20 Weeks or less to Internet Savvy: Changing Your Life with the Internet

Introduction

Many of you may have used the internet but are wondering, how can I leverage the internet to take advantage of the tools it provides? You are at the right place.

My Story-You Can Do It!

I started diving into the internet world on December 15, 2007. Prior to that, I used my university e-mail and g-mail, had a Facebook profile, had made a basic website, and did shopping online. So basically, I had a few basics, but not too much beyond the average collegiate internet user.

While exploration is fun, if one wants to explore in the most efficient manner something which has already been found, a guide is invaluable. The guide is organized for you in a step by step manner, as opposed to the less methodical way I discovered the sites through other guides. The order should make joining everywhere as efficient as possible, however the subject organization will allow you to pick and choose.

Each task does not require much time. The hope is that you can do this in less than 1 hour per day while still customizing the services to who you are. Take some time to fill out your profiles, otherwise your presence will have minimal effects.

Disclaimers:

Trying this might not be healthy for your life. I publish it with hesitation and the sincere hope that it will help and not hurt you, but I can say that I have often wondered it this so called “empowerment” has been beneficial.

The list is general, basic, and limited to my own experience. Your niche probably requires tools unknown to me. However, using the tools below will almost certainly enable you to find what you need.

I at first attempted to list all of your other options in each category. Now I realize that would be ridiculous for such an amateur; I have tried to hit the major sites though. Read the week about expansion if you really want to be on top of the latest trends.

Most things here are FREE! Those things which require an investment are fairly obvious. As far as I know, everything here is also legal.

Standing on the Soldiers of Giants

Week 1: Building The Foundation

Day 1: Install Firefox Web Browser (consider Flock as well)

Day 2: Install FireFox Extensions and Add Ons (I recommend: DownThemAll!, Download StatusBar, Colorful Tabs, Del.ico.us, Showcase, Session Manager, StumbleUpon and PicLens)

Day 3: Sign up for Del.ico.us bookmarking, bookmark and tag as you go on this journey

Day 4: Sign up for “spam” e-mail address at Juno, Hotmail…use to reference all the things you are about to sign up for so they don’t interfere with your personal e-mail!

Day 2: Sign up for Gmail and set up a personalized homepage with iGoogle or Netvibes

Day 3: Sign up for an account with Yahoo!

Day 4: Sign up for an account with Windows Live

Day 7: Organize your e-mail with Outlook and Xobni or Thunderbird

Week 2: Social Networking: Connect with your friends!

Day 1: Join Facebook add friends and applications galore

Day 2: Join MySpace add friends and applications galore (other options: Bebo, Ning, Hi5, Friendster, Imeem, Orkut, Totspot for your babies)

Day 3: Join LinkedIn and/or Xing and/or Biographicon to get your name in the social work community

Day 4: Join Second Life (I still haven’t because I still haven’t found a name I really love…and I’m not sure I really want to…)

Day 5: Get a date with a larger site like eHarmony or Match.com. Look for specialty sites based on your religious views or interests. If you’d like an overview, here’s a big list with reviews.

Day 6: Develop Profiles with your personal information, add-ons/applications/widgets

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 3: News and the Information Pipeline

Note of Warning: if you are fairly curious, these can take all your free time away if you let them. My commitment now is to only read feeds during dinner time. I’d strongly suggest you put bounded limits on the time you spend looking at news!

Day 1: Sign up for Google Reader and select some blogs (ideas-I highly recommend ReadWriteWeb as you go on this expedition), old definition of RSS and almost-as-old post on teaching people about RSS

Day 2: Familiarize yourself with blogs/RSS feeds you signed up for and the types of stories they give. Expand or reduce list as necessary. For more ideas here is a list of my feeds.

Day 3: Sign up for social or personalized news at Digg, Tiinker, Newsvine, Mashable or Yahoo Buzz

Day 4: Learn how to be a search master here or use these: Google, Delver, Quintura, Ask, ChaCha, Yamour, Others, even make your own!

