Retraction

The tendency to jump the gun has struck once again! I feel the need to correct myself about the previous post.

I got home yesterday and got an email that may or may not have altered my career path. It's a job back home (to which I was not planning on moving) that is offering me many things that the school system job cannot. I should know by tomorrow what the official offer is.

Decisions, decisions, decisions! I am praying super hard for some clarity as to where I am supposed to work after graduation and asking for all the prayers I can get to help me through this process. Anyone who knows me well knows what a compulsive planner I am and I already had my move to the big city planned. So this little event definitely puts a kink in those plans but I believe that everything is happening for a reason and that God will make my choice a clear one.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Working Girl

It's official! I have a real job!

I have been in contact with these guys since Christmas and after several other job interviews, I feel like they are the best fit for me. I will be working in an elementary school doing speech and language therapy for all the kiddos with IEPs.

Reasons why this is a dream job for me:

• Working in a school means I get 14 weeks off a year (Hello!)
• I will be working with kids
• I will not be working with adults (Haha)
• I get to move again (and although packing is the absolute worst chore on the planet, it is always exciting for me to move to new places and meet new people and plan a new apartment!)
• I am going to have an amazing support team
• They are taking care of all my initial licensure and certification fees and walking me through the entire clinical fellowship experience (and let's face it--I need a little hand holding sometimes!)

I still have nine and a half weeks left in the hospital before I can get really excited. All kidding aside, I really love the people that I work with. I have a great supervisor and the other SLPs are amazing! I am learning a lot and it's really amazing to see something totally different every day. But if the hospital has taught me one thing, it's this...

In the the words of one of my supervisors, "You need to turn off your Disney World voice and tone down the sunshine."

I was born to be "sunshiney" and to work with people who like Disney World.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Valentine's Day Fun

After a Christmas break full of down time, this was the first weekend in a while where I didn't have any obligations. One of my very best friends came up for the weekend to celebrate our singleness during Valentine's weekend (haha) and we were surprised with about five inches of snow! Here are some of our fun pictures from the weekend:

In other exciting news, I have a contract in my hand for my first job! God has blessed me with a wonderful opportunity to move this summer and work for a great company. I have one more job interview this weekend scheduled, so I'm holding off on accepting this offer until then, but I am thrilled to at least have an idea of what I will be doing for the next phase of my life!

Seriously?

Seriously.

Rough Day

Grad school doesn't prepare you for everything.

This afternoon was particularly tough. After running from one end of the hospital to another, and finding patients either not available because they were in xray or asleep, we decided to pick up an extra evaluation to kill time.

Chart review revealed a 24 year old girl admitted because of a brain tumor. Turns out, this wasn't her first brain tumor, and it wasn't benign. So this young married girl with a little girl of her own, had already been hospitalized for brain cancer before. And the prognosis wasn't very promising.

It was devastating to know that I had to help with an evaluation on someone so young. It seems so unfair that someone only a year older than me had to be dealing with the same problems as the 60 and 70 year old patients I had been seeing all day.

I'm emotionally worn out from the whole ordeal.

Turns out, she was in great spirits about everything and was as pleasant as anyone could possibly be. So that helped.... a little. :)

Seriously?

Seriously.

Sleepy Saturdays

This morning I got to sleep til lunch for the first time in a week. After making this a commonplace occurrence over my long Christmas break, it was a welcome event after a tiring first week at my hospital placement. I got the chance to meet up with one of my friends before she moved out of town this afternoon. We ate at Red Robin (yummmm) and I figured out how much I love spinach wraps (who'd a thunk?) In all seriousness, those green little wraps are seriously tasty! I hope wherever I move after this that I there is a Red Robin close by. I'm not sure how long I can go without one of those caesar wraps, haha.

