Tired of the waiting game!

So I really should be studying for my Anatomy and Physiology test right now, but I just had to get something out really quick. I've been waiting since January 16th for a letter from ISU's physical therapy program. This letter will pretty much decide my fate for the next little while. I know they said that I would get it in the next three weeks. It hasn't even been two yet, but I was hoping that it would come early. To make matters worse, I can't even check the mailbox for it. It will be arriving at my parents house. I've given my mother the horrible task of opening it and telling me what it says...when it finally comes. So sorry to all of you who got exciting thinking I had it already, but no, I'm just complaining about not knowing yet. So there you have it. It would just make school a lot easier if I knew that it was all worth it. I'm having a really hard time putting in the "A" effort not know if it is even going to make a difference in my future. But I will keep plodding along and let you know what the final verdict is hopefully sometime next week.

Back to BYU-I

So about three weeks ago I moved back to BYU-Idaho. The lovely land of Rexburg, Idaho was covered with it's usual snow. In the three weeks I have been back the weather has been crazy. It went from unseasonably warm to -16 degrees. Then it went back up to our usual January weather. Then it warmed back up yesterday and everything was melting. I didn't even need my coat on in the middle of the day. Then today back to a little colder with snow. It's been a very interesting January that's for sure.

The first week of classes I did 24 hours worth of homework. I felt like I was going to die. By the end of the week my brain was no longer functioning. I tried to do homework that Friday and found that nothing I read would stay in my brain. Over the next two weeks, I have figured out what I don't need to do and what is really important. While I still have a lot of work, my material is making more sense and I am spending a little more time having fun with my roommates.

I miss all of my friends that I made in Salt Lake City, but I know that I needed to come back to school. I have applied to the Physical Therapy program at Idaho State University. I made it through the first screening process which put me in the top 70 applicants. I went to a reception held in Pocatello on Saturday and found out that ISU doesn't do interviews. So I will find out the out come of their final screening process in the next three weeks. I would be thrilled to get an acceptance letter, but as long as I make it near the top of the waiting list I will feel successful. It has been an interesting journey trying to get everything done to get in for this fall, but I'm hoping that all my hard work has paid off. Wish me luck!

December and other adventures

So I realized that I missed the whole month of December in posting. Does anyone else feel like December didn't exist? It went by so quickly and I had so much to do that is seems like it disappeared and I wasn't even part of it.

The first couple weeks of December were full of finishing up last minute things for school. I had to take a Medical Terminology Final and I needed to find a proctor. This was accomplished by the help of my roommate, who just so happens to be a high school English teacher. One of her coworkers graciously offered to do the duty. I had a headache the night before and didn't study enough. But we get out what we put in. I ended up with an A- in the class. Not what I was hoping for, but there is nothing that can be done about it now.

I finished up my application for Physical Therapy school at ISU. That was a long hard process. I am either really supposed to go to PT school and am being opposed on every side, or life is just hard. :) I finally got my last reference letter, finished my observation hours, printed off the tenth draft of my essay, wrote out a check, put the application in a envelope and sealed it with a prayer that I had filled everything out right. I put it in the mail and washed my hands of it.

I received a letter from ISU the next week telling me I had made it through the first stage of the application processes. I told my mom that meant I had filled all the information out right and included all the letters to their liking. It left me thinking how many applicants there had been, how many of them didn't get the letter I just read and what were my chances going to be? I'm not sure what the answers are to those questions, but all I can do is wait in anticipation to hear from them again.

Now with my class done and my application in I expected life to be a breeze. This was cut short while I was driving to work on the 11th. I turned the corner probably a mile from the office and all the sudden I had lost power. I hit my hazard lights and muscled my car in to a parking lot. There was nothing I could do. The car wouldn't start and I was going to be late. I called my boss and he said our first patient had canceled. Lucky me, now I had an hour to figure out what to do. I called some friends and they came to give me a ride.

This began an almost two week saga of getting rides to work (thank you Amy, Jared, and Kim). My boss drove down from Park City, drove me to work and then brought me back. Heather gave me a ride to Logan so I could got to Christopher's graduation from USU. His in-laws gave me a ride back to Salt Lake, lucky for me he has awesome in-laws. The next week I was walking in my graduation in Rexurg, Idaho. I called my grandparents and asked if I could have a ride. I pointed out that there was no point in going if they didn't because I wouldn't be there. They were kind enough to oblige. Then I came back and watched my home teacher (Levi you are amazing, thank you!) change my distributor, all the while hoping I had guessed the right size at Checkers (don't worry I had them measure my old one, when I took the core back. I picked he right one.)

