Culture Shock-ish-ness: Part One

So I haven't been a good blogger lately. Main reason? Penn is HARD! I never really realized before how much multi-tasking American university life - especially Penn university life - requires of young'uns. I don't feel like such a young'un anymore. This stuff is crazy exhausting!

To give a better idea of where I'm coming home: A typical week for me in Germany looked something like this: I had class 3 days a week, usually only 1.5 hours of it each day (3 MAX!!), put in a few hours at my internship Mondays and Fridays, and spent the rest of my time doing readings for class, doing church stuff, or riding the subway. Or eating or sleeping. Of course, life got stressful then too. But let's compare mere quantity of activities. In Germany, there were 4 classes (less than 10 hours of classroom time), Bible study, church on Sunday, and either choir or voice lessons. Here? 5 classes (granted, by choice, but it's twice the amount of classroom time and at least 4 times the homework), Bible study, planning for said Bible study with the other group co-leaders, Campus Crusade, choir, church on Sunday, internship on Saturday, and more social gatherings - which, granted, are not required, but I don't want people to think I'm completely asocial - than I keep track of. And then there are things like Fulbright applications and hunting down random unhelpful people who have to approve the courses I took in Berlin so they will actually appear on my transcript and other annoying bureaucratic things... It feels like I'm running a marathon. And for the record, I can't run!

I always knew that Penn was full of super intense over-achievers, but man...

The good news: everything I'm doing (except the bureaucratic stuff and some of the homework) is fun. The bad news: everything I'm doing (except ditto) is fun. Which means I don't want to drop anything! I could easily drop a course and have no problems getting all the credits I need. But I don't want to drop any of my courses! And I'm actually doing less stuff than I did sophomore year, but I guess back then I was still a "spring chicken" and somehow was able to handle it...