Day 5: Consider joining “semantic web” applications like Twine, which feed you recommendations based on where you are browsing

Day 6: Keep refining RSS feed and search engines you like, don’t forget to “star” or “share” your favorites! Learn to use the keyboard shortcuts “J” and “K” to go forward and back in google reader!

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 4: Take on Microsoft Office/Link your office to the internet (or just learn how to work better together)

Day 1: Work with a complete office solution: Google docs/Open office/Microsoft office live/Zoho/ThinkFree. I still use Office 2007 with Word, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, but the day of online applications is visible on the horizon…

Day 2: Build a presentation: Empressr and learn how to present it with your local Toastmasters, Build a database at Dabbledb or Blist

Day 3: Keep your data online and share it with friends with Box, FolderShare, Xdrive or 90 other places

Day 4: See your buddy’s computer screen to help him out with CrossLoop or YuuGuu, or connect your computers with RealVNC, or just surf the internet together with Medium

Day 5: Work together with Backpack, Basecamp, or Facebook’s My Office and keep track of office necessities with Long Jump, NetBooks

Day 6: Keep up with your customers with Sales Force or by managing e-mail lists with ListServ-Lite

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 5: Go Mobile

This is going to grow like wildfire for the next couple of years…

Day 1: Get a GPS/SMS/internet enabled phone: I’m using: Samsung Blackjack II with AT&T, Look at the iPhone, Razr v3 and Blackberries too, they are very common and there are lots of applications online for them

Day 2: Sign up for Grand Central to gain total control over your calls

Day 3: Sign up for Skype (and get a webcam) or AOL IM or MSN Messenger to talk to anyone in the world

Day 4: Sign up for Twitter and Friend Feed to share your life and what is getting your attention on the web. I am loving friend feed, because it allows me to share RSS feeds that I really like with other people (so it doesn’t require your phone, but can enhance it)

Day 5: Sign up for Meebo or Trillian and link up all your IM names

Day 6: Customize at PhoneZoo (make ringtones, find games…), let others know where you are with MyLoki, Fireeagle

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 6: Become an Activist and Serve Others

This guide was not made for you to just selfishly take in information. Learn to use these new tools to help others!

Day 1: Identify a cause/causes you are passionate about (My examples: Ecpat, The Navigators, B2G) also The Water Project

Day 2: Lend or donate money at Kiva, Donors Choose, Network for Good, or your time at Time Bank

Day 3: Get unbiased info Factcheck, USA.gov and FedStats or many other sites, know the politicians that are representing you so you can contact their offices! Seriously, democracy requires active involvement!

Day 4: Sign up for Causes and Ultimatum on Facebook to let others know what you are passionate about

Day 5: Learn more about the causes you want to help and what you can DO!

Day 6: Turn your knowledge into action: write a letter…

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 7: Become a Healthier Person

Day 1: Learn how to cook better: Cooking for Engineers, Epicurious,

Day 2: Know thy body: Revolution Health portal, Medem Leaning Centers, which aggregates top articles from leading medical societies on a wide range of topics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health

Day 3: Diagnose yourself with WebMD

Day 4: Know the trends from the Health 2.0 Conference Review,

Day 5: Read reviews at Healthcare Reviews, HealthGrades,

Day 6: Use online calculators like Microsoft’s Healthvault, Map My Run or My Fitness Pal or Fitness Peaks a host of other places

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 8: Manage Your Money

Day 1: Sign up for online service for all your finances, I use USAA, Compass Bank, MorganStanley ClientServ, UFB Direct and Wells Fargo

Day 2: Sign up for Mint or Quicken Online or Quickbooks Online to keep track of all your accounts in one place

Day 3: Know current interest rates and what’s going on in the market at CNN Money or Morningstar or any number of other sites

Day 4: Let Banks compete to lend you money at Lending Tree or become a lender yourself with Lending Club, or Prosper

Day 5: Learn how to better manage your finances at Motley Fool, How to get rich slowly, I will teach you to be rich, Wesabe or Wise Bread or use caculators like these 50 Recommended

Day 6: Investigate other assorted tools, get an annual free credit report, fill out necessary legal documents at Legal Zoom, or file your taxes online with Turbo Tax or TaxAct, or find information to sell your home at Zillow or Trulia

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 9: Learn how to shop wisely

Day 1: Check out the one stop, one click shopping giant Amazon, Seeing things a long way off? In addition to Amazon wishlists (including Facebook applications) use: WishRadar, Waitable aside from the giants, specialty stores exist online too, so search around!

