Allow me to introduce Jenny

My hair is dripping wet. My hoody and fleece are both soaked through. My holey sneakers are wet and covered in mud, my socks drenched. But I am extraordinarily happy. Why? Jenny. I haven’t blogged in forever, but if I had then I probably would have mentioned Jenny many times. I think I did mention her a few times, and I think she mentioned that she’s my girlfriend, but have I told you about her? No, not at all. It’s time for me to remedy that. I just got back from a walk with Jenny and so I’m in a rather romantic mood, and since a lot of my best writing is done when I’m in a romantic mood and I have free time I am totally going to write, and it will be me being hopelessly romantic. I haven’t written on my blog in far too long. First I’ll tell you the basics. Jenny is from Maine (the way life should be) and is an Intercultural Studies major here at Houghton. I think she should get extra credit for her major by dating me, seeing as how I’m all intercultural and whatever. Jenny is kind, caring and a lot of fun. She’s pretty much the most fantastic person I know. She’s also extremely beautiful, as you can see from the creepy stalker collage I made with my crappy MS paint skills. I couldn’t decide on any one picture to show, so I decided I’d show several. She’s probably going to hate me for this.

Well, now that I’ve covered the basics and given you some of my favorite pictures of her (my mom’s favorite is the one in the bottom far right) I can get to some of the romantic stuff. Let me tell you why she’s special to me. I’ll go through a few of the reasons which I picked out from the many. Jenny is wonderful because she:
1. Convinces me that the past doesn’t matter
2. Reminds me to trust God in everything
3. Reminds me to read my Bible
4. Is the reason I look up
5. Reminds me to be spontaneous and enjoy life
Allow me to explain each of these a little more in depth. Let’s start, as most things normally do, with number 1. I trust Jenny completely, and we’ve talked a lot. I have a lot of phantoms from my past that have irked me for a long time. But Jenny shows me complete grace. The past doesn’t matter to her, and she makes sure I remember that it doesn’t matter to God either. She forgives me and helps me know that I’ve been forgiven. Now on to 2. I once said to her, “Jenny, I’m a writing major and I want to be a missionary, I’m going to be dirt poor, are you sure you want to be with me?” Her answer surprised me a lot. “God will provide.” Jenny helps me to remember that I need to trust God for everything. She reminds me that my strength comes from God, and that I need to completely trust in him for everything. Number 3 is connected to this. I’m really bad at keeping up regular Bible reading and devotions, but Jenny always asks me if I’ve read my Bible lately. She really cares about my relationship with God. I really need to explain number 4 or you would have no idea what I’m talking about. Jenny appreciates natural beauty quite a bit, and she loves to look at the sky. If it’s a beautiful starry night sometimes she’ll just stop walking and stare. I never look up normally, I never appreciate the stars or the clouds or the beauty of the sky, but when Jenny looks up I do too and I see the beauty I’d normally ignore. Number 5 is kind of related to number 4. Being here at college it’s easy to get absorbed into FaceBook and schoolwork and not look at the sky or be spontaneous or enjoy life too much at all. But Jenny and I always do really fun spontaneous things, like the walk in the rain I just got back from. Once Jenny and I were so excited that the weather was warming up that we went for a walk in t-shirts and then laid down in the snow to look at the stars. Cold, but amazingly spontaneous and fun.

So, anyway that’s my little tribute to Jenny. I haven’t blogged in far too long, and I’ve never really blogged about Jenny, so there you go. I hope I can start blogging more, but you probably shouldn’t count on it. Anyway, I’m must be off to bed now, goodnight!

Some of the struggles I have with school... (Why I refuse to "learn on the side")

Last semester I struggled a lot. I came out with a 2.4 GPA, which I am not happy about, especially seeing how good I'm doing this semester. What is the difference between this semester and last? I'm figuring out school. I've been homeschooled my whole life, so this does take some figuring out. But I am getting the hang of it. The fact that I am figuring this out is very little due to my own ingenuity, but due to the fact that all my friends help me out a lot and teach me how this works. But there is one thing that my friends try to convince me of that I refuse to go along with. I refuse to go along with the system. It seems that the system here is not to write well, know the subject matter well, or speak well. The system dictates that we exist only to serve our professors and to figure them out so we know what they are looking for and do that. The point is not learning, but people pleasing, and this irritates me to no end.

