"Give me gift of being able to see myself as I really am ..."

Well, I haven't written for a week because I have been flat out. Not so much with the first weeks of study (I'll write about my comparative lack of academic work in another blog entry) but with parties, social activites, extra-curricular activities, eating out, meeting friends, cooking, playing the piano, and tidying my room and the kitchen ...

... In general, though, life at the Graduate School of Business has been awesome. It is incredible to be here, and the people, subjects, facilities - the whole deal - makes me feel so thankful!

Now when I first got here, I went to a bible study on, of all things, marriage and relationships (this was not a deliberate choice of mine, honest!). I can't even remember what takeaways I had from that part of the bible study - I think we looked at Genesis 1-2 and stuff - but we also looked at another passage in the bible, Romans 12.

I can't remember what Romans 12 had to do with marriage but I still remember verse 3 jumping out at me, like some kind of (jumping) Mexican bean ... (ah, fajitas)

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

In this passage, the writer encourages readers (such as you and me) not to look at ourselves in too bright a light - but instead with "sober judgment". Furthermore, they state that the ability to look at ourselves with this sober judgment is God's gift.

From the time I read that, I knew what my main prayer point would be for the first few weeks of my time here at Stanford - that God would allow me to see myself with sober judgment; as I really am. You see, I tend to fluctuate between thinking I'm (i) the best thing since sliced bread covered with cheese and (ii) really ordinary and incompetent across a wide range of discrete variables. From extreme to extreme. This seems counter-intuitive: wouldn't someone only be up one end of the spectrum? Either thinking too highly or too low of themselves? You might think so, but this is not true of me.

As I've been praying this prayer, funny things have happened. Some early successes with exams and class participation (I always have to hold myself back in class - and no I am not a nerd!) keep leading me to think "wow, I'm the cream of the crop here! I rock!". However, yesterday in the space of two hours I went from being embarrased in my super-economics class on globalisation (economics professors = intense and weird) and losing this real estate competition selection thingy (the top 4 would have gone to Texas to compete in the national competition, and I thought I would definitely have ended up there!), along with some poor time management, had me thinking "geez, I can be really pathetic!". The reality of course is that I'm neither the best nor the worst. But it is so hard to maintain a balanced view of one's self - though in this new environment I think I see a lot of things about me that I hadn't noticed before!

Methinks this prayer is slowly being answered ...

Hope you are well!

john