The end of summer recess is coming soon. I wanted to write a quick post describing what I’ve been doing this summer and what I’m looking forward to in the coming school year. This is intended primarily for people who’ve been with me as I’ve grown up and moved away for school, so that they can have some sense of the direction my life is currently taking. But anyone is welcome to read, and of course anyone is welcome to get in touch with me via email if you want to chat about anything here or in any of my posts. Welcome, and enjoy!

🔬 Research ~ The Bulk of This Summer

I’ve spent some time in previous posts (namely my drone and research posts) talking about my summer research, so I won’t go into much detail here. I’m just mentioning it for the sake of completeness. Here’s a brief summary:

From June to August, I worked for the Princeton Environmental Institute Farm Project as an extension of the Molecular Biology Department’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program. The summer culminated in a poster presentation (click here to view the full-resolution poster) for the mol-bio research program, and I’ll have another short presentation in late September for the Environmental Institute. I’m currently doing some final data analysis, specifically the interactions between experimental variables (see the poster).

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Research Poster

For those who are interested, I did all of my analytical work in python and all of my graphical design work for the final poster in Inkscape. I’m working on a few posts that describe the technical aspects of my work as an aide for people with similar applications.

👪 Visiting Family

After the research program, I had the chance to travel with my parents to Anacortes, Washington, where my grandparents live. I hadn’t been there in six years, so it was wonderful to return and spend some time with my grandparents and uncle. While there, we celebrated my grandmother’s eightieth birthday. My parents and I also did a fair bit of exploring around the town, and the trip ended beautifully with a father-son excursion to a local reservoir with awesome jumping cliffs. Here’s a picture of me diving off:

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Cliff Diving at Whistle Lake, Anacortes, WA

The trip was full of clam chowder, fried fish, Starbucks, good people, and family.

🏈 Football Team - Filming Job

After the trip to my grandparents’, I flew directly back to Princeton for some campus employment leading up to the school year. The employment is with the football team, and I have two primary responsibilities:

  1. I film morning practices
  2. I periodically check players into meals at dining halls

The morning practice film isn’t for production or any sort of media; it’s just meant to be a coaching tool, for players to look over in their spare time and for the coaches to point out to players specific instances of wrong and right technique.

The job is fun and gets me up early in the morning, which I appreciate. We film from ~50ft lifts, so we get the most out of the morning sun, and most mornings so far have been beautiful. Here’s a picture from Sunday morning before Church:

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Football Morning

💻 Various Projects Leading Up to the School Year

Since the filming job only takes up the morning (and the occasional meal time, when we check players into the dining halls) I’ve had a lot of time on the side. I’ve mostly spent this extra time that I have working on projects for:

  1. My campus ministry, Christian Union NOVA (their website is a work in progress while I’m writing this, so don’t judge too harshly. It should be finished around Sept. 11)
  2. My local church, Hope Presbyterian

For NOVA, I’ve been building resources for freshman campaign. Freshman campaign is where we as a ministry focus on reaching out to incoming freshman during their first month at school. This means that we host a lot of events and pass out a lot of flyers. My work with the campaign has been spent designing a flyer and emailing a list of freshman with information about our ministry and an invitation to join.

I’m also a member of NOVA’s Encounter leadership team. Encounter is our weekly large-group worship and teaching service. The Encounter team is prepping right now for our first service, which will be Sept. 13. Prepping looks like planning the evening, conscripting fellow NOVA members to help us with our various responsibilities, and booking the rooms for events.

For Hope Presbyterian Church, I’ve been working to build a new website. It will be at the current address, https://www.hopechurch-nj.org/ and will hopefully be up by the end of the month, so stay tuned for that! I’m also going to have a supporting role with their youth ministry this year, and our first youth group meeting will be on Sept. 21 so we’re working hard to prepare for the start of that ministry. I’ll be leading the youth boys bi-weekly with the help of a fellow Princeton student (and fellow Josh) Joshua Latham, who is involved in Princeton Christian Fellowship, another ministry on campus.

📚 The Coming Semester

This semester of classes will begin on Sept. 11. I’m excited and wary for the start of things: excited about the things I’ll be learning this year and wary about the amount of work and responsibilities that inevitably pile up. Here’s a list of my fall classes:

Organic Chemistry will definitely be a wringer, and I’ve heard that the German program is pretty tough, but I’m excited to be diving in to some new and expansive disciplines. I’m especially looking forward to Linear Algebra and Intermediate Logic. I’d be happy to share the reading lists with you if you’re interested. Just email me.

📖 Sabbath

One thing I’m looking forward to this semester is the opportunity to begin building the habit of sabbath into my life and to encourage my peers to do likewise. Through my reading and prayer, I’ve come to see sabbath (i.e. resting with thanksgiving for and reflection on what God has done) as an active way to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven and Jesus’ victory on the cross in our daily lives. Jesus has already won the victory; why do we need to work ourselves into the ground? Sabbath-keeping is an opportunity to practice trust that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection did enough to save us and that our own efforts aren’t our salvation. Once a week, we can put down our work and reflect on how He’s been working in our lives and throughout history. We can also spend time loving on friends and family, time that is often squeezed out of our life because of our intense focus on work, which in itself becomes meaningless.

Princeton culture is antithetical to sabbath-keeping, so I see it as a need that I can begin ministering to while I’m here. Many of these students will work every waking moment while they’re here just to get a job where they work every waking moment until the end of their lives. Even believers will do this. But for what purpose, ultimately? Especially for believers, we can enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven and time with the Lord because He’s already done the finished work.

I encourage you to think and pray about this too. Look for ways to incorporate sabbath rest into your life, not legalistically, but as a means of enjoying God’s covenant faithfulness and fulfillment here and now.

👋 Closing

Thank you for checking up on me! I hope this post gives you a better sense of what’s going on in my life. And, as always, feel free to reach out to me.

May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always!