(... and it would be so much more fun if it was a picture book instead!)
Today marks the beginning of the last week of classes. (I am sincerely wondering if my blogging habit will be maintained once I am done with Psychosocial and Health Promotion?) I had a MedSurg test this morning, KAPLAN this afternoon, a make-up clinical tomorrow along with a pile of paperwork to complete before then, a research critique, final skills check for SIMlab, a research final and a gerontology final, all due this week.
Ready, Set, Go.
Staff training starts approximately three weeks from NOW. While I really am excited, a lot has to happen between now and then - a lot that I am not particularly excited about. I have a to-do list that could probably match Santa Claus's. I have to do a clean sweep of my room and pack... and unpack... and repack... and re-unpack... and shuffle boxes between Clemson and Lexington and Andrews. I have to survive four daunting FINALS. Then we hit what I'm undoubtedly dreading the most - graduations and goodbyes. And while I am incredibly excited for my friends who have faithfully completed their degree or other calling here and are weeks away from spreading out all over the world, I have a certain image and premonition of how empty Clemson will feel for my senior year.
Anyone who knows me well knows that transition and I are not exactly friends. I am adaptable, I am confident in that. But the process of adaptation, the times of transition and getting used to a new environment, I don't like it. Especially now, because it feels like it's such a misplaced transition time. I'm not graduating. I'm not leaving. This is not the end of my story here. It's not a natural phase-out like graduating, or even like leaving a summer at Snowbird. But the fact that it's time for so many of the people I love to close out this chapter of life is turning it into a period of transition for me at a time where it is not a natural ending. I think it would be different if I was graduating too, if I had new and exciting things to move on to instead of another year of nursing school without a huge chunk of the community I've been blessed with at Clemson.
However, I do know it's a lot easier to focus on the negative instead of being grateful that people like Emily Clardy and Elizabeth Hughes and even Anna will be around. And that this time next year, I will be hopefully be writing about faithfully finishing out MY four years, post-graduation plans, and other things of the "new and exciting" variety. But for now, I have to wait it out, and trust how God is going to provide next year in the area of friendships and community. Next year is going to be substantially different than what I have known my first three years of college, and I think fear of the unknown is playing huge into my general attitude toward my Junior year ending.
Sometimes I think the time leading up to transition, the anticipation of change, and the subconscious fear that God is not going to provide just well in the "new" as in the familiar is almost more difficult than when it comes time to actually close the chapter.
I do love you Sarah Strickland, even if I am leaving for the other side of the country. Sometimes the transitions in our head are much bigger than the transitions in actuality. Hope for that.
ReplyDeleteAnd you'll have your best friend closer than she's been in a while. You'll have been apart so long that you will appreciate each other more than ever and you will have Friday afternoon/evening dates that will more than compensate for other losses because, after all, Due West is a hoppin metropolis.
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