by. the. way.

*The Wedding Planner is on in the background… I’m trying this new thing where romantic comedies and lovey-dovey couples don’t foster an instantaneous knee-jerk reaction where I start to feel bile rise up in my throat and I want to scream/vomit… Let’s see how this goes.* Last year around this time I made a list of the top 25 things I learned in 2010. They all still stand true. I have some additions that I shall include here. As I mentioned previously, I do not do resolutions , so here are my declarations/revelations/moments of clarity. 26. People will almost always disappoint you if you provide too high of standards for them. 27. The only person you should worry about disappointing is yourself . 28. There is no such thing as luck. You work hard and create opportunities for yourself. 29. It is perfectly fine if the only reason you wear high heels is because they make you feel extra sassy! 30. You know more than you think and will never forget what you try to erase from your memory...

Learning. Learning. Learning. Every day at work is like being in school still. I love it. So much to learn. Few things make my heart race…Having a patient’s clinical picture come together clearly, unexpected messages from certain people, positive affirmation from patients and coworkers… Special things that make you remember where you are, why you’re there, and what you’re doing. Living in this city is definitely an adjustment. All of its charming qualities are the same aspects that have been the hardest to become accustomed to. The city is slow-paced, quiet, and inhabited by a *slightly* older crowd. Not that I was a clubbing, night-life frolicking socialite, but I enjoyed the option to intermittently do those aforementioned things. I like the quiet. I have always enjoyed intimacy: small high school, small college with small class sizes, small group of close friends. However, I am missing something here. There are no “young professionals” around here. Finding a social life is provin...

ok. so i've never been on a date. haven't quite figured out how this is possible, but it is. i have two exes... err, well one for sure. i am unsure what to call the second "situation" i was in... i dont think you can have an ex (even if it lasted for two years) if the person never actually admitted to dating you.  with that being said, i think i'm a pretty late bloomer. i realized the other day talking with one of my volusia friends :) that i am not certain how dates even work...or what you wear or how to behave. i am like a fish out of water. i would like to learn how to swim ;)   - - - - - - - - - - -  i hopefully get my credentials this week for the hospital. cannot wait for that. i still have so much to learn. it truly is as if a whole new section of my education is beginning now. page one, chapter one. 

ANXIETY. Excited anxiousness that makes my heart flutter and flip-flop and sends my stomach twitching like it’s trying to make a great escape through my mouth. Tomorrow when I leave the OR after our surgery I will officially be done with physician assistant school. FOR-EV-ER (I need you to say that to yourself like the nerdy kid from Sandlot with the flashlight). “The most terrifying thing is to  accept oneself  completely.” - Carl Jung I may not know who I am going to be tomorrow, but I definitely know who I am today. I recognize that every day I wake up I have the ability to determine the type of day I am going to have and the type of day I am going to help others experience. By accepting that responsibility and recognizing that only you determine your happiness and success, you are empowered. Do not say that someone else ruined your day or made you sad or disappointed you. Allowing another human being that much power and control over you is debilitating. Do not permit ...

I am at school preparing for my final NSU exam ever . I cannot put into words how exciting that is. Do you know that feeling when you are watching a thunderstorm from afar and you can see the lightning and are waiting for the thunder? It is that sense of anticipation I am experiencing right now. 31 days . It is not that I am so ready for this chapter to end, as it is I am so eager to see what the next has in store for me. I do not ruminate on how lucky I am to be in the position I am in; rather, I am enjoying watching the fruits of my labor blossom. I do not believe in luck . I believe that you make opportunities through hard work and being the kind of person others want to know and see succeed. I find myself in the position of waking up every morning excited about life. I learn so much every day, and although that may be due to the fact that I am still a student and will be a student every day of the rest of my life, I relish the thought that there is so much more to learn. I...

this list is in its infancy and I am sure that it will grow :) when I listen to everyone complain about former sig figs (aka significant others) I realize that there are SO many reasons to stay single and smiling! here is what I have thus far... 1. Sleep diagonally across my queen bed and sprawl without concern 2. If the house is a mess, it's my fault and no one else's 3. I can leave laundry in the dryer for days until I'm prepared to fold it 4. I can eat the last bagel/apple/pickle/cookie if I want because I don't have to share! 5. I always choose what's on tv 6. The Toilet seat is never up 7. No one expects dinner to be made 8. An acceptable dinner can involve edamame and an orange 9. I dont have to be concerned if half of my bed is covered in books and my laptop 10. If I get off work at 5:30 but don't get home until 8:45, no one is calling me to see where I am 11. I don't find facial hair shaving remnants all over my bathroom counter/sink (....

boot camp. butt-kicking, make my arms feel like jell-o, oh-my-goodness is the hour over yet kind of workout.  my legs feel like thousands of tiny ninjas are stabbing my thighs repeatedly with tiny ninja swords. it's amazing. amazing, but i may find myself having a week of using the bathroom counter to help lower myself onto the toilet! haha. i love all of it. i'm one of those people who doesn't feel as though they are truly getting a "good" workout unless it renders them so sore that they have difficulty popping the lid off the aleve bottle. i blame it on college sports. athletic trainers who knew our limits and then took those limits and destroyed them. we were left with the impression that a workout was only productive if it left you crawling up stairs one at a time because your legs were so sore you couldn't imagine tackling them while being vertical.  also... today is day 5 of no meat or milk. however, still eating cheese occasionally and using butte...

