To Study or Not to Study?

I love Friday. I love the feeling that Shabbat is coming. Shabbos is a day like no other.. and that means that erev Shabbat is by association just as special.

About a year and a half a go...maybe longer...I started buying flowers "lekavod shabbat kodesh!" 
In seminary, Rabbi Geisler told us something that really stuck with me. He said that he does not buy his wife flowers on Friday. He and his wife go and buy flowers for Shabbat together.

Rav Shimshon Pincus, in his sefer on Shabbat, also talks about flowers. He says that he went to the store to buy flowers for Shabbat. He went to the roses. Only the best for Shabbat. Only the best for the Queen. But he couldn't decide how many to get. A dozen. two dozen..there is no value for Shabbat. Maybe he should just buy them all? In the end he bought three roses; one for each of the avot, which in turn correspond to the three meals of Shabbat.

The greatness of Shabbat is often ignored, trampled on. R'Pincus explains that all too often Shabbat is the most spiritually deficient day of the week. During the week, the learner has his sedarim. The earner has his daf yomi, he goes to shul and makes his time for his shuirim and throughout the day he is following the various halachot that pertain to his business. But comes Shabbat..everything changes.

The scene is all too familiar. Friday night, we rush through shalom aliechem and Kiddush to get to the meal because we are starving! As soon as the meal is over..everyone stumbles into bed, its been a really hard week after all. Shabbat morning, he's lucky if he makes it to shul in time for Baruch She'amar. ( i know that personally i often wake up too late to even go to shul.)  Again, after the heavy food, cholent, no one can hold his head up. So off to bed we go. When we do wake up, its reading Mishpacha at best, homework or a novel at worst. Back to shul. Mincha, seudat shlishi, and Tada the holiest day of the week -GONE.

Shabbat is one thing that I am supremely passionate about. Even as a high school student, even in seminary, I refused to study on Shabbat. I just could never understand it. This is Shabbat. This is the day when we are in the Yichud room with Hashem. It is the one day we get to put away all our work and bask in the glory of the day..and what is everyone doing? Planning what they will be doing Motzai Shabbat, studying for the test on Monday so they can go out on Sunday...It just makes me seethe.

Even now, in PA school. I was talking to a few frum people in my class. They were saying how Shabat was the best day of the week to study. I honestly had to control myself from exploding right there into a mussar shmuess about the kedusha of Shabbat! How could you do that?! ITS SHABBAT! ITS A GIFT! All our work is supposed to be done. Today is the day we are to sit with Hashem and gain all that we can. Any spirituality, any physicality, anything we get during the week comes from Shabbat. You are going to squander that special time studying BIOCHEM!!! Learn a sefer  you cant during the week! Say a little more tehilim. Sing a few more zemirot!

I told him, that I point  blank refuse to study on Shabbat. He tells me that if I plan on doing well in this program that I'm going to have to.

I don't think I will fail out because I refuse to study on the day of Kedusha. Besides the fact its highly inappropriate, there is an issur of hachana. i think so. I have not asked my rav yet..so i dont have a Psak yet. But for now I'm holding out.

So what about you?
Do you study on shabbat? How do you feel about it? D o you think I'm wrong?