Tales of a Third Semester (WHAAAAAT?!)

Holy smokes. This week- this past 6 months have been such a blur. I am so amazed because I still feel like, despite the ridiculous amount of work, I went to sleep yesterday the day before grad school and woke up today an almost THIRD semester. I can't even begin to describe this ridiculous journey that God has put me on except to say that NO ONE can understand unless you have either been a grad student in the Speech Pathology program at Baylor, or are currently in it with me. There are not enough words to describe or explain how hard everyone has worked this past 6 months, nor are there adequate words to express the feelings I have for the girls I love SO much in my program. I have to admit that when I started grad school, I looked around thinking I had absolutely NOTHING in common with some of these people. We now laugh about how our first impressions went as I sit at dinner with some of my closest friends and some of the most legit women I have EVER met.

I have worked part-time since I was like, 14 years old, and I have worked with people of all different types. But nowhere have I been pressed and beaten down like grad school, and NOWHERE have I found a group of people to pour encouragement out of their nearly empty wells. I legitimately am SO impressed. I go to school with some of the most servant hearted, hard working women of God on this planet. Girls who have pulled out their prayer journals on a day when I was stressed out and shown me MY NAME written in their prayers. I am so sorry, but people who ACTUALLY pray when they say they will pray for you are hard to come by. I have never been so humbled, so challenged, so encouraged, and so loved as I have been in the past 6 months.

For me now, everything looks a little different. I'm looking around and seeing these girls who are leaving the program for their internships and wondering, "when will I see you again?"... that is just NOT okay. If you would have asked me before grad school if I thought I would become this attached to these girls, I would have laughed. But I am. I am so sad to see them moving along and our pathetic little speech path building will just not be the same without them lighting up the hallways. I have learned so much from those girls- more I think than I have learned in the classroom. I have learned about what matters. I have been mutually encouraged- I am SO BLESSED to have known them, and hopefully to keep in touch with them! I thought I was a hard worker until I met girls who have TWO CHILDREN and families and still are going through grad school. They wake up, take their kids to school, go to school, have clients, do all the same work and projects that I do, work as Grad Assistants to help pay for school, and then get off, pick up their kids, spend the evenings with them, put them to bed, then spend the rest of the night preparing and working for the next day, waking up and doing it all again.

This is a crazy season of life for me- and I can't explain how much I hate it and love it at the same time. I love how God is using it. I LOVE how he is humbling me and I love that I can seriously do nothing without him. I have learned so much from my clients too. I have seen true joy on the faces of clients who can't communicate at all- just joy because they get to spend an hour around people who they know love them enough to spend that hour helping them out. I have seen 65 year old couples enter the doors together, with the husband wheeling in his wife to therapy. He sits next to her as she does her best to communicate, and encourages her. He tells her how proud he is of her. He looks us all in the eye and tells him that Jesus Christ is the only thing that matters in marriage. And I believe him. He looks at that woman like she is 18 on prom night and loves her- and I can only hope and pray that I meet a man who loves me like that. I think I'm going to make my fiance in the future go to marriage counseling with that man. I only hope that I could love someone that well too. I have seen little boys' faces light up because all of a sudden they did something they thought they could never do. Nothing- I mean NOTHING- replaces that feeling of hearing that little one say, "look teacher! I did it!"

My heart has been opened up to places that I never thought existed. I have cried with girls- literally sobbed from exhaustion in groups of four other sobbing girls, only to end up dying laughing because we realize how pathetic we all are. I have cracked speech path pun after speech path pun- YES, I am officially that nerdy. I have gone to dinners with people I used to think were weird- and I've found that they are seriously some of the greatest people I know. I've learned that people will surprise you.

I think for a long time I spent my days bogged down. I was so consumed with myself and what I was trying to accomplish and what problems were happening. But being in this program, although it has been the toughest thing I've ever done, has brought back this crazy fire and love for PEOPLE. I LOVE people. I love hearing about things I never would have thought up on my own, and realizing that we are all out on this crazy journey together- not to judge but to learn something beautiful from one another. I suddenly realize that where I thought I was always struggling to catch up with everyone else, that really we are all dealing with the same things. Really, we are all insecure. Really, we all want to be loved. And honestly, if we were all really honest- we are searching for a purpose in what we spend our days doing. I have learned to treat every day like a new chance. I have realized that even the small things we do matter. Small things with great love and more powerful than huge things sometimes. It's about being faithful in those small things, and suddenly waking up and realizing how much you've been given has grown.

I am so excited for this next season...