School Parallels

This week, I'm detoxing.

I've been overtaken by junk food lately, so junk food is the first thing I've been trying to give up. The next is facebook. Oh, how I hate to admit that facebook has gotten the best of me, but I've gotten into a habit of checking it a little too often in the past several weeks, so it's time for a break.

The withdrawal hurts. I'm hungry and lonely. That's what stings the most - the fact that, without facebook, I feel lonely. How pathetic.
 
Interestingly, this week in school I'm studying addiction. Even though my addictions aren't quite as dangerous as other addictions out there, I'm very aware that I am a slave to certain things. Every time I study addiction (the topic spans several classes in my major), and I read stories of people who have suffered from severe alcoholism or pornography addiction, I realize that I have a similar problem, just not with alcohol or pornography. I have the habitual tendency to turn to something (like food or facebook) when I feel stressed out and I want to escape. It gives me a temporary high, and then I feel ashamed. The shame causes me to beat myself up, then I feel stressed, and I start all over again.

I don't like the feeling of being controlled by something, and as I study what happens in the brain as addiction is formed, it's a little frightening. Addiction truly takes away freedom, so I am trying to be more aware of the ways I habitually try to escape reality.

This is one thing that is really great about my schooling process. I feel like every class I have taken so far has been relevant to what is going on in my life at the time. Even week by week. For example, last week I was worried about a relationship with a friend. When I started my reading for school, it was all about relationships and how to be a good friend. On Saturday, I confided in someone that I have had a lot of negative emotions lately, particularly anger. I had no idea that when I started my reading on Monday (two days later), I would be studying anger.

Anger and addiction all in one week. It's like my classes were designed for me.

The other phenomenon I experience with school is that I take two classes at a time, and even when the subjects are quite different, they tend to overlap. Right now I am taking Family Theory and Communcation Essentials, and there have been several times during the semester where the material from one class has related to the other, and it kind of blows my mind.

I am also shocked at how much I love family theory. I have learned bits and pieces of family theory in other classes (particularly Family Systems Theory and Stress Theory) and I've always muddled through and never cared for the topic, but now that I'm studying it more thoroughly, I'm eating it up. 

I really feel like God is involved in this process. For reasons I don't fully know just yet, He led me to this, and He is guiding me through it semester by semester.

Next semester I'll be taking Human Growth & Development and Adolescent Development. I am excited (and a little scared) to see what role these courses will take in my personal life, especially since Scotty and I will be channeling our inner pioneers as we play "Ma and Pa" to 15 teenagers on Trek this summer.

(Anyone can parent 15 teenagers for three days while they pull handcarts dressed like this in hundred degree weather with no shade, right?)