Day 2: Check Overstock.com, woot.com or Etsy for specialty items or deals or shop by shape comparisons at Like

Day 3: Find items in your community at Craigs List, Freecycle, Oodle, or borrow it with Loanables, or Traxtuff

Day 4: Bid on or find random things at Ebay, find textbooks for less at half.com

Day 5: Get familiar with your city vendors at: Attendio, Yelp!, Citysearch.com

Day 6: Save yourself some money by shopping with Froogle or PriceGrabber, using reviews like Buzzillions or coupon codes (multitudinous websites, just search for those terms at Google)

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 10: Photos/Artwork

I know you’ve been waiting for the media recommendations. They start now.

Day 1: Sign up for Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Shutterfly or Kodak EasyShare Gallery. Try the new, no-frills Picupine or use Facebook to share your photos with the world.

Day 2: Get some tips on photography at Free Digital Photography Tutorials, or Digital Photography School

Day 3: Touch up your photos with a free image editor like Gimp or Get Paint if you don’t already have Photoshop

Day 4: Sign up for Google SketchUp, Blender, or Maya to become a 3D artist/animator, get more information through Renderosity, I could go on about this area because it interests me, but for now I’ll leave it at that

Day 5: Become an artist and meet other artists by signing up at Deviant Art, expose yourself to the best photography at Pulitzer Prize

Day 6: Search the internet for other places to meet up with artists, photographers and painters or explore areas like graphic or web design, consider a Wacom tablet to do art on the computer…

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 11: Music

I’m no professional with this area so if I get some recommendations I’ll definitely add them in!

Day 1: Sign up for iTunes to organize all of your mp3’s.

Day 2: Sign up for Pandora to expose you to new songs based on those you already love

Day 3: Sign up for Last.fm or Ruckus or iLike to share your favorites

Day 4: Sign up for Groove Shark to use and get paid to share your music, there are many other P2P (Peer to peer) services out there like LimeWire, Napster, Kaaza, just search for them, I don’t use them much

Day 5: Find a concert near you with Ticketmaster or Last.fm or the up and coming Pitchfork

Day 6: Look up your favorite bands on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 12: Movies/TV

Day 1: Sign up for your own YouTube account.

Day 2: Find free movies at MovieFather or AllUC or pay to rent DVDs at Netflix or Blockbuster online

Day 3: Learn about Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or ScreenIt for your reviews, Check out Apple Trailers for previews.

Day 4: Visit Joost, Hulu, or Miro as well as the major network stations for TV online, here for other recommendations.  You want to be building a personalized TV source.  The networks may never give you exactly the stations you want, so make your own TV network (note to self-a way to get rich)!

Day 5: Be inspired by great videos at TED and look forward to the upcoming Pangea Day when the world will share its best short videos. Some other great instructional videos are at Expert Village, and Video Jug. Also see the DIY section near the end of this post.

Day 6: Spend the day making your own video, see here or You Tube advice for some ideas, use Kaltura to collaborate with others, then share it with the world at YouTube or Motionbox!

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 13: Books

Day 1: Sign up for iRead or Visual bookshelf 0n Facebook

Day 2: Sign up for Google Books or Microsoft Reader to start your e-book library, then get e-books on your phone at Mobipocket

Day 3: Get some more e-books at Project Gutenberg, The University of Virginia, Many free books big list, even the Bible, or a full NetLibrary

Day 4: Organize your personal library and get books suited to your tastes (soon) with Library Thing, Book Lamp or Libra

Day 5: Learn about the literary masterpieces Random House top 100, what’s new in the book world at Big Bad Book Blog,

Day 6: Writing should have it’s own week probably, but I’m going to put it here: Writing tips at: Writer Online, Writer’s Digest, Take classes recommended here, Share and get Feedback with Scribd, Publishing Lulu

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 14: Communicate your thoughts

A beautiful part of the internet is being able to express what you are passionate about, so get out there!

