Summer

I've always been kind of a freak when it comes to summer. I like humidity, but loathe heat. I get bored and listless when I'm not in a learning environment. And I'll probably read more in the summer than I do during the school year.

One trick I figured out a few years ago was to assign myself goals -- or, shall I say, deadlines? -- to complete before the end of summer.  A lot of the ideas spring out of things I want to accomplish, but don't have the time or means to do when I'm at school. In the past I've successfully sewn a dress, completed a summer version of NaNoWriMo, and even sufficiently motivated myself to clean and organize a closet full of craft supplies. I'm interested in seeing what this summer will turn up.

On my reading list:

• Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett (I saw it at Barnes and Noble and it's been in the back of my mind ever since)
• 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a bunch of other stuff by Jules Verne. Have been meaning to get to it for a while.
• The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson
• Shades of Milk and Honey and the rest of the series by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Forgotten God by Francis Chan. Required reading, but I'm looking forward to it.
• A reread of good old Pride and Prejudice.
• Relatedly, a Jane Austen biography.
• A partial reread of the complete and unabridged Les Misérables -- got it for my birthday and haven't had time to finish it, though I've read a mostly-unabridged version.
• Lots more I've probably forgotten

On my to-do list:

• Practice my taekwando to the point of being better than where I left off at school. I'm just barely a yellow belt and I probably won't start lessons again until I get back.
• Finish crocheting a pair of opera sleeves
• Tame the barn kittens!
• Help family with house projects -- new drywall, refinishing floors, etc.
• Listen to a backlogged year of Writing Excuses, a favorite podcast
• And, most importantly, finish the novel.

 These things will be combating the all-important GET A JOB that is currently screaming at me, but right now, my summer is undetermined. Totipotent, if you will. (Plant bio still has not banished itself from my mind.)

My home state of Iowa has welcomed me back with thunderstorms and tornado watches. I'm embracing the humidity and current lack of heat. God willing, I will make this into a beautiful summer full of learning and new experiences.

Stuff I've learned

One of the things I love most is learning. Love of learning is why, largely, I decided to go to a private liberal arts college when I don't need a degree for what I want to do. Write novels? You really need to go to school for that?

No... and yes. Writers need to learn things. And writers need to be able to apply what they learn.

I've been surprised at what I've discovered, and lots of those discoveries happen outside of a classroom. Some of them are little things, skills or facts that have surprised me:

• The most efficient path between buildings when in a hurry.
• How to store things in my memory short-term just for quizzes and tests. (This disturbs me. I never used to have to do this.)
• How to eat a full meal in three minutes.
• How to make macaroni and cheese anytime in the dining commons. (Stop waiting in line for it, people. The ingredients are at your fingertips.)
• How to make conversation with random strangers.
• Pocketknives actually are very useful. (I'll admit, I had one originally because I thought it was cool.)
• If, as a writer, you go anywhere without a pen, you will regret it.

Some of them are bigger, more along the lines of guiding principles. Some of them should be obvious, but typically, they've been no less surprising:

• There are a whole lot of people smarter than you.
•  Ask questions. It's how you keep up when things are difficult, and people will surprise you with how kind they are.
• Any plans you make to better your schedule will be waylaid by something else.
• There is no end to opportunity. The hardest part is taking hold of it.
• Don't take it for granted that things will fall together.
• Sometimes, you have to relax intentionally.
• Little sleep isn't the end of the world.
• Everything feels better when your room is clean.
• People are both more wonderful and less perfect than you think.

 Learning is the easy thing, especially where I am. The hard part is learning to apply what you've learned.

Specializing in Generalities

A few months ago, I took a workplace-oriented strengths test that was supposed to tell me what my talents were. (Before that, I didn't realize that "context" was a talent.) In the introduction, the writers stressed that people don't play to their strengths. Humans apparently have some kind of negativity fixation that makes us pound away at the things we aren't good at, resulting in endless mediocrity for us all. If we stick to our strengths, then we will excel.

There may be some merit to this, but not enough to satisfy me. 

According to Robert A. Heinlein, "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

By these standards, I'm about 2/3 of a decent human being. I'll see if I can get them all by the time I die.

On my bucket list, there are many things I plan to do: learn how to play piano, build a treehouse, perfect a spatula-less egg flip, martial arts, contact juggling, longboarding, bake a yule log, sight read music, perform a standing walkover, beat my boyfriend at Settlers of Catan, and speak another language fluently (since Ubbi Dubbi doesn't count).

More than almost anything else, I love to learn things. This occasionally results in a kind of procrastination ("I can't work on my story, I'm learning how to knit") that can take away from big projects, but I have to think it makes me into a better person as a whole. When I learn something new, I'm better equipping myself to do whatever I may be called on to do. I'm learning not just a new skill, but how to struggle with difficulties and overcome them. The results are often less than perfect, but they're still results. Maybe someday I can use them to do good.

And when I find something I can't do, it's a nice reminder not to take myself too seriously.

I'm not great at everything. Teach me how, though, and I'll try anything. The struggle is good. The overcoming is good. And occasionally, failing is good, too.

Top Ten Interesting Things I've Learned

This is a post I meant to write a long time ago, right when first semester classes let out. Now I'm back at Taylor and very excited about it. Before I start my first full week of class (I had class today, but hey, it's a Tuesday) I want to put up a list of the most interesting things I learned last semester, in class and out. Perhaps you already knew these random facts, or maybe they don't seem so remarkable. In any case, they stuck out to me. In no particular order:

• Drinking milk or eating dairy products before singing doesn't actually do anything to your voice. This should have been obvious to me because the windpipe and esophagus are two different things. I've been told the milk makes mucus, but I've never really observed that milk has any effect on my singing voice, and one of the music professors told me this. I'm going to believe her so I can have my milk and sing, too.
• Having lots of time does not necessarily facilitate getting lots of things done. This is a widely-observed phenomenon among people who do NaNoWriMo.
• Contrariwise, having very little time makes you an extremely productive person. (It works for me, anyway. I need to keep busy if I'm actually going to finish revising my novel!)
• The Golden rectangle is everywhere, and it’s really fun to hunt for it. (Thank you, math class!)
• Fibonacci in general – awesome. If you know nothing about Fibonacci numbers, I hope you cover it in class at some point or do some research on your own. Start with Vi Hart's videos, if you like.
• How to use power saws. This I learned from theatre set building, and I think it will be very useful later in life. Perhaps it would be more useful to be able to handle a drill properly, but I'm still really bad at that.
• Satan and Lucifer weren't originally proper nouns.They're Hebrew words to which we've attached specific people, in this case the same specific person.
• How to use databases. This is an important research skill I'm still surprised I didn't learn in high school. Thank goodness for friendly librarians.
• How to use Photoshop. Part of me thinks this is kind of cheating to put it on this list, but as a person who likes art, I think this is also really useful.
• "Internet" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. For some reason, this really took me by surprise. Again, perhaps this should have been obvious, but I find it interesting that in our very Internet-oriented society, spelling and punctuation are dropped for lots of day-to-day communication to the point of ignoring the medium we're using. Or maybe it's more that the Internet is such a part of our lives that we take it for granted.

I want a better list next semester, so I need to kick learning into high gear. Perhaps I should start by sleeping for my first ever 8:00 a.m. college class tomorrow.