This week I also started back eating healthy. Despite missing Dr. Pepper much more than I am willing to admit (seriously... it's been over a week since I've had one), it hasn't been too bad. I've been eating a lot of yogurt and wheat thins and fruit and drinking more water than I ever have. I picked up several containers of V8 Fusion this week to see which flavors tasted the best. I would recommend the Tropical Orange the most because it's really only a few steps away from orange juice (and anyone who knows me well knows how much I love OJ).

It was a good first week at the hospital. I learned a lot. I have just barely scraped the tip of the iceberg of all the things to be learned there. I got to witness several modified barium swallows, do therapy with a few inpatients on my own, visit the stroke and dialysis units, etc, etc.

In addition, here are a few things that I learned about myself this week:

• I have trouble feeling authoritative in situations with people three and four times my age.
• No matter how many times I see it, I will never be comfortable seeing senior adults in hospital gowns jacked up so high that you can see their diapers.
• Families don't care whether you are a nurse or not - they still demand that you bring them things and some of them get in your face about it.
• There is a really good looking EMT in the hospital :) Saw him once while visiting a patient on 10-West...
• I miss my kids at the elementary school from last semester a whole lot.
• I am totally loving the experience, however, I am so not cut out for the whole "adult" thing... at least not so far.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Things I am Learning

There is this old song called "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" that is real catchy and has been stuck in my head all day. Not because I have recently experienced a break up, but because I keep singing to myself, "Growing up is hard to do." (To the same tune. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can click here and listen to it.)

Here are some things I am learning and looking forward to in the upcoming year:

For starters, I am learning to eat new foods. I ate some Lebanese food in New Orleans this past November, I conquered oysters on the half shell there too, and now, I give you... the chicken wing:

And here is the proof that I ate it:

Yay me :) I know, it's probably weird that I waited this long to try one. Don't sue me.

I am also learning car maintenance. This afternoon, I got a hands on lesson from my dad on how to replace windshield wipers and check the air in my tires. As my emancipation from being a dependent on my parents' income tax return is drawing near, I suppose it is good that I learn these things now.

On that note, I had my first job interview this week. I am not giving away all the details until they let me know if I'm officially hired or not, but it has dream job potential and I'm praying so, so, so hard that everything works out. They've given me a tentative thumbs up and emailed me all the insurance details and benefit plan so I'm hopeful that I they may offer me my first job. Stay posted for details.

Of course with the breaking news of possibly having a set-in-stone job come all my planning compulsions. I've been stalking furniture and home good websites for things for my first home. I have been bumming furniture off my parents for a while and I'm ready to put my name on something and have my name on it. I have visions of gorgeous coffee colored chenille and rich blue and gold silks.... And then I snap back to reality. :)

Seriously?

Seriously.

First Post of the New Year

So ends the first full week of January and my fifth week home for the holidays. Truthfully, my break from the working world has been a good one and even more truthfully... it has been a break that I really don't want to end. I'm dragging it out as long as humanly possible. I haven't spent this much time at home since I graduated from high school and I forgot how good it is to just be a kid again. It definitely puts simple "grown-up" things like laundry and buying groceries into perspective. And though I'm glad that I am months away from being a real adult, I am going to miss writing things down on my mom's grocery list and having them magically appear on the counter a few hours later or throwing my laundry in the bin in the hall bathroom and having clean and folded laundry magically appear on my bed.

So I have one more week at home before I have to head back to my apartment and my last internship. I think most of the people from my program are starting on Monday, but my hospital didn't want me to show up until the 18th, so I get another free week to bum around my hometown. I'm not so nervous about my hospital placement; I had an excellent full day of orientation back in November when I got got meet all the other therapists, got a tour of the hospital, got the lowdown on my caseload, etc. So I know exactly what to expect. I'm excited about it (and really excited about wearing all the scrubs I got for Christmas!) and my schedule is pretty good there. I only have half days on Friday so that means I will get to come home a lot! You might think that my parents are happy about this but I think they are just tired of my dog coming with me....

Seriously?

Seriously.