Day 1: Sign up for WordPress or Blogger or Live Journal, don’t try to put your blog in two places, it will just split your popularity, WordPress is known for probably the best search engine placement so that’s what I use (duh!)

If you want more flexibility and maybe even the ability to make money off your blog with advertisements you will probably have to find your own website host. This is a more advanced option, but it can pay off long term. Download templates at WordPress.org. The current trend is towards “magazine” style themes. Here’s a sweet guide to the best wordpress magazine templates available to start or here’s 45 other ideas.

You can also create a “lens” at Squidoo for something you know a lot about or edit the Wikipedia entry to add to the world’s knowledge

Day 2: Outline what you want your blog or website to be (help: The Newbie Guide to Blogging) Use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) so you don’t have to mess with coding like HTML, CSS, or PHP to start out

Day 3: Construct your blog/website, make an entry

Day 4: Learn what widgets are and how to make them. Set up an RSS feed from your website that you can access in Google Reader which you should now be pretty familiar with.

Day 5: Figure out how to get “googled”: this is a science that will take way more than a day, but you can get some ideas in just one day. See Problogger, BlogStorm, Sphere, Technorati to increase visibility. WordPress does a lot of work behind the scenes with sites like these and others to increase your visibility

Day 6: Sign up for StatCounter or some other free stats website to keep track of your blog if it doesn’t do that for you. This is especially useful if you went the website route.

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 15: Establish Your Reputation and Get a Job

You already have an OpenID and are connected on some of the best professional (social?) websites LinkedIn and/or Xing and/or Biographicon so get a move on!

Day 1: Join Monster, Jobscore, Career Builder or Yahoo HotJobs to start searching for your dream job. If those aren’t enough, here’s a list of the “Top Ten Best Job Hunting Sites“.

Day 2: Make your Resume or CV, get some tips from Monster or Career Perfect and look at examples at Resume-resources.

Day 3: Don’t forget to let your social networks know you are looking! Phone multiple friends or review job postings

Day 4: Create a business card or many other cards at 1to1 and get a bit of advice at Entrepreneur.com

Day 5: Make a vCard to attach to your e-mails so that everyone knows how to contact you: Instructions

Day 6: So, you’ve gotten to the end of the week and nothing? Guess you were meant for academia or being an Entrepreneur; read on! (Seriously though, keep trying…)

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 16: Become a Researcher

Whoops, some of these are pretty niche specific, I’m not sure tools available for those of you in liberal arts, maybe use ISI to jump start you.

Day 1: Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikispecies, wikipedia.org, Freebase,

Day 2: Learn how to search for technical papers with ISI Web of Knowledge/Science, EI Village, CSA Illumina or Science Direct, search for patents at Free Patents Online

Day 3: Use Endnote Web or Zotero firefox extension and help you keep up with your citations. Word 2007 also has some good tools for this.

Day 4: Get alerts with Google Alerts or EI Village Alerts to keep up with the research world and papers that have been released. Look for feeds from technical societies as well

Day 5: Use Technorati to search for niche specific blogs/RSS feeds

Day 6: Learn to write better! See the books entry above, here’s an online Textbook on Technical Writing or a list of Links and Books. I’ve also heard and pretty much agree that The Elements of Style is a mandatory read.