Day 2 - Well... Apparently being so sore that I cannot raise my hands above my shoulders actually is beneficial. In order to shampoo my hair I end up having to do multiple sets of crunches, thus providing an unintentional ab workout. Definitely a positive. Negative - I think patients suspect a caffeine overdose or possible narcotic usage based on the shaking my hands do when I try to write or listen to them with my stethoscope. Note to self: more Aleve when I get home from clinic. All-in-all - very pleased with my level of soreness and looking forward to tomorrow's class. Let's all say a prayer for a lower body workout!!! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

day one.  I have done little, and when I say little I mean zero, truly dedicated exercising since my second knee surgery. Partially due to never finding something that I was passionate about and partially because it is so much easier to be lazy, it just never happened. However, I have…ballooned. I say that in the most polite way possible. A combination of being sedentary, eating poorly while studying, terrible sleep patterns, and what I suspect is sleep apnea has contributed to my scale’s growing number. With that being said, I am not a numbers girl. I do not get hooked on how much I weigh, but rather how many closets of clothes I own which I cannot wear. Current closets are assigned as the following: always, sometimes, never. As in: Closet #1 I can always wear, Closet #2 I can sometimes wear, and Closet #3 I can never wear (most of which is from more than 3 years ago). So! Today is Day 1 of my “Get Skinny” plan (I appropriately have an iTunes playlist titled the same). I ...

I’m going back to Peru. I’ve wanted to return to Peru since the moment I left it four years ago. Knowing the immensely profound opportunity I have to travel to a foreign country, be welcomed by a community, and help that community with my newly acquired skills and knowledge has the power to make me take a deep breath and hold it. Then I stop and think: Is one week enough? The answer is most definitely: No, it is not. I want to stay there for months…and months. There are multiple problems with that. 1. That would be expensive. 2. I have a fantastic job opportunity that will not wait for me for that long. 3. I do not know if I have the capacity for being alone in a country I do not know, speaking a language I am only slightly acquainted with for that period of time. I am not sure which of those three problems is the most significant. Maybe they are all equally significant. Each has its own importance. The last thing I want to do is go to an amazing country for an extended time whil...

I believe in right and wrong. There is no grey area for me… I have come to realize that for most others this is not the way they view things and my perception is often too strict. That is fine. I accept that I am judgmental. Not accept in a passive, complacent manner, but in an “I’m working on it” manner. My struggle lies with the fact that I believe my extraordinarily judgmental, critical, perfectionist tendencies are what have brought me to this amazing, rewarding stage of my life. For that, I am not the least bit apologetic. However, the strict standards I hold myself and others to do not cause me to berate, ridicule, or patronize individuals who fall short of achieving those expectations. I have realized that we are all on journeys. Some people are simply further along in their journey than others. That is what makes life so intriguing, stimulating, and frustrating all at the same time! It is an intricate web of interactions; every day we come in contact with people who are ...

Countdown has begun. Officially 5 months and 26 days to go… Graduation. Cliché to say it is one of those exciting/terrifying/confusing/exhilarating anticipated moments. It is though. The complicated part involves determining which fractions of my past deserve being ended while my multiple new beginnings set to blossom soon. This is further complicated by having what seems like EVERYONE ask you what field I am going to go into once I’ve graduated and passed my boards. For a while I was concerned because every rotation I entered left me with the feeling of “Wow, I could do this, too.” I was warned by multiple advisors and professors that I would most likely find myself in that situation; the situation of enjoying and being good at several fields, while finding it difficult to determine which was truly calling to me as a possible profession. Fortunately, I do not think that will be the case for me. I finally had my true “AHA” moment. The trick is now to align my “AHA” moment with r...

I have been single 25 of my 27 years of life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And yet, everything around me tells me that I should not be so content with my solitude. The movies, the wedding channels, the tv shows centered around relationships, every person I know engaged/married/pregnant… these things all point to our predilection to pair off in twos and go forth and prosper. Some days, I log onto Facebook, look at the most recent engagements, pregnancies, marriages, relationships, wedding planning, etc, and I want to delete every single person. It is not a malicious deleting that would occur. I think of it more as self-preservation . What is a girl supposed to do while she is inundated with couples and procreation? It is particularly obnoxious when you have not seen a person in multiple years and their first question for you is, “So are you seeing anyone?” Now, when you are asked this question as their opening line, it intrinsically implies that nothing else going...