Switching, etc.

Well, I was contemplating switching to a wordpress blog, because I like the fact that both Savannah and Steph have click-able links on their blogs, but after wading through wordpress's damn website for about an hour and a half, I decided to give up out of sheer frustration. Perhaps I was just simply not meant to have a fancy, complex blog. Maybe when I'm less frustrated and murderous, I'll go back and see what I can do with it. Until then, this is officially the Holland-blog!

An Article About The Fulbright

And, more specifically, me winning the Fulbright. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I was featured in an article in the Honor's Tutorial College's spring version of the alumni magazine, Ampersand. It's pretty spanky, if you ask me. Thanks to Jessie Cadle for writing it up, yo. :)

Here is the link! Check it out!

Winning the Fulbright, Finding a House, and Coveting Bread

Hello!




Well, two years after starting the long and difficult process of applying for the Fulbright, I have won it and am officially moving to Utrecht on August 25th!

Everyone keeps asking me how I felt when I won it - honestly, a big mixture of thrilled, relieved, and terrified/sad. Well, doesn't that just cover the spectrum of feelings! When I got the letter, I woke up two of my roommates with my screaming, so obviously I was thrilled. But it's also nine months away from my family and friends, and that's going to be rough. I've decided to replace my family with bike rides and bread, which don't make me laugh quite as much, but there you go, in order to be successful, sacrifices must be made. ;)

For those of you who don't know, I am living in a beautiful Monument House with a couple who are classical musicians. I'll include a link of my room here, and maybe some pictures of the house when I get there! I have a bike (that's how everyone gets around in the Netherlands) and I'll be taking an intensive language course for the first three months of my stay, MWF, from 9-12. I'll be going into the lab in the afternoons to work on my project, which is measuring brain activation in children (boys ages 8-16) with ADHD during a reward processing task. I'm sure I'll write more about the project later. I'm nervous and very, very excited to start this trip. Please come along with me!

Back to Blogging

Ohello, dear world.



Everyone always says this is a tumultuous time of life. I wonder if they couldn't find a better way to describe it. Like, they could have said, your whole life will be completely revolutionized during this time, or, be prepared to withstand pressures, passions, problems, and pains that you've never come across before, that you may never experience again, yet which will redefine how you look at yourself, your world, and the people around you. I'm a terrible poet. However, were there a decent one to find, he would be the man for the job. Poet's have a way of taking complex ideas and making them simplistically beauitful, meaningful, and enagaging. I have a good friend, who is now a house-mate of mine, who is a math major. She is an incredible woman. She is fascinated by the interplay of poetry and math, and wishes to find some kind of harmony between the two. How cool is that?? She would be the kind of person who could take my ineptitude with language and find a way to express this complexity of emotions, commonly known as maturity and wisdom.



I think getting back into blogging may be good for me. Like the title implies, there is far too much that I cannot process without the aid of a page or a keyboard at my disposal. Fascinating fact - speaking to my boyfriend only last night, we both examined the idea that we need to be spurred into discussion of hard topics, and asked uncomfortable questions, in order to understand things we may not have known about ourselves. I shall digress here, then.



I found this in my freshmen year of college, staying up till all hours of the night, laughing, yes, but often simply and respectfully questioning one another's beliefs. Nothing has ever lead to faster growth for me, or for more personal introspection and shock, when I realized how often I would simply state someone else's beliefs, instead of my own. I suppose, this is an exhortation for hard questions. Don't let the fear of an answer drive your decision to enter into a discussion. Language fails me again. There are caveats to this statement. One man will look at it and say, that tells me to be violent! Passionate! In people's faces, more or less, convincing, questioning, eating away. Another man will look at this and see what I hope I see - the need for humility and love to join the questioning. I suppose that was covered in the beginning - don't ask a question expecting an answer. Unless, of course, you're proposing, in which case, we all think it would be better if you knew the general idea of the answer. If you ask a question rearing to debate, you're not approaching the situation with humility. You're arrogantly placing your burden, of judgement towards a desired decision, upon someone else. I don't know about you, but that's not what I'm called to do.



So many people are hurt. Many are angry because of it, many are bitter, or resigned, or apathetic. I have come across all kinds. You don't realize how far you push away people if you come to a conversation with an agenda. If you're an even mildly intuitive person, you will notice if someone you are talking to begins to edge away. I'm sometimes repulsed when people approach me, and I know that there is a point they want to get across right away, underneath their concern for my welfare, my state of life. It's unsettling to be so highly scrutinized by someone I don't know very well. It doesn't provide the setting for a deeper relationship to form. I thought we were in this (as Christians) for the relationship! I'm so upset over corner-box messages, preached and delivered in a fashion that, at the very least, makes me feel inferior and idiotic, for not grasping at some claim they purport to be absolute truth.

I hate speaking to people who have been forever turned away from what I might say to them because of militaristic Christianity. I have been told that I am soft, ill-founded, wishy-washy, and uncommitted, to be unwilling to adopt that "evangelical" message myself. I refuse to believe it. People deserve to meet someone who is compassionate, and who doesn't come across as an arrogant, know-it-all, Jesus-fan-club member, out to getcha, dirty sinner.

WWJD? There have been a lot of stones thrown. Seeing as, from what I've heard, none of us are blameless, I would appreciate a little more of what Jesus was the perfect embodiment - humility. I want to see the kind of love that works through relationships and service unto others.

Help

This made me cry and cry, and then made me feel incredible joy.

Update

Some of the current events of life, in all its tragic beauty.

Well, firstly, my grandfather has been in and out of intensive care for the past month or so. He is struggling with the loss of his ability to swallow. His doctor asked my dad if he wanted to put my grandpa on life support, which my dad decided to do. My grandfather now has a feeding tube going directly from his stomach to a food pump, but no one's quite sure how long it will last. Prayers about this, my friends. We knew it would have to come eventually, but that never really prepares you for what it's like to lose a loved one.

My family recently finished putting a fence around our whole back yard. This is excellent for the dogs, and is something we've been thinking about doing for years. Hoorah!

I am officially an R.A. next year, about which I am both excited and extremely nervous. I'm pretty sure I'll make a good R.A., I just have trepidations about the time commitment.

There is a road trip being panned for this summer!! More to come on that later. We're going through New York (the state), near Albany, into Canada, and back down and out into Boston. Not sure this is the best idea when gas is $3.80 a gallon, but, on the upside, it'll probably only get worse from here on out, so really, we're getting it in just on the tail end of our ability to do so!

I'll be working on a new behavioral therapy program for kids who have autism over the summer with Josh's neuropsychologist.

I had the most amazing piece of cake I've ever eaten today.

Ignorant, rude people should always be taken in stride, and remember, the patience you possess which allows you to reflect on yourself and not grow bitter is what differentiates you from them, so, be the better man, I suppose.

Oh, and I've been increasingly struck with the ineptitude of some of the parents of my friends recently. The best advice I have garnered from this? Don't have kids unless you're ready, and unless you're willing to unconditionally love them with the fullest extent of your being.

Poetry

Just thought I'd put some work up. Eh, everything in stride, I've just been feeling more creative of late.