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 17: Become an Entrepreneur

Day 1: Sign up for an Ebay account to sell your unneeded items which others might want, or start your own “store” at Zilo, or use Craig’s List or the Facebook Marketplace as classifieds

Day 2: Sign up for Google Adsense to start your blog or website making money

Day 3: Develop your personal application at Coghead or build your own web widget at Etelos or use something like Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, Facebook’s API etc…not for the faint of heart

Day 4: Don’t do it all alone! Work with others at Octopuz, Basecamp, and ConceptShare

Day 5: Make a tangible product with Ponoko, visit various other DIY (do it yourself) sites; to get ideas go to MakeZine, or check out this gigantic list

Day 6: Get as much advice you can on starting, like is available at The Funded, Entrepreneur.com and absolutely all over the internet. You’re going to need to find some money, so here’s some advice from Mashable on free online materials about Venture Captial

Day 7: Catch up and Rest (although if you really are going to be an entrepreneur that’s not going to happen, in fact, this will probably be your last week ever reading this…)

Week 18: Travel the World

Now that you have a job you want to take vacation already! Well, at least do it wisely then…

Day 1: Travel for less with Kayak, Priceline, Orbitz, and Yapta…

Day 2: Travel in style with InsideTrip,

Day 3: Get expert advice at Zicasso

Day 4: Read reviews at TripAdvisor

Day 5: Get lost or need directions or want to know where the nearest ___ is? Use Mapquest or Google Maps. Don’t forget, your GPS enabled phone can probably can show you your location and Google maps are now editable, so you can leave your online review on that place in the cyber world for the next explorer!

Day 6: Relax on the beach, climbing a mountain, watching a sunset or some other activity…

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 19: Compress and Integrate Everything; Soup up your Desktop

If you wait till the end you can do this in a more comprehensive manner

Day 1: Update your page to reflect your newfound mastery at iGoogle or Netvibes or SecondBrain.com

Day 2: Sign up for Google Desktop, and allow y6urself to run Google on your desktop even offline with Google Gears

Day 3: Sign up for RescueTime-I’ve had a few issues with my time being significantly underestimated, but the concept is great, and it will help you see how much of your life you are spending on the computer now, which might lead you back to a more balanced life!

Day 4: Filter your feeds with AideRSS, I still haven’t found this to be extremely effective, but look for other sites to soon follow with similar ideas…

Day 5: Don’t forget to update your FriendFeed, breaking news: it grew 25% last week!

Day 6: Find places to link everything together…

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

Week 20: Expand

Day 1: These are in my opinion the top guides: Webware, ReadWriteWeb,(and What’s Next on the Web-2008), Future of Web Apps, TechCrunch, (see also their TC40 and Crunchies Finalists), GigaOm, Venture Beat, I’d say if you keep up with them for a while and don’t come up with your own website to start you are not a very creative person

Day 2: Start using a content management system: 50 recommendations, 30 more recommendations (some are repeats) and Linking tools (which probably would have helped with this post!). I’m going to be using Twine and My Office (facebook).

Day 3: Let everyone know what’s going on in your life, pretty much all the time with Lifestreaming, also found at sites like Onaswarm, Lifestrea.ms, Soup, Jaiku, Tumblr, or the previously mentioned and probably most popular Twitter and Friend Feed

Day 4: Some other practical guides: Weather and Fashion (for guys, I’m not even going to touch the ladies fashion or celebrity gossip (see TMZ), or find things completely impractical but Neato! with this guide

Day 5: Learn another language with at somewhere recommended here, or just keep doing that life long learning thing with recommendations of 100 Free places to learn

Day 6: I leave the last day to your wildest dreams… maybe you can understand the universe by listening to this explanation of string theory

Day 7: Catch up and Rest!

I decided to embark on a journey to understand, or at least to start understanding the cyber world. Not only did I feel that not doing so would be the first step into becoming a stubborn old man, but also I knew that not doing so would substantially hinder my ability to interact with the future world. It has been quite a process and like many explorers, I now realize how small I am, but I also have returned a changed young man equipped with new tools and skills!

It has also been said that one never learns something well until they can teach it to others. Hopefully I have learned enough about the internet for this to have been a good guide for you. Partly as a result of this exploration, I have decided to embark on various voyages of discovery into three subjects every year in the future. (Proposed: Hawthorne Reserve, Ornithopters, Neuroscience, Chinese, the Visualization Lab and Writing). At the end of each voyage, perhaps I’ll be a different person and equipped in a new way to operate in this complex world we live in. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date!

