One Happy Post

So this is a post that I had hoped I would write this year. I know last year every once in a while I would write about Junior year. In this post and this post  specifically I wrote about how difficult last year was. It wasn't impossible, and I tried hard not to complain, but sometimes it was just too much. There would be days where school was hectic, the kids I babysit were acting crazy, and then I would come home and work on homework for hours until I went to bed with absolutely no break.

I could probably count on one hand the number of days I did NOT have a quiz or test in school because I pretty much had one every single day. And not that it was totally impossible, but it was definitely exhausting.

Well, I can happily say that the rumors are true: Senior year isn't as demanding as Junior year. Alleluia! I realize I'm not that far into Senior year, but I feel like I'm far enough in where I know the homework load. I just can't really express how amazing it feels to be able to do a lot more relaxing and fun things when I come home from school.

Take today for example, this is my amount of homework:

I finished everything except about half an hour of homework by 5 o'clock. Yes!

Tonight I'm planning on painting my nails, baking a dessert for a party tomorrow, and making a headband for my themed dance tomorrow night! Pure bliss :)

We've got a big Senior Project to do this year (I might write a post about it one of these days!), and some people are really freaking out about it, but I'm honestly super excited about it. I'm doing my project on something I absolutely love and am passionate about, so I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

We also have a Senior Series in art class where we each get to pick some kind of theme to do a whole bunch of art work on. I chose mine on Paris, and I'm really looking forward to doing those projects too!

So although I do think the amount of work has decreased from Junior to Senior year, I'm also not dreading the work that I do have because I have a lot more freedom this year in studying things that I want to study.

And I can't believe I'm about to incorporate Beowulf into a blog post, but I am....

Last week in my English class we read the poem Beowulf. It's an old oral tradition story that eventually got written down about a hero that slays monsters and dragons, but eventually ends up getting killed in the end.

Today in class we were talking about the story and how it incorporated a lot of faith and God into it. The narrator had a big belief in God that really showed through the entire story. It also pointed out the fact that having faith in God and humanity can really take you far in life, but in the end it's important to remember that everyone is still human, and everyone still makes mistakes.

This got me thinking about how this all applies to my own life. Sometimes I think that having a strong faith tends to make more things in your life go "right". But I've realized that's not really the case. Having faith in God doesn't mean your life is free of problems, but it also doesn't mean that your life is a lot better than someone else's who has no faith.

I think that having faith just changes your perspective, not your situations. But a good, faith-like perspective makes all the difference. And that's what I took away from Beowulf - that faith and trust doesn't make us not human, but it does make us better equipped to handle life's challenges.

I never thought I'd be able to relate a couple thousand year old story to my life (and this blog post), but somehow I did!

So maybe although my circumstances have improved somewhat since last year, maybe I'm also getting a little bit better of a perspective that makes me see the best in my days. That's definitely something I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to get better at!

So have a good rest of your Thursday, and try to focus on what went right today instead of the things that went wrong :)