Freedom!

The hard semester has come and passed! I’m relieved to be typing this, back home in Minneapolis, realizing there will not be a semester quite as brutal as this one for the rest of my Drake career!

The last two weeks of school + finals was the most demanding academic experience I’ve ever had. A 10 page term paper, 3 (15ish) page lab reports, and five tests, all in about 20 days! Looking back, I got a ton of grace throughout this semester, and I’d like to highlight some of the things that got me through.

-    God – “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” – 2 Corin. 2:19, I remember praying for grace weeks before the semester started in the mountains of California, knowing hard times would come, and that’d I’d be weak. God’s promises always come through.
-    Classmates – more specifically, one of my classmates helped me above and beyond – Kyle. He was the only other student in my Inorganic chemistry class, and really helped me out big time! The class was a huge learning experience because our professor expected us to figure out everything on our own, and most of the advanced instrumentation I had never used before (luckily Kyle was able to take the advanced Instrumental class last spring and had done research in our professor’s lab before, so he knew what was up). The lab was a struggle often, and it didn’t help that we left half of our lab reports for the last three weeks, but we were able to work together, peer review each others papers, and show the lab who was boss.
-    Professors – I couldn’t ask for more wonderful professors! In upper level courses where class sizes are small, the profs really go all out for you. One thing my p-chem prof did was stay an extra hour after class two days a week to help us work through tough problems!
-    Parents – I did have a few times where I freaked out and was overwhelmed, but my mom and dad are always just a phone call away to talk through things if I ever need them. Thanks mom and dad!
-    Friends and fellowship always brightened the day and were always there! I’m so blessed and thankful to be part of a fellowship who really believes and follows John 15:13!

As of now, I’ve been totally lazy the first few days of break! I’ve gotten to spend a lot of good time with family, and am excited to visit and hang out with friends this week.

Mike