My friends love to learn, and so do I, so I asked them "When then, will I learn?" and I was told that what you do in school is "learn on the side" while pleasing the professor to get the grade. I have a big problem with this. Last semester we had a group project, and while everyone else chose which topic to work on by who else they would be working with, I chose to pick the topic that most interested me and that I most wanted to learn about without even thinking about what my group might be like. Only later did I realize that I now had a fascinating topic (homelessness and schizophrenia) but a rather difficult and dysfunctional group. In the end it was only okay because of my over zealous interest in the topic leading to me covering 11 minutes of the presentation rather than the 5 I was supposed to. Ideally, according to "the system" I should have chosen to do a project with my friend who I need would be good to work with, even though the topic interested me less.

This makes me so frustrated, because to be honest I really don't care about my grades or my GPA too much. I'm here to learn about things that interest me. Right now I'm preparing for a paper on Israel and Palestine and all the nasty conflict there. I could do this paper on anything I wanted, and I probably won't get an A because I've picked such a difficult topic that I'm not sure I can write about it so well that it would be worth an A. But that is the point. I'm not here for an A. I'm here to stretch myself, increase my skills and learn! Though I could probably get a better grade if I had chosen to write on something easier and more relevant here, such as the drinking or dancing rules here at Houghton, I choose this not only because it interests me, but because I know it will challenge me.

Anyway, that's just another rant from your beloved C. J. Clark, I must be off now. I hope you've enjoyed how much I've been blogging recently. I've just had a pretty light workload this week. But next week I'm pretty sure that will change...Cya.

What I love about P.O.W.

I love P.O.W. with all my writing major heart! What is P.O.W. you ask? Well, not Prisoner of War. At Houghton, at least until the course change come into effect, the intro level writing course is Principles of Writing, or P.O.W. I love my P.O.W. class, and since I have half an hour before I need to go to P.O.W. I think I’ll tell you some of how fantastic it is. First of all, Professor Lori Huth is fantastic, I learn a lot in class about different writing styles and how to improve my writing, which means that this is probably the only class that I fully pay attention in, and don’t let my mind wander. But even more than the lectures I actually enjoy the work. In P.O.W. we have, like every class, readings for every class. But I usually skim, don’t do all the reading, or just don’t read for my other classes. But for P.O.W. I always make sure I’ve read, no matter what, because we have surprise reader responses in class. I love this because it means that I’m always ready to write and it’s getting me in the mindset of analyzing what I read to better understand not only the writer’s idea and point, but the nuances and ways that the point is presented more effectively through skilled writing. Through this better understand I am able to apply what I learn to my own writing, as well as being able to write about the things I read. I love how this class is improving my writing.

Another thing I love about this class is that whenever we have to write a paper we have writing workshops, where we split into groups of three and critique each other’s drafts and help each other. This is a good chance to analyze other people’s writing and also to get suggestions about my own writing. For the more difficult papers we have conferences with Professor Huth too, and she critiques our drafts and gives us suggestions before we turn them in the final time. I really like this class. Anyway, I should probably be going to this class soon, I don’t know why I told you all that. I hope you know I’m enjoying college! Cya!

A little of what I've learned this semester...

This semester has taught me something. I am not stupid. I am smart. I can do anything I can put my mind to. Therefore, the problem is not what I can do, but what I’m willing to put the effort into. This semester I have all good grades. My lowest is a B. Except for the on class where I have an F. What is the difference between the classes where I do well and the class where I’m failing? Is this class so much more difficult? Are all my classes this semester really easy? No, neither of those. Actually, the class I have an F in is arguably the easiest class I have this semester. It’s a P.E. class! The reason I’m failing is that this class is SO easy that I don’t feel like putting in the minimal effort that is required. Not to worry though, nothing motivates me much more than the fear of failure. I had to drop a class last semester, I refuse to do that again. So I’m already not failing anymore thanks to my awesomeness, I just need to stay consistent with not spiting this class and I’ll do pretty well. I think that’s my real problem. I take classes personally, and if I don’t like them I’ll do things just to spite them. Or if I love them, such as with my writing class, I’ll start researching the topic for my paper a month and a half before it’s due. What this means then is that I need to be careful to try to choose classes I can enjoy and love, and also make sure that if and when I do have to take a class that I don’t like I won’t spite it. Because I look back on last semester and I realize I could have done so much better, but it was my first semester and I had no idea what I was doing. Now this is my second semester and I’m doing an okay job making up for last semester, and I’m learning a lot, about myself, about school and also the stuff I’m supposed to be learning from classes. My writing has definitely improved. I read my writing from last semester and scoff, how could I, the great Chris Clark, have once written like that? Maybe I should try looking at my first few blogs posts and see how bad I once was…

Anyway, I need to be off to my Presentational Speaking class which I have an A in. I hope you’re glad that I’ve blogged. I really am. It’s been too long. I have another post that I wrote earlier but I’m waiting to ask approval before I put it up. Anyway, I must be off now. Cya!