Thursday, December 14, 2006
Exam Week Ramblings
Well so it's now Thursday of Exam Week and I only have one paper left to write! All my exams are over. I'm done with lectures. Tomorrow Emer leaves for Clare, Co. Galway. Saturday Greg leaves for New Hampshire. Monday I'm going to Cork to meet with Dr. Eibhear Walshe about research involving Kate O'Brien and her response to the overall repression of women that characterised the Irish Free State and the Irish Republic. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I'll be travelling; right now the plans include Galway City Co. Galway, Killarney Co. Kerry, Cahir Co. Tipperary and maybe Dingle in Co. Kerry. So my last week will be busy, for which I'm very grateful. Thankfully both Karl and Amy have decided to stay around most of next week to get some studying done so I won't be coming home to an empty house.
I keep coming back to very conflicted thoughts. I look out my window at the steely grey clouds that seem to cry a keen (yes that's a little poetic and melodramatic). I walk through campus and through puddles with feet and jeans completely soaked. I go to bed stressed every night because I have too much to do and not enough time. I fall asleep knowing that tomorrow is another of the last days with these people with whom I have fallen in love. And yet, despite the fact that it is still raining, despite the fact that my shoes are soaked through and my feet have never been this cold, despite the fact that I am getting tired of making grilled cheeses and just want an enchilada or some chilaquiles, despite all that I know I'm happy here.
But what I've also realised, with the help of a senior English teacher who somehow finds it in his busy schedule of preparing for New Zealand to continue to teach me, that this experience does not diminish my love for anyone, either here or home. Mr. McGowan told me, "You are finding that the heart has an infinite capacity to hold all of those we truly love and share our lives with. It is not an attic room with limited space but an expandable vessel with infinite capacity."
That my friends is the single greatest lesson I could ever have hoped to learn.
I keep coming back to very conflicted thoughts. I look out my window at the steely grey clouds that seem to cry a keen (yes that's a little poetic and melodramatic). I walk through campus and through puddles with feet and jeans completely soaked. I go to bed stressed every night because I have too much to do and not enough time. I fall asleep knowing that tomorrow is another of the last days with these people with whom I have fallen in love. And yet, despite the fact that it is still raining, despite the fact that my shoes are soaked through and my feet have never been this cold, despite the fact that I am getting tired of making grilled cheeses and just want an enchilada or some chilaquiles, despite all that I know I'm happy here.
But what I've also realised, with the help of a senior English teacher who somehow finds it in his busy schedule of preparing for New Zealand to continue to teach me, that this experience does not diminish my love for anyone, either here or home. Mr. McGowan told me, "You are finding that the heart has an infinite capacity to hold all of those we truly love and share our lives with. It is not an attic room with limited space but an expandable vessel with infinite capacity."
That my friends is the single greatest lesson I could ever have hoped to learn.
# posted by Matt Reznicek @ 7:04 AM 
