There are times...

When I'm so frustrated with the administration at school and feel so utterly disenfranchised that I think I just can't bring myself to go back to campus or pick up a textbook. And I still feel that way for the most part. One of the faculty recently said that all students feel this way once they get over the hump and are just a few months from graduation. I remember feeling like I couldn't wait to be done with school that last time and I just kept saying "...finally, I'm finally going to be done" and I said it so often my mom had it piped onto my graduation cake. Thankfully, the person at the bakery was able to spell it correctly (I'm alluding to the cake my MIL brought to our rehearsal dinner that said simply "Tomorrow!" but the girl at the bakery could NOT, for the life of her, spell "tomorrow" without misspelling it. Repeatedly.)

But, today, I find myself feeling excited for the curriculum and for having had some really interesting experiences as a student. Right now we're doing simultaneous mental health and community health rotations and I'm really enjoying the mental health clinical portion. I'm sure I'll enjoy community health (home health and hospice rotation) but I don't start until tomorrow. Anyway, we have a lot of assignments for extra-curricular projects one of which is observing 2 self-help groups. We're supposed to do AA for one and then anything we want for the second one.

And I have to tell you, dear internets, that attending an AA meeting has to be one of the most interesting things I have ever done. It was absolutely fascinating. And the member were so friendly and welcoming. And they really do introduce themselves by saying "I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic." And they celebrate anniversaries of sobriety. One member has been sober for 50 years, another 18 years and one 7 months. But everybody applauded these efforts no matter the length of time spent sober. They spent the meeting reading from the Big Book and everyone took turns reading a paragraph and then talking about what that paragraph meant to them. Or to make any other comment and it was humbling. The desperation, the struggle, the rock bottom-ness of it all was sad, inspirational, fascinating and surreal all at the same time. I'm glad I went. Thank you, SMU faculty, for assigning this project. I can't promise to try but I'll try to try to keep this in mind the next time I feel like I can't bring myself to go to campus.