Lacking Motivation

The past few days, I just haven't had any motivation at all.  I think I'm overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work that has to be done.  None of it is excessively difficult--there's just so much of it.  Here's a taste of my list of things to do before next Wednesday:

1. Finish and edit an open letter, based on the letters in Revelation 2-3, to the congregation that most formed me.
2. Read a 6 page article and answer 10 reflection questions on said reading.
3. Read 12 pages of Jean Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.
4. Read a 35 page article and write out the accompanying study questions.
5. Read through seven chunks of the OT prophetic books, and memorize them well enough to be able to recognize a quote from each on the midterm and say which prophet wrote it.
6. Read several more articles and answer a whole bunch more study questions, the numbers of which I haven't yet counted.
7. Memorize at least 40 Greek vocab words, including every pronoun and definite article in the Greek language.
8. Memorize and recite to my class the Letter to Ephesus in Revelation 2-3. 

I won't bore you with the rest of it. (Yes, there's more.)  But now, you can understand my sense of 'overwhelmed.'

Despite all of this, I've taken the last two nights off from doing any real work.  I feel like I need time to absorb all of this, to reflect on it.  I need time to explore my own sense of call, I think.  But now that I'm over my head in reading, writing and 'thinking theologically', my brain just doesn't have any room to think about anything else.

By the way: if anyone can tell me how a person 'thinks theologically', and how I can switch my International Relations brain to Theology, I would very much appreciate that.  Five weeks in, I'm still not sure what that phrase means.

Other developments:

I finished another crochet project!  It's a neck warmer, for which I didn't really have a pattern.  I just kind of did whatever I felt like with it.  I'm hoping to get a picture of it that I can upload for you before I donate it to the church auction next weekend.  =]

I finally get to participate in worship this week!  I'll be the liturgist for the call to worship and the confession portion, which one of the pastors very graciously wrote out for me.  Hopefully next week I'll be able to write my own, which would be awesome. 

And finally, another PLUS/MINUS:

MINUS: Even after having been here for six weeks, I feel like I don't really know anyone yet.  Sometimes, I feel like I speak an entirely different language than most of my peers.  I don't really know how to explain it, other than in 'bubble' terms.  My bubble at Knox was so diverse (comparatively, at least), and so weird sometimes (and that's not necessarily a bad thing), that I seem to have trouble communicating with people that use the word 'normal' in a good sense.

PLUS:  There is so much support for women at Western.  Next week alone, there are two separate events just for female students: an evening with the faculty women on Tuesday, and a formal dinner with the women of Calvin Seminary (hosted by the two seminaries' presidents' wives) on Thursday.  In November, there's a luncheon (again, with Calvin), where two authors are coming to chat with us about their book and their experiences as women in pastoral ministry.  I am ridiculously excited about all of these things!

It's so refreshing to not have to defend myself or my call to anyone else here on the basis of my gender.  Do I question my own call sometimes?  Do  I have to explain my sense of 'call' every other day to someone new?  Yes, but never simply because I am a woman.  And that is awesome.