I need a roommate starting May 9th. If you are interested or know of someone who might be, pass the word!

For now this is it. If your eyes are not bleeding from excessive hyperlinks, perhaps they will be after you join all these sites! Have fun and happy surfing!

Great Lives … A Full Semester… By Suprise!

Forget a glass just half full or half empty; it is overflowing now!
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There has definitely been an irony about my last fall semester at Auburn. In the past, I have had such a curiosity about life that I have pressed myself to take on a very full workload. However, this semester I determined to take a less directed approach to examining life, which has seemed to actually provide a richer experience. I maintained being part of the ultimate team, helping support the Navigators ministry (through website and e-mail communication, leading Bible Study on Colossians and The Gospel with Dan Drown) and kept involved with the Tennis Society about once a week.

On the engineering front, I managed to drop my part time job with the labs, not participate in Cupola Engineering Society, and also take just 13 hours, 1 which was a pass/fail fortran class requiring little work, and 2 of which are golf. I thought this might result in a lighter workload, but my senior year aerospace classes, propulsion, aerodynamics three and design have certainly provided enough of a mental challenge. As part of my design class I joined the “Design Build Fly Team” at Auburn, to work on a design for the “AUAV-2 Eagle Eye”. My role has been to keep communications going and the team organized with captain Sam Kobliska, working on the stability and structural analysis for the aircraft, and assuring that we have a design strategy that can allow us to win the competition. I am currently working on a GUI (graphical user interface) to make many of our analyses and optimization run more smoothly. We have a great team and I am excited to see the plane we will design and build flying at the competition next spring (sorry, no sneak previews yet!). Working with Sam, who is a young man who also enjoys examining life has been a privilege and a joy. I also have definitely enjoyed being able to focus and even explore some of the concepts on my own as opposed to just surviving the barrage of assignments from classes. I have begun the search investigating job and graduate school options, and think I have found a few places where I can really develop in building very small aircraft. We’ll see what the future holds; hopefully I will refuse to be selfishly lazy and seek God’s direction throughout the process. Ultimately though, the load of class and engineering related responsibilities has not really been what made this semester “full”.

“Campus Golf” Auburn Style in front of Samford Hall

(Invented by Kirk Oliver, Thomas Sheffield, and Rand Lemley at TCU)

Ah, golf. The sport of relaxation and escape from the reality of life for so many. I have noticed in myself an occassional, but despicable, mediocrity developing. You can consider writing this my first contract to rid myself of such behavior. The balance one must draw here is difficult, since you desire to obtain many experiences and be a genuine “Renaissance man or woman” yet tasks in our world require a great deal of focus to achieve excellence. I remember while I was at Lance’s wedding we wandered into this park in New Port Richie at about 10pm. The park was closed, so we had it to ourselves and walking down the road led to a causeway out to an island. During my time on it, I remember standing on a part of the island which jutted out, dropping off to the water about 12 feet below and just staring out at the harbor/open ocean. You could hear a very human concert going on by a band trying to replicate some of the popular songs of the day but what really struck me was looking out onto the horizon and seeing such a dark open expanse, full of so many possibilities. I stood alone for a while, but then together with my friends, yelled out into that infinite abyss. Recently I have read the book “Lessons from Great Lives” by Sterling W. Sill (notes). Although I still wonder about some statements the books makes, he skillfully highlights the traits of great men and women and writes in a manner which inspires you to greater heights. His premise is that “the greatest creation ever brought about upon our earth is people; everyone has something to teach us and one of the most inspiring things on earth is a great human being”. I hope to live my life on that plane of existence, which is one reason I am giving myself to the labor of writing these journals. By far what has made this semester so rich is interacting with great lives. You need the discipline to organize thoughts on your own, but one must balance that with interacting with people, who bring such a variety to life and are a continual source of new and challenging perspectives. If you are allowing yourself to be afraid of pursuing a relationship with anyone I would really urge you to commit to getting to know other people on a deeper level. Yet I digress from my point of letting you know what went down during this semester.

