Leisure of the Best Kind

I was sitting outside my friends' house early this morning (even before they were awake!). The picnic table in their backyard looks out over Long Island Sound. I watched the gray sky turn a fuzzy yellow as the breeze started to nudge the clouds back over the horizon. Turning the page of my Joint Structure and Function bible, I pulled my sweatshirt on over my Sunday dress. With every paragraph I returned to, I learned more about my own knee joint, and consequently, the knee joints of all mankind.
My assignment for tutorial class on Tuesday is to present on normal knee joint motions, and then those of a knee whose ACL has been torn.

Who would have thought I could "get into" this! I thank God time and again for my degree from That Anonymous College--the place where I really learned how to "get into" learning. The amount of reading was always overwhelming to me, as I used to demand understanding of every phrase before continuing. They used to tell us, "A life of study is a life of leisure." I would always mutter some retort such as, "If I don't get it, I'm not having fun." So, a fortiori, Finals Week was the period of maximum leisure?? hmmm...which premise is "off," there?

But what excellent training all of that was! Primarily, I'm grateful for the substance of knowledge I gained. But without realizing it, I was also being trained in the method of obtaining knowledge.

I dreaded opening Joint Structure and Function this morning. Although I knew it had the information I needed, all I've been hearing from my classmates is, "It's so dense; it's so hard to read; I fall asleep after 3 pages..." anon anon anon. Gee whiz, folks! Ever try reading Hegel on a Sunday morning? Ok, let's keep it to science...Einstein? This is pleasure reading, for goodness' sake! Sure, my professor put substance into every single sentence when she wrote this book, but that just means you have to read every single sentence. Yeah, what a drag.... =b

So as I'm sitting at the picnic table, looking out over the Sound, I realize that there's nothing else I have to do today. This is my job--my vocation right now is to be a student. I can sit here all day and read about the knee joint. And by the way, I'm loving learning about the knee joint. Because I've been trained to read so as to learn. (slight stylistic plagiarism from St. Paul)

So because I'm excited about physical therapy and all the knowledge that I need to understand it more, studying about it is how I want to spend my time.

That's the kind of leisure I'm talkin' about.