The winter holidays are always a busy time with lots to do before them and then even more once everything starts up again in the new year. For me, this has been a busy time with lots of emails, papers, and of course, the holidays themselves. 

Before the holidays, there was a flurry of meetings, including for the  Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe Book Launch and Symposium which I am helping to organize as the student assistant for the Center for Religion and Heritage. The handbook is a project edited by Professor Todd Weir and Dr. Lieke Wijnia with more than 40 section authors, and is available as open access here. Organizing this conference has had me sending emails, booking travel for visiting professors, making flyers, and practicing my social media skills to promote it, but I am very much looking forward to the event. 

I also had a faculty council meeting which was, as always, a great look into the inner workings of the faculty. The meeting process also included both meeting with the rest of the student faction, as well as meeting with a University Council representative to be able to pass information both ways about how the faculty is being run, but also what is happening across the whole university.  

Throughout the second quarter I also followed my first Dutch language course with the University’s Language Center. After seven years of living in the Netherlands I figured it was time to start working on my language skills. The twice weekly course was a great experience with an excellent teacher! And despite it being an introductory course, it gave me a great confidence boost with the bits and pieces I have picked up throughout my time here in Groningen, and left me eager to work on it more! 

During all of this I have been slowly starting my work on my Bachelor’s Thesis, the last assignment of my years as a BA student here. Kind of like approaching a mountain while doing a multi-day hike, that lump off in the distance grows steadily larger until suddenly it’s right in front of you and all there is to do is get over it. This could be a more fitting metaphor if I were to talk of fighting a dragon instead of climbing a mountain, as I will be talking about the works of Tolkien, the religion in them, and how the film adaptations have changed the messages and themes, both implicitly and explicitly. That being said, for those of you who have read The Hobbit recently, or just have a good memory, my metaphor of this being an approach to a mountain might in fact still be accurate, but my hope is that whether the metaphor is a mountain or a dragon, it stays metaphorical and my laptop doesn’t start breathing fire. 

The holidays themselves were fairly relaxed for me and a much needed break. This year I had decided to stay in the Netherlands instead of making the mad dash (10+ hour flight) back to Berkeley for what would have been a 10 or 12 day trip. Instead, I spent the holidays with my girlfriend, meeting her family and spending time with them, which was quite lovely. 

Coming back to school following two weeks off is always a bumpy reentry, especially with the cold and the dark we have this far north. My first week back was a mix of feeling quite productive as I sent and replied to emails, but also feeling like I was spinning my wheels in the mental mud of vacation and the realization that now that the holidays are over we have another two or three months before it starts getting warmer and lighter. Every day gets a bit smoother and easier to get back into the groove, so it's just an issue of persistence and eventually the words will arrive on the paper.