LeTourneau adventures etc

So! LeTourneau was awesome, for lack of a better word. My various exploits included NOT missing any flights despite Texas being hit by a freak snowstorm ['0.5 inches! Let's close all the schools!'], arriving at the arranged time to find that my poor roommates had not been informed that I was arriving WEDNESDAY not THURSDAY [they were wonderful about it], scuttling along the frozen campus in what must have been a 10° windchill [very very cold, for me], all on the first day.

The scholarship competition spanned three days and ~75 high school seniors from around the country. It was all fabulously fun and occasionally nerve-wracking. I met some rather amazing people, Heritage kids, LeTU students, professors, they were all great.

My days consisted of such things as orientations, meals in the cafeteria [students alleged it actually tasted that good regularly!] with the faculty, hobnobbing with a couple of LeTU students in the sunshine playing frisbee and listening to a kid play guitar, going out to a movie on the last night with the one other Heritage gal staying in my dorm and a bunch of college students who we'd met, group interviews, and essay-writing. We learn about the scholarship in about two weeks.....

And yes, for a number of reasons I do think LeTourneau is the right college for me.

If I go to college, that is.

Because patriocentricity reappeared on the scene with the aplomb of, say, Saruman or any other classic villain. [Except around here, patriocentricity wears a black trenchcoat and a Stetson. Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference.]

I do so enjoy this. I pendulum regularly from

1) Can't go on
to
2) Can't give up

and that's really all there is to it.
When I was a little kid, I think I used to be just insanely happy all the time [okay not all the time, but compared to now, yes]. Most teenagers become a lot less happy.....I became a lot less happy, in SPOTS. At intervals.
I manage to cram Bethie-enthusiasm into half as much time, it seems like, and Teenaged Angst into the other half. [The percentages are a little off.]

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We packed up the robot last Tuesday, at 30 seconds to midnight. It was extremely epic. I was writing autonomous mode at 9 PM and testing out the line-following code and shrieking when it WORKED and getting cut on duct tape [don't ask me how] and running back to the computer to tweak the program [the laptop DIED on the last day and we were trotting the robot back and forth every half hour] and ingesting more caffeine and etc etc. It was a really thrilling day fraught with watchdog errors in the code and tension in the shop.

We bagged up the robot at 11:56, tagged it, and then realized that the router was still outside...we could add it to the 30-lb allowance of stuff we can work on after the deadline, but we didn't. Mentor got a brilliant idea and bagged it right on TOP of the robot....just tucked it down on top of the first tag, and tagged the router with a second tag....perfectly legal and very amusing....

Now I'm beginning to obsess about scouting and jot to-do lists on my physics notes.

Bought about 20 books at the library used-book sale this weekend! On the last day I was running around stuffing books into a cardboard box at $5 a box, rather exciting.

Quote from my physics teacher, showing us an applet [ == little application] that demonstrates the concept of pressure on an atomic level:
'An applet a day keeps the engineer away!'


Patriocentricity, Take Two
Hey, if anybody reading feels like praying for me, please do. I don't usually beg for prayer, for some reason [probably a silly one], but I sure need it. I'm always saying that I don't know how much longer I can go on; every time the fight takes a little more out of me.

Thanks guys.

My disappointing multi-generational vision, AND Texas

I keep hearing the phrase 'multi-generational vision' or 'multi-generational faithfulness'. I guess I really should READ the books [addressed to men] that explain in detail what exactly multi-generational vision is...

Vision Forum is, naturally, very big on vision.

I am not.

My disappointing version of 'vision' does not involve 'taking dominion' over the earth and everything and everybody in it. If I may paraphrase one of my friends: I see value in changing the culture, but only one person at a time, simply by being a Christian. Showing Christ's love to others, that is.

We are never told in the New Testament [and I think not in the Old either] to take dominion over the culture.


Heh, my vision would probably tend towards wanting any offspring to do FIRST and go into computer science and maths and other things like that, but I hope I wouldn't ever force them to do that. Because other people are not me.

My vision includes ensuring that any children I have, particularly girls, do not read or hear about patriocentricity until they have a solid faith based on love and grace, and they are old enough to discern the good from the bad. Sheltering, I suppose. Meh.

Most likely I'll eschew any Vision Forum products, if only so that Mum does not have a meltdown upon seeing the catalog she used to fume over a teenager, hehehe.

Okay, I really do have more uplifting goals than that. I just don't have the time or energy to expound to an eagerly waiting public [heh heh] about them.


In other news, I'm back to considering LeTourneau University. So much so, in fact, that I'm actually flying out there next week, to compete for a scholarship and also tour the place. Of course the Dallas airport WOULD be closed currently, due to the worst storm of this year's Texas winter, but hopefully things will be cleared up by next week. I leave next Wednesday, at the cheery hour of 8 AM, and return late Sunday night.
So! A solo trip to a college on foreign soil! Great fun! Also a little frightening, but I am quite enthused. And beginning to pack baggage [the college doesn't have room for the influx of its 100 top students of the freshman class, so we are kipping on dorm room floors in sleeping bags].