I discovered through the whole experience that I am surrounded by people who love me and are willing to do so much for me if I just ask. I love my independence and it was so hard for me to have to rely on people for just about everything. My parents, uncle, brothers, roommates, visiting teacher, home teacher, friends, ex-boy friends, and many others who helped me should all know that I couldn't have done it without them.

By the time all of this was done it was Christmas. It just kind of snuck up on me. I just spend more money than I was planning on car repairs, so I had to think of other ways to show people that I loved them. I wrote my roommates all individual letters, expressing my gratitude to them. As I was writing them it made me think about all the things they had done for me, all the fun times we had had and that I needed to tell them more often how much they meant to me. I think this same principle can apply to many individuals in our lives. You never know how much a letter or note can mean to someone. Just knowing that someone cares about you can brighten any ones day.

The next week was filled with working and training replacements. I worked in two different locations for one physical therapy company. One was for a PT in Murray and the other was a Hand therapist in Park City. I've found that training others is both satisfying and frustrating. First off I tried to do a better job training my replacements than the people who trained me did. I tried to think of all the things I wish I had know when I was first starting. All the things that I had had to figure out on my own, that would have been so much easier if someone else had let me in on the secret. Although I did learn really fast when I had to figure things out from making mistakes. I feel like I did a pretty thorough job of training them.

The frustrating part comes when you have to let them do everything. You have to make sure they can actually perform the tasks when you aren't there. I am pretty good at my job and sometimes I forget that I did things slower when I was starting off. I hate the sound of timers beeping. I don't like to leave patients sitting for too long in between exercises. It is instinctual for me to want to help them. So I just had to take some deep breaths and try to be lazy my last week of work.

My favorite moment came when I was trying to let my trainee work with our last patient all by himself. I had been working with this particular patient for the last couple of weeks and had gotten to know her pretty well. When he came over instead of me, she was a little upset. She told him that she didn't want to be rude, but asked if I could work with her. She had been with me the whole time and this would be my last day and she just wanted to spend that time with me. I felt pretty special. Sometime you wonder how much of an impression you make on people.

That day was hard because I had to say goodbye to a lot of people I had gotten to know so well. It is hard to leave patients you have been working with for months, and not knowing how everything will turn out for them. But we all have to move on and progress in our lives. I am so grateful for the opportunities I had to work at Hand and Ortho, for the things I was able to learn and the love I have gained in helping people recover.

On Friday my friends helped me load up my car. Moving is always an adventure for me. I have just the right amount of possessions to fit into my car. Anymore and I would have some problems. Two of my guy friends (don't be offended by this story) decided that they could pack my car. Really I just needed them to carry my heavy boxes down to the car. I reluctantly let them loose and they started putting things in while I was packing up a few last things. When I went out side I just laughed inside and knew I was going to have to start over. I have moved enough times that I know packing my car is like a puzzle. Everything has to go in a very specific place or it wouldn't all fit. I told my friends that it was nothing against them, but I was going to need to do this myself. After another half an hour, I had everything neatly packed and could even see out all of my windows pretty well. Another victory for the pack man's daughter.

After saying goodbye to some very unhappy people, I headed up to Aberdeen to hang out with my parents. I missed the snow storm for the most part and arrived safely. We ate dinner, played games and stayed up talking way too late. Yesterday morning, I woke up and headed to Rexburg. I saw one of my roommates briefly for maybe fifteen minutes and then she left. I had two of my good friends come over and help me move some furniture and boxes. Then I went about the task of unpacking.

I hate living out of boxes and I'd been doing it for about a week and a half. So within a few hours I had most everything in it's place. It's amazing what you can get done when no one is around to distract you. My friends invited me over for dinner, which was so good. We had breakfast for dinner. Then we played some games and had some ice cream at Brother Wilson's house. I came home, finished unpacking and went to bed before one for the first time in two weeks.

Pretty much my life has been crazy busy and full of adventures. School starts at BYU-Idaho on Tuesday. I'm taking 15 credits of prerequisites. My goal is to get good grades, retain the information and still find time to have a little fun. So one more day of freedom and then the race is on.