It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep.

Do you ever feel small?

There's a whole world out there that needs changing, and I'm only one little girl.

I have nothing to offer but my willingness to try.

I suppose that's something.

Moving Forward

So, apparently I'm not very good at updating this blog, but I'm determined! I will not give up! Soon you won't be able to keep up with all the mad-blogging I'll be doing.

I suppose a huge part of the reason I've been so silent on this front is because for the past few months, I have literally felt like I was drowning in school work. But no more! Because low and behold...



Holy Crap, I can't believe they actually let me graduate. I had actually convinced myself that I would never make it out of that place alive, and so the whole experience felt unreal. Until I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends, and started bawling. That sucked. But the rest of it was great.



I'm so proud of both my brother and my mom. David is 6 years older than me, but since he and his wife got married so young (he was 19), they couldn't afford for them both to be attending school at the same time. So she attended, they worked hard to pay off their debts, and then he went back to school. My mom got her Associates (which is why her cap and gown are a different color) by taking one class at a time per semester. She never got her Bachelors, because like my brother and sister-in-law, she and dad married young, and then they left for the missions field (Chile, to be more specific) as soon as he finished school. I greatly respect people who go back to school after taking time away, because that takes real determination and strength of will.



Because my dad is a professor at the college from which we all graduated, he was the one who handed us our diplomas as we walked across stage. So the only member of my family who wasn't in the ceremony was my sister-in-law. This isn't a particularly great picture of any of us, but I still like it.



I've never been so happy and so sad that something was over at the same time. Something about it all seems so final, and I can't believe that some of my best friends, who I've spent so much of my life with over the past five years, are people that I will now see only rarely, if ever. I feel so small and inadequate in the face of what is to come, and yet I feel so excited to be a part of something bigger than myself. School is over, and now it's time for real life, and I have no idea what that means or if I'll even be good at it, but while I'm terrified out of my mind, I'm thrilled at the opportunities that lie ahead of me.

Class dismissed.