Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Going Beyond

Tonight was College Night, so we had the opportunity to sign up for informational seminars regarding pertinent college material. I signed up for Questions to Ask on a Campus Tour as well as Beyond the B.S., and they were, for the most part, extremely informative.

Beyond the B.S. covered the many college degrees offered in undergraduate and graduate schools, what steps an aspiring student must do to obtain these degrees, and whether the student’s future career or direction required a certain degree or not.

I learned an enormous amount of information regarding professional degrees because frankly, I was not educated about them at all until now. Therefore I absorbed as much as I could about the different levels of college degrees, and now, I have a clearer image of the steps I need to take and degrees I need to achieve in order to reach my future goal of becoming a physician. This seminar cleared much of the thick cloud of confusion I had about my future college education, and I feel very much better informed and confident about it.

My interest in my World Religions class is constantly increasing as we dive deeper within the many major religions of the world. I can honestly say that I now have a much better understanding of faith—not simply the history of it, but the impact and reason it has in people’s lives. I have learned things about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam that I never knew before and probably would never had the chance to study much (or at all) in school or college.

We have officially begun our studies of Hinduism, and many of us walked out of class today with an aching head and question marks circling above our brows.

Because we have just concluded our analysis on the Abrahamic faiths, which share a history as well as certain aspects of worship, the introduction of Hinduism put forth completely new and almost incomparable ideas on the table.

After much discussion on the Hindu belief of Brahman and reincarnation (it is much more complicated than it may appear), we left class a bit more enlightened than before. Just a bit.

During Study Hall, however, I seemed to have reached an epiphany of some sort and my ideas about Hinduism began to click. I cannot wait for class tomorrow so I may present my conclusions and essay about the night’s reading.

Our first field trip to Sherith Israel Synagogue is scheduled for tomorrow as well, which makes me even more excited than ever. There is a dress code for our visitation tomorrow—since it is a holy place, we must dress respectfully. That means long pants and covered shoulders for the ladies, and a hat for the men (the synagogue will provide kippahs).

I am enjoying the activities and class here at VSA, but the one aspect that never ceases to put me in an indecent mood is the bug bites that no one is safe from.

Many of us have been suffering from fiery mosquito bites since Day 1. However, this day must have been one of my less fortunate ones. I awoke to a swollen left eye (which is probably not one of the best things to wake up to). I hurried downstairs to the office before breakfast with Aiyana to seek some medical attention (VSA provides exceptional student services in regards to the well-being of their students), and was given some allergy medicine to decrease the swelling. However, I found that Benadryl is not effective on mosquito bite swellings, to my dismay. I suppose I will have to walk around with a puffy eye for the next few days.

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