Graduate School

Much of my time this week is dedicated to finishing my final paper for my current Rhetoric class for graduate school. 

This is my work station. Liquids, socks, blankets, books, all are at the ready. 

Dwayne is making dinners this week to save me an hour or more of effort each evening and free me to simply get up from my work, eat, and go back to work again. 

My girls are still homeschooling around me during the days. Right now, Avril's taking her online art class in the classroom, painting along with her teacher. Adele's upstairs in her room practicing guitar. The girls are often on the couches in the same room with me doing math or logic or Latin. 

I still manage to keep the household throughout my breaks, washing dishes and switching laundry here and there to give myself something different to focus upon. 

I am certainly less attentive than usual as far as homeschooling goes, but my daughters are older and they are very independent and responsible. It's easy enough to see that they are on task. And I can help as needed. I stopped work for a few moments yesterday to help Adele straighten out a particularly long long division problem yesterday. 

Sometimes I wonder why it takes me so long to complete my course work, why I must set aside so much time, but maybe it takes everyone just as long as it does for me. I am comparing myself to some imaginary idea that I have about how long this ought to take in comparison to everything else I do in life. 

I also wonder how, if at all, I might save time and effort, considering all I have to do in addition to school, but then I consider the difficulty of the material- Aristotle and Plato. I reconsider the richness of the texts, and I decide again that the work I am doing is proportionate to how much I actually care. I absolutely love what I am learning. 

Sometimes it feels like every book I've ever read has been preparing me to read (and actually enjoy) Aristotle. The first book I actually read to truly understand it was the Bible, and that's where my education began. I know the Bible better than any other text, so I see connections to portions of the New Testament and insist Paul and James must have had access to some of these texts or at the least, they had knowledge of these ideas. 

I see hints of Aristotle, too, in poems by Hopkins, novels by Lewis, and treatises by Charlotte Mason. Of course, all the great books are talking to each other, and to think- Even the Lord entered into this great conversation Himself, revealing to mankind all they could not determine through natural revelation and reason alone.  

The Lord I using this work to fit me for Himself. May all I am learning make me more capable of knowing, worshipping, and honoring Him with all I am.