Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Heater...an end to my split personality in sight

Tonight I had the delightful pleasure of attending a middle school girls volleyball game. You might ask how can that be either delightful or pleasurable, and you would be right to do so.

Middle school volleyball is about the worst sport to watch if you have no vested interest in the game, and it is the worst sport to watch if you're forced to be in attendance. An actual volley occurs following every 7.3 serves. An ace occurs more frequently but more often as the result of someone watching to see if a certain boy is paying attention to them rather than the result of a well-placed shot. A spike or kill is the Holy Grail of middle school volleyball, happening about as often as the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. But there are two reasons why tonight was great.

1. This was the last game of the season, so I will not have to go to another match unless I willingly choose to, which is highly unlikely. Especially considering some other news I'll post further down. And...

2. The middle-age man sitting on the front row who would yell "OH YEAH, THE HEATER!!!, THE HEATER!!! YEAH!!! THE HEATER!!!" every time one of the middle school girls "served up an ace/the other team blew a return." My first thought was how ridiculous it was to call a 12-year-old girl's serve "The Heater," considering that her arm is about as big around as my index finger. Half of their serves didn't even make it over the net. But I was eventually won over by the man's enthusiasm and was slowly brainwashed into using the term in my notes. By the end of the match, it was actually pretty natural for me to label a serve that lands on the other side of the net "The Heater," and I'm kind of sad I won't be able to use it any time soon. Regardless, I left the gym with a hop in my step.

I'm not ready to lay to rest using "The Heater" phrase just yet, but I won't be using it anytime soon since I'll be making a career change of sorts soon.

After about five months of not having a clue whether I was going to stay on with Bryan Student Life or not, I accepted a full-time position as a resident director for next fall last Friday. I was notified of the opportunity's possibility back in October when talks started about building a new dorm, but I only interviewed for the position about a week ago. I cannot express the relief knowing that I won't have to try to juggle two jobs next year and that the job I will have is what I've wanted to do for close to five years. I guess the best way to explain is to say that I've wanted my life to be an example to the guys in the house this year, to just live life with them and be open about what my life entails on a daily basis, and I was pretty discouraged when I discovered that one of my guys only recently realized that I have another full-time job. I guess he thought I just spent exorbitant amounts of time staying away from the house, which must make me an apartment manager or something. This year has been harder, far more difficult than I ever would have thought, and I know that it will prove to be a defining time in my life, but I'm really looking forward to being more visible, more available and not squeezing ministry into a double-life.

I still intend to continue writing too. I've always wanted to develop my own column for the paper but have never had the time to invest in it.Hopefully, with a little more downtime, I'll be able to get this thing off the ground and maybe even incorporate "THE HEATER!!! YEAH!!!! THE HEATER!!! into a column or two.