This week I registered for classes for my SENIOR year of COLLEGE. I can’t believe that this time next year I will be graduating. It’s crazy!! Seems like just yesterday I was pulling up to Wright Hall and unloading my Mercury Sable…oh, how time flies.
When I reflect on what I’ve learned over the course of my last three years at Belmont, I don’t think about anything subject-related. (For example, “accumulated depreciation,” certainly isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.) What I do think about are the friends I’ve made and the many memories we’ve shared. I also recall the numerous experiences in which I was forced to “put on my big girl panties” and grow up. (There have been quite a few of those — the most challenging one being when I spent 24 hours in the JFK airport after having spent a semester in Spain!)
Yesterday, my friend Kelly and I were recalling how we first met. We had both signed up for the same group project in Abnormal Psychology, so we spent quite a few hours preparing PowerPoint slides and practicing our presentation together. I remember her inviting me to have breakfast at her house one Saturday, but I couldn’t because I was working on the Virtual Campus Tour. I was so disappointed to have to turn down the invitation, and I hoped she would want to hang out again! After that, we started taking walks together and ended up keeping in touch all summer, despite the fact that we were 500+ miles apart. When she came to visit me (and her grandparents, who conveniently live five miles away from my house in KC) in early-August, we spent the week singing to Rascal Flatts, sun-tanning, cooking, hanging out with my family, and — always — laughing. It was truly one of the best weeks of my life.
I ended up getting a C in Abnormal Psychology, which means I’l have to take it again next Spring in order to apply for Occupational Therapy school (I need all As and Bs in my prerequisite classes for OT). However, like I told Kelly yesterday, the first time I took Abnormal Psychology, I wasn’t destined to make an A or a B; I was destined to meet her.
I want to leave you with an excerpt from the very first blog entry I wrote. These words are still as true as they were three years ago…
“Let me preface this entry by saying that these past three weeks at Belmont have been absolutely life-changing for me. There is no way I could possibly express how welcomed I have felt since my first day here or how much I love everything about this place. One consistent characteristic of Belmont, and perhaps what I love most about it, is the genuine hospitality of everyone here. People make eye contact with each other. Strangers greet each other with a ‘Hey! How are you?’ There is just such a sense of community and optimism here and I love being a part of it.”