Occupation: Student.

Slooooow Doooooooown!!! That is what I want to scream to the summer. I know that “summer always flies” is said by everyone….but seriously. This summer is going way too fast.
Alas, it is time to begin facing what is ahead: student teaching. This is my last semester before I am technically fully in the "real world". I have been intimidated by this stage of life for years.

I love college. I love learning. I love absorbing information. I love being challenged to grow in my knowledge and maturity. I love having a different schedule every few months, with no room for monotony. I love being surrounded by other learners, seekers, and question askers. I love having being able to pull from sharp minds all around me. I love striving for high grades.

Of course there are things I don't love about being a student - like paying tuition and taking out loans that will haunt me the rest of my life. But if college was free, I’d stay in it forever and confidently say that I was made to be a lifelong student!
The cliché really is true that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Heading into college, I remember thinking, “This is it. These next four years are going to shape me. I’m going to find my final positions on every issue, find my passions, and come out a confident person, ready to face the world.”

Well….5 years later, I am further away from those things than I was as that naïve 18 year old with high expectations. My eyes have been opened to the vast variety of views of the world. I have developed a hunger for knowledge, understanding, creativity, and most of all, truth. But at this point, I do not think that the hunger will ever be satisfied. I’ve always felt like my unquenchable thirst for understanding has been like a power switch that got stuck “on”. While those around me could receive information with a content, “ahhh okay. Now I get it.” My mind never got it. The more information I was given, the more I questions flooded my mind. I want to understand things so deeply that even my own skeptical mind cannot refute. I’ve always felt like my mind was abnormal in this way. Either it should be able to understand more, or it should be satisfied with understanding less. But I am stuck constantly aggravated because I never feel like I understand or know enough to pledge my allegiance to any viewpoint.

In college, I began to realize that there is no way that I, at 23, can be confident about almost anything. I remember being told in high school that you had to be “strong” when you went to college. “Stand your ground! Be a “light”! Stay strong!” I was told each of these cliché phrases by multiple well-meaning people. But the truth of the matter is that I took a much different approach. I finally realized how small I really was. I began to not only be a student in class, but I became a student of everything around me. I was in an entirely different part of the country, living amongst people from all over the world. Who was I to think that I, a young girl from a small city in the Midwest, held any matter-of-fact ideas? What value did my perspective have to offer? I began to realize the plethora of wisdom surrounding me, and developed the beginning of a serious need to more deeply search for truth.

And so here I am now. Although I am technically almost no longer a ‘student’, I don’t see my addiction to learning ever changing. Sometimes I envy the simplicity of minds that are different than mine. All summer long, Grove Lawncare has kept the whole family busy mowing lawns for hours a day. While doing so, most of my family struts behind their mowers enjoying energizing summer music. Meanwhile, I mow lawn after lawn with my headphones blaring a philosophical lecture series, a health related audio book or theological podcast. Some may call me ‘nerdy’, but I would call it ‘necessary’.

What about you? Does anybody relate? How do you rest without having all the answers? What fascinates you the most? What is the greatest source of growth in your life?