Update on my life...
So once again I have been neglecting my lj. It sure has been an exciting year and yet I don’t feel very different. Isn’t that weird that you can go through life changing events and come out in some ways the same…..or at least I don’t notice the changes.
So this past school year I was an RA in the Quad. It was an awesome and eye opening experience. I quickly learned that by living in the honors college hall my freshman year I did not understand what your average college student was like. I learned about drinking, vomit, random screaming, and weird gossip. At the same time I learned that people who are not people I would immediately want to hang with can be really cool and even if someone drinks or does something stupid does not mean that they are not nice people. This is a duh statement in a way, but I never thought that after “busting” a resident that I could be friends with them. But that made relationships stronger in most cases. Except when one gave me the silent treatment for a month or two.
Academically I have learned that passing class can be hard. I have finally been challenged this year and really started to like my major more and more. This next year I will be taking mostly classes in my major now that I got into professional school, so that should be nice.
The biggest thing that happened this year was my surgery. I have a birth defect that means that the bottom of my brain goes into my spinal column. Through out the year my balance had been getting worse and my head hurt more as well as some other symptoms. We found out that I had this malformation my junior year of high school but didn’t think much of it. So after multiple doctor and neurologist appointments I ended up at the neurosurgeon’s office the first day of spring break and the next morning I was in the hospital for surgery.
To simple put it they made more room for that part of my brain. Spent some time in the hospital and then home and was back to school for week 2 of classes. I told the surgeon that I was going to finish this term or it just didn’t work. Well life isn’t that easy….
During week 4/5 my eye sight was going and my balance was iffy and well I felt like crap. I went home to see the eye doctor. I will never forget his face. I could barely read the top letters when he was working with me. I have never felt so helpless or frustrated in my life. The thought of going blind crossed my mind. I started to think about not being able to capture a moment in a photo or see someone smile again. It was a scary thing and now I am so much more appreciative of my sight. My hearing became more acute though which made me notice small things which was a positive thing.
The next week I went down for an MRI (my third, they are fun!). When the tech says just stay there and needs to call to consult you start to panic. They ended up letting me go that night, but the next day my temperature flew and I was reluctantly in the ER.
To speed this up after nine days of no fun hospital stay it turned out I had an allergic reaction to the patch the put in the covering of my brain. After some steroids I was feeling better. But I was under watch from my mom and dad and spent the rest of the term at home. Being a driven person this was frustrating. I had to drop classes, take and incomplete, and got credit for the RA training class I TAed for. I even graded papers in the hospital when I could barely read with a high temp.. I felt that I could not let my students down. It was so hard and devastating to drop classes though after working with Services for Students with Disabilities to get note takers (I couldn’t read the board) and working with professors and staying up late doing RA work too. But I now realize that life was telling me to just slow down and breathe. A message that was hard for me to take.
Being away from Corvallis and my life up there became hard and very boring, but at the same time I needed it. The bumps of spinal fluid went away finally this last week and I am now working full time on conference stuff up here at OSU and start a class from 8 to 9am on Monday. This is to pick up one of the classes I dropped to be able to take classes fall term I need to able to go on my internship spring and summer terms next year. I will just be taking some heavy loads, still being an RA, and really working on perfecting my time management skills. I am excited for the challenge….I think.
Some times life just throws a different more interesting path your way and hey I lived through it to be able to tell you all my story. And yet I don’t feel that different. I just have a greater appreciation for life.
So that was a long post and maybe next time I will post more often then once a year!
So this past school year I was an RA in the Quad. It was an awesome and eye opening experience. I quickly learned that by living in the honors college hall my freshman year I did not understand what your average college student was like. I learned about drinking, vomit, random screaming, and weird gossip. At the same time I learned that people who are not people I would immediately want to hang with can be really cool and even if someone drinks or does something stupid does not mean that they are not nice people. This is a duh statement in a way, but I never thought that after “busting” a resident that I could be friends with them. But that made relationships stronger in most cases. Except when one gave me the silent treatment for a month or two.
Academically I have learned that passing class can be hard. I have finally been challenged this year and really started to like my major more and more. This next year I will be taking mostly classes in my major now that I got into professional school, so that should be nice.
The biggest thing that happened this year was my surgery. I have a birth defect that means that the bottom of my brain goes into my spinal column. Through out the year my balance had been getting worse and my head hurt more as well as some other symptoms. We found out that I had this malformation my junior year of high school but didn’t think much of it. So after multiple doctor and neurologist appointments I ended up at the neurosurgeon’s office the first day of spring break and the next morning I was in the hospital for surgery.
To simple put it they made more room for that part of my brain. Spent some time in the hospital and then home and was back to school for week 2 of classes. I told the surgeon that I was going to finish this term or it just didn’t work. Well life isn’t that easy….
During week 4/5 my eye sight was going and my balance was iffy and well I felt like crap. I went home to see the eye doctor. I will never forget his face. I could barely read the top letters when he was working with me. I have never felt so helpless or frustrated in my life. The thought of going blind crossed my mind. I started to think about not being able to capture a moment in a photo or see someone smile again. It was a scary thing and now I am so much more appreciative of my sight. My hearing became more acute though which made me notice small things which was a positive thing.
The next week I went down for an MRI (my third, they are fun!). When the tech says just stay there and needs to call to consult you start to panic. They ended up letting me go that night, but the next day my temperature flew and I was reluctantly in the ER.
To speed this up after nine days of no fun hospital stay it turned out I had an allergic reaction to the patch the put in the covering of my brain. After some steroids I was feeling better. But I was under watch from my mom and dad and spent the rest of the term at home. Being a driven person this was frustrating. I had to drop classes, take and incomplete, and got credit for the RA training class I TAed for. I even graded papers in the hospital when I could barely read with a high temp.. I felt that I could not let my students down. It was so hard and devastating to drop classes though after working with Services for Students with Disabilities to get note takers (I couldn’t read the board) and working with professors and staying up late doing RA work too. But I now realize that life was telling me to just slow down and breathe. A message that was hard for me to take.
Being away from Corvallis and my life up there became hard and very boring, but at the same time I needed it. The bumps of spinal fluid went away finally this last week and I am now working full time on conference stuff up here at OSU and start a class from 8 to 9am on Monday. This is to pick up one of the classes I dropped to be able to take classes fall term I need to able to go on my internship spring and summer terms next year. I will just be taking some heavy loads, still being an RA, and really working on perfecting my time management skills. I am excited for the challenge….I think.
Some times life just throws a different more interesting path your way and hey I lived through it to be able to tell you all my story. And yet I don’t feel that different. I just have a greater appreciation for life.
So that was a long post and maybe next time I will post more often then once a year!