Goodbye Classroom

When you spend a year of your life re-organizing your priorities, putting one specific activity above everything else, that activity becomes a part of the definition of who you are.  When you spend countless hours trying to digest all of the information disseminated to you in time for the test and with enough depth for it to stick and translate throughout the curriculum, it becomes a part of your "normal routine."  When you spend everyday with the same 13 people for a year, inside the same four walls at the same tables in the same chairs suffering through the same fight, they become more than just classmates.  They become an extended family (we spent more time together than we did with our families anyway) -- you love them, you hate them, you help them, you snap at them, you laugh with them, you cry with them, you heal with them, you complain with them, you encourage each other, you get by and you get through.

And then, all of a sudden, your time together is up.  Time to move on to the next task.  Time to put what we've "learned" in the classroom to the test (thank goodness for a miniature library of physical therapy books and notes to which I can run to when I need to) and venture out to clinical assignments.

It's surreal.  It's not real to me yet.  I've teared up.  But realizing that I won't wake up tomorrow, drag on some sweats, grab my backpack and head to class -- it's unfathomable right now.  Tomorrow (day 1 of the clinical) will be a shocker to me.  Ice cold water to my face.  No more routine for us!

And the comfort that we've built with each other (beginning on day one with palpating each others pubic symphyses -- I kid you not!) has been ripped from us, just as we were thrown into it. 10 months (exactly!) together...

Unreal.  Just absolutely unreal.  Did I really make it?  Is it really already time for these clinicals?  Is graduation really so close???

Congrats to my classmates... We've lived through this together, which means we can do anything. :)  Good luck to everyone on their clinicals, and I can't wait to see y'all for the Board Review and share stories of what we've seen and done :)