Beach Bummin'

Today Mike, Kate, and I went to the beach to beat the heat in style! After yesterday's 95 degrees with no mercy, I decided I'd had enough of summer already. Mike and I both had the day off together (for the first time since Summer I began) and Dave was gone to have his Army physical so Kate came beach bummin' with us all day. Mike got to wander around taking pictures while we girls soaked up some rays and went swimming. I wore a ton of sunscreen and still got fried. My anatomy professor would cry and inform me of all the skin cancer I contracted today. Such is the way of summer.

Mike and I got to see X Men 3 on Saturday and it was a great movie. I highly recommend it--and if you go, stay until the credits are over.

I'm sad my three day weekend is over but this week is week four of Human Phys., which means I'll be half done by Thursday. Considering I feel like I've only started, I think the rest of it will fly by and I'll finally get a break from the constant studying and homework. The lab homework really wears me down--two labs a week and each report is 6+ pages long. My longest was lab #2--18 pages!! If I don't get an A on that one someone is going to lose their head.

I haven't seen my family since Easter and that sucks complete balls too. I miss them a lot but between my parents' schedule, Mike's, and mine, we're never free at the same time. My mom is back to working weekends so going home would be pointless, my brother recently started working his first job, and my dad's schedule is so unpredictable that it's a wonder anyone gets to see him. Coming home in the week is out of the question--I have the pharmacy and class every single day.

The waiting list is irritating the bull out of me. It moves a few in a day, getting me all excited, then it doesn't move for a week. I'm stuck in between two basic feelings: not wanting to go at all, and wanting to go so bad I can taste it. On one side I realize that yes, pharmacy school will be a big challenge and adjustment, but in four years I'll be out of school and there will be nothing else to do except begin the rest of my life. Most people laugh at me when I say four years--after all, most people I know will be getting out of school within the next year or two. But for me, four years is the light at the end of the tunnel. The end of a very long day. The finish line, past which I'll never have to study another f-ing thing again. It means being able to marry the man I've wanted to marry since our first date. It means never having to worry about how I'm going to pay for my groceries. It means doing something else besides school. Sometimes I think it's unfair that everyone's real life gets to begin before mine. Occasionally I hate it that I have to wait when I've already waited for so long. But when I truly think about it I know that I'm doing what I need to do, and the journey isn't the same for everyone. My road may be longer but in the end it is the best road for me.

Of course on the flip side it would be so much easier to stay within the boundaries of everything I know. Staying in Kalamazoo with Mike and my friends, with a university I've learned how to manipulate for my cause, with an education that no longer intimidates me. Perhaps that last one is the biggest. It took me nearly three years to figure out I wasn't the dumbest person in my classes. How long will it take me to discover that in pharmacy school?

This all bothers me the most because the summer is slipping away fast. Already one of the four months is gone, and I wonder how much longer I'll have to wait before I know what I'll be doing at the end. Any scenario thrown at me I can handle--I just want to know what it is.

Damnit I wish that list would move. Or something.