Day 22: Refocus?

2/6 More of the same old, same old. This morning Katie had chapel so she headed to the LICC early, leaving the guys and me to fix sandwiches. The only problem with that situation is that I hate getting up in the mornings and David likes to take forever at breakfast, and Daniel can’t make the sandwiches quickly without help…..so we started out rather late on our trek to the LICC. That would have been perfectly fine except the tubes stopped several times while we were on them, just sitting for minutes at a time in the dark underground tunnels before lurching back into motion. Nevertheless after much debate, going out the wrong exit (half a block down the wrong street), and daintily trying to race through the rain without soaking our shoes, we made it with 7 minutes to spare. (I knew we would).

I was pretty tired throughout Plenary, and spent much of the time daydreaming, but when I was fully there (and even when I was only partially there) we gained some good direction for our papers (mostly a definition of what the “fledgling west” was supposed to mean).
Chapel today was phenomenal. It was a very relieving break from the business of life. We didn’t have a speaker for the week and so we did it Koin’s style and sang a mixture of worship songs and hymns mixed in with scripture and times of prayer. The theme of the service was “refocus” and I think it was a very fitting theme.

After we broke from chapel, it was time for some serious work to be done. I personally was pretty excited about this paper…(you’ll see how that works out for me) and was excited to go back and uncover the thematic elements of Beowulf. Upon returning to my room I took a new approach to my paper and started by looking through my notes on the topic so that I could find the “key features” of the characters in Beowulf. I made a list of those things and then created a brief thesis that focused on those characteristics. Next I opened up the book to page 3 and began to read with a blue pen in hand. I hadn’t underlined the first time I’d read, so now that I had direction I read the whole book again with specific elements in mind.
I read Beowulf twice in 3 days… wow.

At dinner I became slightly nervous because Daniel said that his thesis was null after hearing some words from Dr. Wardwell about the topic. Apparently some people had gone to the prof’s flats to ask about the topic and got advice about their theses. Eventually, I found someone to tell me more details about what had been said. Thankfully, my proposed thesis was right in line with what they dictated and I felt prepared to continue in my direction.

By mid-evening Katie and I both felt like we were approaching this paper differently than our first two—for better or for worse. I personally thought it was more like a literature paper for highschool, and was excited while many people were weary before even starting. At story time I found out that Steve had come across a great writing streak and finished his first draft between dinner and 10pm! Wow. I finally crawled into bed at 12:30 having not accomplished my goal of one page. I did, however, have a working thesis, all of my examples from Beowulf, and solid outline of points, and a clear vision for my paper. That means tomorrow should be a piece of cake…