Musings from the First Day of School

Well, today was my first day back to school, the start of my sixth and third to last semester. I've been dreading this day since the first day of the holiday break. I kind of decided it would probably knock me off my feet and leave me gasping for breath until the middle part of May, but I was actually wrong. At least about the FIRST day knocking me off my feet. The first day was actually relaxing and fun. I really enjoyed seeing all my physics friendies again. We've really bonded over the semesters, having been through some tough times, long days, and impossible problems together.

I even liked greeting my professors from the semester past as they passed me in the halls. They look just as happy to have us students off their hands as we are to be out of them. You see, I've found that in the physics department, the professors welcome each end of the semester and even eagerly look forward to it, not because they don't enjoy what they do, but because each semester is a four-month long, nastily tiring collaborative effort between the professor and students to get as much knowledge and experience packed into our tiny incapable brains as possible. We ALL look forward to breaks because for us they mean a chance at some oxygen.

After two and a half years, I've finally succumbed; I've become a rolling backpacker. I've heard all the bashing, I've even bashed them myself, but this time I decided that I care a whole lot more about my long term posture and comfort than short term shame. And as of yet I'm still a polite rolling backpacker: I haven't accidentally tripped anyone yet, though I did get it caught in the door more than once today....I'm still getting the hang of it.

I had three classes to go to today, and the middle one was canceled. When I heard the news, my reaction was literally, "Ah, man! Really?" You see, the class is Greek and Roman Mythology. Upper div GE. Jackpot. It's the one and only class I'm taking that would truly break my heart if it canceled for the semester. I can think of only one other class that I've ever felt this way about, that was Dr. Clementine Oliver's Western Civilization. Why, you may ask, are you majoring in astrophysics when you feel so light and happy about history and legends? Well, I think it's the difference between a hobby and a passion. A hobby will ALWAYS put a smile on your face whenever you get the chance to play around with it because in your NORMAL schedule, the schedule you've chosen, you hardly ever find the time to fit it in. But your passion may not always make you sing and dance and skip, in fact at times it may make you sigh, simply because you're tired of working constantly at it in the schedule that you've chosen. But when someone asks you the right curious questions about the passion, the kind of questions that hit right to the heart of WHY the subject is your passion, or when the textbook takes a turn to talk about EXACTLY the things that motivated you to chose astrophysics in the first place, the singing and dancing and skipping comes back.

I was sitting in my Experimental Physics lab today as my professor did a grandiose job of summarizing some of the breakthrough physics experiments we would be studying this semester, and it made me smile to listen to him talk about the difficulties that all the most brilliant minds on earth had in conducting these experiments, the YEARS that it took to come up with the experiments and get results, and the years and further experiments it took to understand the results. It made me smile because I knew that all the while, in the midst of all the years and effort and stress, our God had ALL of the answers to ALL of those scientists' complex questions. He knows exactly why the universe obeys the laws it does and what exactly black matter is (if it's anything) and what would happen if someone like you or me were sucked into a black hole and how gravity relates to the nuclear force and IF we need something like the String Theory anyway. He knows all the answers because He spoke the laws and answers and phenomena into existence! Every semester I'm excited afresh because I know I'm going to come away probably more confused than when I started, but also more in awe because I KNOW the God who understands it perfectly.