JOURNEY

“Love is not a fight, but it is something worth fighting for”. Those are lyrics from a song that seems to have found new meaning in my life. I know it may seem random to begin my learning journal with these words, but they have challenged me and taught me a lot in the past few weeks. I think my perception of love was slightly skewed, not shallow, just a little off track. When people say the word ‘love’ we automatically assume romantic love-or at least I do. But it is so much more than that. Love is a verb. It is an action and it is a choice. Even when situations in life are less than ideal we have to make the choice to love people or let the situations get the best of us. I am learning that all of the people who are closest to me and the little girl who lives on the street by herself and all those in between deserve my love. Not in a mushy way, but with humility and selfless giving. I am so far from perfection in this area, but I am being so challenged to make love a choice and not just an empty feeling.

On a completely other note, but maybe not so far removed, I can finally use the F drive! I think a sicker may be in order. I did not actually have too much difficulty with it, but I am feeling much more comfortable with that system, along with researching. I thought I would never quite catch on to all of our professors tricks (which I haven’t), but I think I am at least a baby step closer. I was getting a frustrated with how little useful information I was finding, but slowly I think I am improving on how and where I locate useful information. Our professors have been very patient with helping me with all of this and also my fellow ‘Truth in Society-iers’ have been so helpful in sharing what works and what does not work for them. The profs also challenged us to continue making our work and our reports more professional. I am finding that it is the little things and ‘simple’ things that make our work seem more professional- minor things (that are not minor at all) such as including our names, full citations, in-text citations, etc. This is so simple, but effective.

We had another slight ‘confrontation’ in the class, if you could call it that. And I must say that there is some drama boiling to the top of the class. I am glad that it is surfacing and I really hope that we have all learned from it and can move on from it to a new level of learning and also respect for one another.

Oh, and did I mention that I am excited about the direction that our Inquires are taking? I was so confused about what the final outcome of this work would be and now that I have a better understanding I seem to have more motivation to actually do all of the work and do it well. I guess that alone taught me that asking questions and questioning the process that the profs are leading us in is okay and needed in our journey to amazing discoveries.

PS. I have a new appreciation for many of my class mates after the formal on the weekend. They are some of the greatest people in life and they all keep me going and grounded in some way. Cheers!