{"id":19650,"date":"2018-10-19T05:42:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T12:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=19650"},"modified":"2018-10-19T14:14:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T21:14:28","slug":"what-a-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/what-a-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Relief!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a Relieve!<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the time we left Hong Kong, the challenge of self-organisation has been significant and especially balancing the work-related, family and reading assignments. On arriving back home, there was much waiting for me and without settling down to access the situation before getting straight into them, I jumped into them. There was a deep crisis in one of our churches with serious internal conflicts that threaten its split and they were waiting for me to bring them together from a neutral level. I also found my son who is a college student and had had some drug\/alcohol challenges and was in rehab was relapsing back to the same. I had to deal with two critical issues at the same time as if that was enough, the same week I was holding an Africa board meeting for my organisation where I am the secretary to the board and organiser for the board meeting where leaders were coming from across Africa. On top of that, I had a class assignment to read and prepare for our zoom classes. With all these in place and trying to figure which one takes priority, my elder son came and introduced to us his fianc\u00e9 whom they are planning for marriage in one-month time.<\/p>\n

With all the above issues falling on the shoulders of one person were seriously overwhelming and confusing. With variously mixed emotion, where at one time was sad about the boy relapsing and trying to get him back to the counsellor and on the other hand joy for another son who is planning for his wedding and bringing another member in our family. Reading this book by Derek Rowntree which at first never looked like it could transform anybody, and especially when he stressed on how to keep a balance between the competing demands of study, family responsibilities and full-time jobs. The book spoke to the condition and saw myself in the middle of all these mix-ups. There was no other good time than reading this book now that earnestly spoke to me as if Derek was addressing my confused situation and asking me to organise myself with proper planning. I am always organized, but this time I was caught off guard completely and found myself in a state of confusion. This led to even confusing the time I was to join the Zoom in and ended joining an hour later when it was ending. This was a clear indication from Derek’s description of a strategic planning method that I was to plan while in Hong Kong, but I had no clue what was waiting for me back home. Learning is indeed a process, and simple reading books may seem obvious, but I am happy Derek Rowntree has driven some sense of planning, organisation and strategic focus on this journey of study. It is an essential factor that we need to take responsibility for what we do especially our lifestyle, learning resources, time and study sessions. If I had observed all the above I would have managed some of the challenges I encountered when I arrived from Hong Kong; I would have handled better than how I did this time around.<\/p>\n

Derek Rowntree wrote that there is a need for one to be understanding his situation;\u00a0 “Different situations have different things to offer you and make different demands on you in return.” Understanding your situation and reflecting on what one needs to do in advance is important so that one may not be drawn in the mix-up of many world issues we experience. Derek further said that “If you do not understand your situation, you find yourself blindly adopting in-appropriate approaches to studying\u2026.\u201d This is the actual situation I found myself in when I came from Hong Kong. I appreciate the time I took going through Derek book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a Relieve! From the time we left Hong Kong, the challenge of self-organisation has been significant and especially balancing the work-related, family and reading assignments. On arriving back home, there was much waiting for me and without settling down to access the situation before getting straight into them, I jumped into them. There was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[913],"class_list":["post-19650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rowntree","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19651,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19650\/revisions\/19651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}