Countdown Obsession

Let's be honest.  I just love the clicker thing. 

The number of classes left in this master's degree:

How completely bittersweet is that?  8 years since the completion of high school there actually appears to be a (likely) end in sight for my post-secondary education.  No more classes or exams or cramming facts in beyond capacity or kowtowing to the lingo that professors want to hear when I reflect on my personal experiences.  No more room 420 with the same 45 other people 4-5 days a week, 2-5 hours a day + extracurricular fun times + projects.  No more holing-up in study rooms with teddy grahams and white board markers to hash out charts about various disorder groups or language milestones.  I have always been fortunate to have a great group of friends wherever I have ended up but there is something special about the SLP class.  A closeness of shared experience, shared lives, shared complaints, shared disappointment, shared excitement, shared worry, shared excitement for the future.  There has been much reflecting over the last few days about what and who will be missed and what exactly was so great about our time together.  What can I summarize from these talks as we try to grapple with leaving/changing/growing?

Everyone was accepted.  Whether you felt accepted or not I can promise you that you were.  There was no in-crowd or cool group.  No one was put on a pedestal and no one was torn down.  There was an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) respect for each and every person and exactly what made them unique; for the things that they brought to the table.  I hope that everyone felt that this was a time in their lives where they could truly be themselves and be appreciated for that.

To have a few good friends you have to invest in those relationships while not investing in others.  Everything is a choice, everything has an opportunity cost.  I wish I had had more time to get to know each person equally as well but I feel like that I'm still pleasantly surprised, even after 2 years, about what I learn about my classmates.  I may not have spent as much time with some people as I have others but I can honestly say that there isn't anyone I wouldn't be comfortable going out for coffee with and getting into a great discussion or someone I wouldn't be extremely excited to see 5 years from now at a speech-language pathology conference.

Goodbyes are hard.  It hasn't even sunk in yet that we likely will never all be in the same room together again.  Convocation will hopefully come close.  Things will change, I will change, people will move away and, in a few weeks, or a few months, I'll be sitting at a cafe reading a book and I'll realize that I haven't seen my friends in a while.  I'll be sad, maybe I'll get a little weepy.  I'll wish all the best for each of them (each of you!).

Oh, the sap!  I started writing little maple-sugar-filled notes for each of you lovely classmates on this blog but it felt cheesy.  Maybe I'll come back and personalize it later.  Or send me a message and maybe I'll let you know what I had planned to say.

The Countdown continues (no, this clicker thing just doesn't seem to get old)

This many sleeps until I leave for Kenya (15 "sleeps"* until I set foot on Kenyan soil)

The number of objectives out of 8 that I STILL need to complete for my portfolio!

The number of days I have left in Toronto.  Sad.

The number of days I will be spending in Kenya/Africa.

The number of weeks until I am a grown-up SLP that can actually be paid for my services.

*I don't actually anticipate much real sleeping over the two days of airplanes and airports.