It has been a privilege to spend the semester meeting with, investing in, and being invested in by others. I met with Daniel Gossman, William Dunham, Ryan Schumacher, David Bilodeau, Tito Jackson, and Todd Hendrix often during this semester.

Daniel wanted to meet with the mormon missionaries one week, so I decided to be supportive and go with him on it. I also met with them with Tito for a while. I am thankful for the privilege to have met with Elder Sharp, Elder Tiernan, Elder Galloway, Elder Hill, Elder Wilson and Elder Spencer, all of whom presently believe mormonism to be true. Their challenge has continually been to “read the book of mormon, and pray asking God to show you if it is true”. Over the course of college, I have gone away from my high school apologetic roots in favor of a more experiential investigation to see how Christianity works out in everyday life. Their challenge to reexamine what I know/believe to be truth helped to renew my enthusiasm for studying the question “how do we know the truth?” and corollaries (see next journal entry for expansion). Also, it has enabled Daniel and I to minister together, to refine our Biblical interpretation skills (observation, interpretation, application), and to start to examine the character of God in the Old Testament (link). I have started considering how I will leave the scape of the Navigators at Auburn, and Tito is stepping up with the website and communcations soon, so that will be great. I will probably try to meet with some of the younger guys more often next semester.

Elder Sharp, Daniel, Elder Tiernan and Myself

Some of my relationships with the “older guard” of Navs have continued to develop over this semester. William and I have taken golf together in his last semester here. He has been there with me in times of doubt, exposed me to many movies and encouraged me always to trust God, whose way is best because he unconditionally loves us. Ryan has also been there when I doubted and has reinforced the great importance of having a hope that you are always prepared to give a reason for. David Bilodeau has continued to show me the value of prayer and what it means to engage life with everything you have. Conversations with Todd have continued to point me back to the Bible as we have shared our excitement about our findings in Colossians and on The Gospel, which we have also shared in the Open Study. Here are notes for Colossians. The Navs also continued to meet often at the “Du” for Friday Night Double Dollar Dinners. I organized two events, the Navs Prayer Night, and a Video Scavenger Hunt, while we also had fun building gingerbread houses or just playing random board games on occassion. I also tried to lead worship for the Navs on various nights since it seemed no one else wanted to step up. I enjoyed doing it twice this semester, though my guitar skills still need work. We also went caroling again which hopefully brought some joy to the surrounding community.

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The overwhelming amounts of input from people has not just come from my guy friends. Some of the most valuable women in my life have been “birds of paradise” this semester, since by enriching the lives of those around them, they have reflected what life might have been in Eden. I have been blessed to have ever deeper friendships develop with a few young ladies. Quite a few insights into the nature of relationships have surfaced as a result. I have attempted to summarize them and previous information from my journal on relationships. Thanks to Briana, Laura, Shelley, and Sarah for their amazing friendships. I am embarking on an experiment with them where I strive to define my relationship with anyone (especially young women) as clearly as possible. See the relationship page for an explanation of what the experiment actually is; if you want in just let me know!

There is too much both Shelley and Laura do to even put into words, but here I want to publically thank them for being two of the best sisters ever! Shelley has been a great sounding board for my ideas and I love having her around at school. Hopefully Laura and I will continue to deepen our relationship as we move on in life.

For a while I thought I was ready for a relationship. I have had to reevaluate that stance as I continue to see a significant degree of immaturity in my life. You may have noticed my first, albeit short lived, facebook relationship with Sarah Wirgau towards the end of the semester. That was essentially a prank, but we did have a very good discussion to clarify where things were at in our relationship. Briana challenged me to figure out how to guard young women’s hearts and to find ways to encourage other guys to do the same. Therefore, I was compelled to work out an experiment to really set things straight with Sarah, and while doing so realized that the clarity I was striving for was one way to really guard others hearts. Thus we embarked on the “experiment”. See the further explanation of the experiment at the link above. On the crazy/spontaneous side, I greatly enjoyed painting up with her for the second and probably last time in my college career. Beating Florida also helped, since last time I was painted it was a rainy 40 degrees and UGA beat us on a last second pass!

