One Year Down

This adventure of Graduate School is already one year down, only two to go.  This past year I have struggled and been blessed through the struggle.  I started in the summer last year, and so I was able to get my feet wet while the kids were out of school.  Online school was flexible enough to allow me to still pull off a girl's camp and a youth conference as well as take Connor on a surprise 9th birthday trip.

The fall came and I saw the fruition of the Priesthood blessing that Nathan gave me, where he helped me to be reassured that I am doing the Lord's work and that He will help me to accomplish this task.  I saw the ability to get by on less sleep that was promised me fulfilled.  What a busy fall it was.  I knew that because I had my Practicum in the Spring semester I had to fit all of the children's activities in the fall.  They had soccer, ballet, swim lessons, football, speech and debate and all our other activities on top of school and my classes.  Nathans' parents were gracious enough to watch our kids while Nathan and I went to Washington D.C. for our anniversary.

The spring semester nearly killed me off with my practicum.  I needed 100 hours over the semester on top of my hardest class so far.  I also knew that we were going to Hawaii, so I had one less week to accumulate hours.  The experience was incredibly rewarding though, and I absolutely know that I am going into the right field for me.  My parents came out with the kids for our trip, but Danielle was an absolute mess from me being gone so much already and then leaving her for over a week.  She is just now starting to like her Grandpa Frey.  I ended up with 140 hours. 

Somehow we made it through that semester.  I am loving my summer classes and have enough down time with the kids that I am feeling very rested and the kids are enjoying sleeping in.   I have learned so much already, and I still have more to go.  I am in no hurry to graduate, but I am glad that I decided to do this.   I have learned more about myself than I ever knew before.  I am highly social, which isn't surprising, but I can see that I have more social needs than most people.  I have a hard time digesting theory and putting it into practice, but I am starting to learn ways to work with people beyond just my gut instinct.  I have a lot of biases that I wasn't aware of before, and I have discovered that there are a lot of questions that I will have to shelve, because the answers won't be immediate.

I am nervous about my internship, but I figure that like every other part of this process, I just have to take things one step at a time.