First day of school! First day of school!

Wowza! It's been a loooooooong time since I have posted anything! I have so many ideas rolling around that I need to post and a few crafty items I recently created - I'll get to them eventually! I have been so out of touch lately because I have been trying to get my life together for the beginning of grad school!

I spent the better part of last week in Bloomington with my boyfriend. Basically just watching him unpack and pretending to work on my paper that was due today. (I also made him a couple of goodies as a welcome back to school type thing that I will be posting soon).

After I finally said goodbye and came back home last night I decided to pack up everything and got super excited for the beginning of this new chapter. Who knew I needed TWO lunches ehh?

Unfortunately I woke up this morning and the unpacking fairy hadn't come... Damn. Hopefully I will get it all settled in soon and can post some fun pics!

I was awake this morning from the excitement TWO hours earlier than I expected.... obviously super eager to start!

And left for class about an hour before my classes started. Traffic was much better than I had expected BUT parking was a nightmare!
After seemingly endless trips down aisle after aisle and parking lot after parking lot I had a minor meltdown and ended up parking here:

Horrible way to start my day! But it got MUCH better as the day progressed. I'm excited for this program and everything that is going to come from it.

After my roller coaster day I got home and was ready to relax. I picked up the mail and my mom (who keep in mind, runs a day care) had sent me a book. As I flipped through the pages describing how I could be anything I wanted to be, one caught my eye:

I can already tell that the next two years (at least) are going to be a roller coaster. There are going to be a lot of things that I don't want to face in my coursework and in my fieldwork as a social worker. But I cannot wait to begin this journey. Without those trying times and bits of feeling uncomfortable I wouldn't be able to help those that I want to help. I learned today about shifting paradigms and how you can feel so vulnerable sometimes. But you need to accept that vulnerability. Because without vulnerability you can't have joy, or gratitude, or happiness. Check out this amazing snippet of a speech by Brené Brown. I found it truly inspiring.