"Time Flies When You're Having Fun"

Hard to believe, but the summer is almost over. This is week 10, the last of the program. I can hardly believe how quickly the time flew.

I worked Saturday and Sunday, twelve hour shifts which always leave me extra tired afterwards. And yet, despite being exhausted and at times overwhelmed, I've never dreaded going to work. Not once. My family (who are privy to my usual evening mantra of "But I don't want to go to work tomorrow!") can testify that that's a pretty significant improvement. I've loved the time I've had here, the ER and the nurses and others I've met. I can say, with more conviction than previously, that I will enjoy being a nurse.

My roommate mentioned today that a friend texted her, saying how ready she was to go back to school. My roommate couldn't sympathize--like me, she thinks the summer has gone way too fast. "Yeah," I added, "and if summer's gone this fast, just think how quickly this next year will go!"

"Stop!" She cried, covering her ears. "If you say it, it's going to happen!"

Unfortunately for both of us, it probably doesn't matter whether I say it or not--time is a quirky entity. Even though we can measure it out in minutes and hours and days and weeks, we've all experienced how very fluid it can be. Some days, it simply seems to creak slowly by (or even stand still). Other days, we lose track of whole hours, often while doing something enjoyable.

I'm glad to have come through three years of college, and excited to look forward to being a nurse. But I'm also enormously grateful for another year before that time arrives--another year to learn and grow, to live with the friends I've come to know and love like family over the past three years. The first hints of change will arrive in December, when my dear friend Margie graduates--the first brave one of us to venture into the "real world". And from there, it just continues.

Change will come, sure as the sun will rise. But there will also be so many good times and rich memories in the interim--and I'm ready to soak them in.