State of Mind

My head is spinning.  For sure.

Here I come, there I go.

I feel like I am always on the go.

At least I really enjoy my job.  I absolutely adore my job.  I teach reading at an inpatient psychiatric facility to children that have some pretty serious mental problems.  Some of my students have bipolar disorder, some of them have schizophrenia, many are victims of physical and sexual abuse, most do not know their birth parents.  Some, even, are sex abusers themselves. 

When I stop to think about what I have read in their files, it makes me cry.  It’s so odd though, I read a file, then the kid walks into my class.  “*That* kid?” I think.  In all the numbers and calculations and diagnoses and paperwork and admitting and discharging and transport and drama people seem to forget… they are children.

Awesome Hot Dogs! Only $2.99!

Excited doesn’t cover it.
I am pretty much in complete and total disbelief about how well everything is turning out. I don’t want to jinx myself, the way things turned out is just awesome. Not red and yellow socks awesome, but truly, breath-takingly, I-am-totally-excited-and-this-really-rules awesome.

I believe this picture of Oreo captures it best.

Awesome hot dog!

Notice how he is so excited that his ears are back *and* his tail is wagging so quickly that it’s blurry…haha. Oreo has the best attitude ever. Every day when I come home, he’s all excited.

Seriously.

I have so many blessings I can count!

1) While my current school may be closing and this is truly sad for the girls, I found a new job! I am going to be working in a similar situation with at risk kids aged 7 to 17! It is still not going to be easy to say goodbye to the girls next Friday, but at least I know I am going to be able to use my skills to work with some different students instead of having to go back to waitressing by necessity.

2) My mommie got me a new phone *AND* it’s green and sparkly! I was using this old one because my good phone got stolen in April.

3) I got an 1160 on the GRE! USF said that I needed at least 1000 to get admitted to the graduate program I want to do and I got 1160! I got 640 on the quantitative and 520 on the verbal. I think if I took it again, I could study more and really blow the verbal away.


4) I wrote about Tupac on the analytical writing portion of the GRE and I am very confident I blew that section out of the water. That’s right, I said I wrote about Tupac Shakur on the GRE. I signed a bunch of stuff saying I would not reveal the questions so I can’t tell you *how* I wrote about him, but none the less, I kept it straight gangsta on the GRE.

5) I got a $500 scholarship for this semester to start working toward my Master’s Degree in Special Education at USF on August 25!

6) I can walk to work and to the gym each day so I won’t need to use gas unless I’m going to USF!

7) My Dad and I understand each other a lot more now than we used to and, as a result, we get along much better. He also offered to help me subsidize graduate school if I score well!

8) Despite the fact that I am far away, a lot of my family is still very supportive of me.

9) Last, but definitely not least, Adam. Adam has stuck with me through thick and thin. He has stood by me through all the crazy ups and downs over the last 2 years while going through problems of his own.

I do, however, miss Ohio. I hope I can go visit sometime soon! I miss my family, naturally, but I’d like to shout out to my Ohio friends Brian W., Brijette N., Dawn M., Heidi G., Janice D., Neil E., & Trevor E.!