Grand Finale

Okay, so it won't exactly be "grand", but it's a finale. This is the last post I have to do for my composition class. The semester is winding down and there's only a couple weeks until finals. This first year of college has been a lot of fun. I've made so many new friends, many of them are friends that I will keep for the rest of my life. I'm glad for the summer to be just around the corner, but I'm sad to leave all of my friends knowing that there is a possibility that I may never see a few of them again. Most of them, however, I will see in the fall and I am definitely looking forward to that. I've made so many memories over the past few months, memories I will never forget. And although I'm not even one year into my college education, I realize that I want to look back on these memories years from now and be able to say that these were the best years of my life.

You know you're in college when...

Over the past two semester, my friends and I have had plenty of moments where you just don't know what to say. Those moments when you feel so stupid for messing up something so simple, something you do every single day for years. Every time these moments come up, I realize that I am truly in college. Now maybe not all of you have these moments. If you don't, I'm jealous. While these moments are always funny, they are almost always at my expense. Let me give you a few examples:

Putting your bra on wrong, not realizing that it is on wrong until 11:00 at night, and your boyfriend has to fix it for you because you can't figure it out. (No joke! This happened to me literally five minutes ago. I couldn't figure out how it was twisted and I couldn't exactly strip in the middle of my room.)

Moving your mattress into someone else's room and staying there for a couple nights. It's no big deal until you sleep somewhere else for a few weeks and don't come back for your mattress. (My friend brought his mattress into my boyfriends room so we could all sleep down there one night. We seriously didn't see him for at least a week. We finally put his mattress in the hallway and just left it there.)

Making runs to Taco Bell or Burger King at 11:30 at night when you ate dinner no more than 2 hours ago. (This will be happening in a few minutes. It may be common for some, but we're watching The Terminal and he had Burger King. Now we're going.)

Even if our inside jokes are always at my expense, at least we're all having fun. I mean, these are supposed to be the best years of our lives, right? They might as well be entertaining.

College Relationships

Over the past few months, I've seen plenty of people walking around with their significant others. Some have lasted for a few weeks, some for a few months. A few of my best friends here have ended their relationships, a couple of them were even on good terms. Lucky for me, the relationship I've been in since August shows no sign of slowing down. Sure, we've had our rough spots. Every couple does. However, those rough spots have been rare. It seems we never get sick of each other either, except for the rare occasions when one has Vault really late at night (like now. Burger King was a bad idea). Even with the nights of being over-caffeinated, I truly think this relationship will last. I plan to make it last. Austin is perfect for me in every way. I know it hasn't even been eight months yet, and I never thought I would know this quickly, but he is the one for me. My mom always told me that when I went off to college I would find my soul mate. As much as she told me that, I never thought it would be so true. I met mine within the first week here at Defiance.

Cincinnati Masters

Lately my mom and my aunt have been trying to convince me to get a summer job that has something to do with my major. I figured that it was a little late to start searching for jobs in physical therapy clinics to find a job that I can hold for 3 months with a vacation, and then leave. Because of that, I'm still going to be working at Wendy's for this summer. It works out well because I already know the people I work with and they are really flexible with my schedule. Even though I can't find a job that can help me with athletic training, I found a volunteer position that might help. I was looking at tickets for the tennis tournament in Cincinnati that they have every year. I love going because they have all of the big name tennis players there: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, everybody. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to any of the matches because I have to move in at school early for athletic training. While I was exploring their web site, I came across a page with volunteer positions. Looking them over, I found one job for girls over 16 to basically hang out in the locker rooms. They would do anything from folding towels to stocking the training rooms, or even aiding the players with special requests. They even said it would be a good position for girls in high school or college. I thought it sounded interesting, so I applied. I have yet to hear back from them, but there is still a lot of time until the tournament (the women's tournament starts in early August).

Summer

Summer's coming up in just a few weeks, and as much as I love the people here and as much as I like it here, I have to admit that I am really looking forward to the summer. I can't wait to see all of my old friends again and be around my family all the time. I'm going back to work at Wendy's, which isn't very exciting, but I'm actually looking forward to that as well. I love the people there and, although there is a lot of drama, I couldn't have picked a better place for my first job. My family decided to take a vacation to Myrtle Beach some time in June. I'm very excited for this trip! I don't think I've ever been to Myrtle Beach before. If I have, I was really young and I don't remember it now. My parents even agreed to let Austin come with us. That just made everything more exciting! Although if Austin couldn't come, I could rub it in his face that I was in Myrtle Beach because he did that to me when he was in Hilton Head (cue my evil laugh: mwahaha).

Sophomore Year

I can't tell you how excited I am for next year! We've decided who we're rooming with and even chosen our rooms already. I'm on the third floor again, but I've got a good room with the best view you can get from Whitney, and the most awesome R.A. ever! One of the girls that was in my hall last semester got an R.A. position for this semester in Whitney. She's keeping the job next year and I'm in her hall. She's already got everything planned: our door decorations, the game we play to get to know our hall, and meals (she's an amazing cook). Because we both move in early, I'll probably help her get everything ready for the other people in our hall or whatever she may need help with. I think we might be the only two in our hall for a while, so it should be interesting. We decided that we're going to have potato soup on the night she moves in. I'm also really excited for athletic training next year and football camp. We move in on the 12th of August and we have to be at the training room my noon. I think football camp starts the next day or something like that. Kevin said it will be nice because we've got football only for nine days, so we'll have plenty of time to get settled in and situated. I'm really nervous for camp though. I worked with our athletic trainer through high school and I've taped players for games before, but I'm still intimidated. I know I can do it, but I guess I'm afraid of the upperclassmen not liking my tape job or something.

Trainer Olympics

I think last night was the most fun I've ever had in a training room. Each year, the Athletic Training department hosts the "Trainer Olympics". The trainers, minus the certified trainers, are split up into two teams with the Graduate Assistants as captains. This year we had the "Sternum Stabbers" against my team, the "Gauze-n-ators". To prepare, our team chose team colors and decided what all we would wear. We ended up making t-shirts and giving everybody names of different gauze terms. My name was "Fresh". And if I do say so myself, my shirt was pretty impressive. The number on the back of my shirt was outlined i gold with gold stripes, and with green and white dots between each stripe in different rows. I was pretty proud of myself; I've never been very creative, or creative at all. When I walk into the training room, my captain throws me a roll of gauze to decorate with. We start off with pizza and then move on to the scavenger hunt. In my opinion this was the worst idea ever made by athletic trainers. We ate a ton of pizza and pop... and then we ran around campus trying to be the first to find all of the clues. We lost that event. Then we moved on to Jeopardy. My team lost that event too. After that, we moved onto the skill events. These included one handed events such as ankle taping and hip spicas, blindfolded events like ankle taping and shoulder spica (blindfolded shoulder spica was my event. I lost by a split second), behind the back ankle taping, fastest ankle taping, and "Bloody Ankle" taping (taping an ankle with two gloves on). Throughout all of these events, there were quite a few debates on cheating. Stirrups were a big issue because it is almost impossible to do three stirrups without tearing the tape, and tearing the tape means extra time. After a few events, we had finally taken the lead. Unfortunately we ended up losing, but we still got the shirts that the winning team "won".