Painted Up 2002 and 2006

I had the privilege of riding to Lance and Tara Armbrester’s wedding (16 hours round trip) with Briana Keafer. Honestly, I did not think I could handle such an experience, but this car ride, and the conversations following it, have been nothing short of life changing. What a privilege to have gained another deep frienship with an amazing young woman. Do you know what it means to encourage someone not just by “bucking them up” with some phrase, but to actually speak to their heart where they are at? I honestly believe that for one of the first times in my life she and I encouraged each other at this level. To interact with a young woman who has such depth at such a deep level and know that although we are similar, we can remain good friends, is freeing and immensly encouraging. Our relationship has been “iron sharpening iron” as we also have engaged in the “experiment” together.

Wedding Mischief with David, Briana, and Steve
(It would look even more impresive if the interior mood lighting was turned on!)

 

Slowly all these ladies are teaching me more about how to feel, how to express those emotions, what occurs when there is a difference in our intellectual expectations and our emotional desires, and living with a greater degree of spontaneity in my life. Perhaps there is a poet, artist, and muscian which lies underdeveloped deep inside me and will soon explode onto the scene; I am trying to work up a few submissions for the Circle next semester, although graduate school applications are consuming most of my free time. I will probably be sticking to conversation, photography, prose, and organized, didactic journaling as my communication to the world while experimenting with other techniques, so we’ll see!

Many others I have only had a glimpse of this semester. So I really need to thank also: My Parents (anything and everything!), Andy Carroll (firm committment, even when things get tough), David Peake (meanings of rest), Tom Williams (encouragement in doubt), Jordan Vrbas and Andrew Campbell (view back to freshman year), Marty Carlisle (call to pray), Andy Rauschenburg (call to pray, approaching big decisions), Sam Rauschenburg (finding good books, relationship advice), and Oscar Price (you can choose to hope even without knowing every detail, not to buy into the lie of “I can minister-once I get the next promotion”). You have all come alongside at times when I needed it and been a source of encouragement for me.

Thanks again to everyone else who has even slightly impacted my life over the course of this semester. Your input and support has made this one of the most productive and conviction producing semesters in my college career.

As somewhat of a side note, this semester I have made some efforts to examine my diet. It appears I average around 3000 calories a day, which could explain why I am always full of energy. I highly recommend two peanut butter and jelly waffle sandwhiches for breakfast.

I managed to record most of the verses I have memorized and make a verses document with them listed in order in it. It includes a list of the verses in the Navigators Topical Memory System and Life Issues packs if you are interested in knowing. I was somewhat suprised by how much I know and how much I do not know. I have been slacking recently and letting my “sword” become a little rusty, but I do see the value in memorizing scripture and so I think it will become more a part of my everyday life.

One of the last random events/activities I have done was to really consolidate where I stand financially and set up a budget for next year, giving, and assess where I am at in my mutual fund holdings. I am thankful for the good financial start that God has given me, although I am working at becoming more responsible with my finances. My main resolution as I move into the new year will be to live on a budget and to check up on my finances weekly.

This semester I have read: 1984, Freshman, Pride and Prejudice, The Silence of Adam, Lessons from Great Lives, Escape from Reason, also parts of The Idiot, English Poetry, and Emerson’s To Pray Without Ceasing and Woman.

I have watched the movies: “V for Vendetta” (three times), “Finding Neverland” (again), “My Fair Lady” (twice), “Beauty and the Beast” (again), “Garden State” (again), “Cars”, “Something’s Gotta Give”, “She’s The Man”, and “Assault on Precinct 13″. I am not going to start a review service here, but V for Vendetta is done by masters of an art form. Those listed above are in order of my opinion of them.

I have set up a forum to leave any thoughts you have about the website or life in general. I would enjoy hearing any feedback you might have the time to leave. (now outdated)

So, to attempt to summarize, the semester which was supposed to have been a little more relaxing has ended up being full, but one of the most satisfying yet of my college career. I am loving my fifth year and consider it a privilege. Undoubtably I have had some amazing interactions with many “great lives” over this semester.