who I'm sure would never let me starve (though a little hunger would probably be good for me), to friends who range from "you need to eat, I'm paying" to "take this money." For me, financial stress is a question of whether I can go out with my friends.
For some people, it is a question of life and death.
What stupid idiot came up with money in the first place? Why do we need this? Someone has to die because what, he didn't sell enough coffee beans, or Wal Mart came and drove him out of his livelihood? Does anyone see this happening?
God and I had a little shouting match about this tonight. Or rather, I had a little shouting match about this tonight--the nice thing about having a shouting match with God is she usually lets me win.
But as Saint Francis so many years before, I found the question being bounced right back at me. Why do you allow poverty?
"Listening to God." There's some sort of thematic focus on that next week that deviates from the standard Lectionary for the Church of the Brethren. It's an interesting topic, and one I can take a few different ways. I suppose it boils down to the usual dichotomy between Biblical and bearable, the former being this:
God speaks to us with the suffering of others. Every cry for help in the world is God's call for us to stop dicking around and do what Christ told us to do. It happens halfway across the globe as thousands starve in a world with more than enough food for everyone, and it happens in our own cities as weathered people beg for spare change in the streets. And like any good child, we've become adept at tuning out our parent, and even better at justifying it. The hungry children in Africa or Asia are too distant for us to immediately help, and the hungry man on the street corner is probably going to spend the money on drugs.
We make these stupid indefensible arguments so we don't have to give up our flex money or, worse, look these people in the eye. Do you feel like a piece of your soul dies every time you pretend not to see them? I do. And I can tell you why: it's because we just hung up the phone on God, again.
Awful, isn't it? I feel awful. You probably feel awful.
Let's go to church and sing a while and pretend we've done our bit.
