It's nearing the end of spring...er, snow break. It's a beautiful winter wonderland outside right now, which is giving me more motivation to drink hot chocolate and write this LONG OVERDUE blog post than to study the hypothalamus. I have 14 days until my next medical neuroscience exam. I'll start studying tomorrow ;)
I feel a little guilty about how long it's been since I've written, especially since I've technically been on spring break for over a week now. But somehow that week filled up very quickly and I didn't find much extra time to sit and reflect. During the first weekend I packed up my childhood room. That included a lot of reminiscing, sorting, tossing and packing boxes as efficiently as I could. It was very weird to see the finished product: boxes filling the space beneath my big wooden loft, empty walls (except for the awesome pink, purple and green paint job my family did for me when I was about 8), a pretty empty closet, and just my bed left with sheets, blankets and pillows that will wait until later to be packed. I found some great stuff while cleaning- a high school journal full of angsty entries and epic poems (that have been shredded and really never deserved to see the light of day in the first place), a crisp $20 bill from my Grandma Audrey and Grandpa Darrell for my 8th grade graduation, some report cards (one of which told me I got a 3 (out of 4) for "uses scientific process correctly" HA!), Danish money that will soon be packed to travel back to Denmark with me in May, a shirt I used to love that said "My Space is the pool"......get it?? :P and, finally, lots of pictures. Of family and of friends. And they all made me smile. Even the ones from middle school when my hair was goofy and my glasses were nerdy.
I'm glad I had a goal. I knew what needed to be done. I needed boxes packed and ready to go to the new house (by the way, my mom bought a new house, for anyone who doesn't know yet. haha). For the record, my new room is going to be sweet. It's going to have 3 light grey walls and one dark grey walls. I picked the colors :) Anyway, I'm glad I had a goal because otherwise I might've found packing up my childhood room to be more painful. It's sad, of course, to have things changing. It's especially sad in these circumstances, to know that dad would have enjoyed this process, and he would love the new house. And so it's hard to get away from feeling like we're leaving our memories of him there. In the house where we shared all that love and joy and time together. But we're not leaving it there. We're bringing all the memories and love and laughter with us. To another place that we can make a home. A place we will come for years and years to celebrate holidays or just for the heck of it, because we love to be together.
Back to the things I found in my room. Holy cow, I was more of a teenager than I thought at the time. I will admit, most of the time I found myself to be at least somewhat superior to the average high schooler. I didn't have mood swings (because I was apparently always a bit of a downer), I always did all of my work (because I thought that that was the measure of my self worth), I cared little if people actually liked me (and lots of them didn't) as long as they respected me (and probably only some of them did) and I had surprisingly dark thoughts (I wrote a whole entry in my sophomore english class journal about whether I'd ever have a near-death experience and that maybe it would make life seem less meaningless-- yikes!). I guess I wasn't as immune to the woes of being a teenager as I thought I was. But I'm pleased to announce that I think I've turned out ok. Thus far, at least. My perspective on life is much different now and for that I am very grateful. Knox has toned me down a bit (which was definitely for the better) and Denmark has made me more adventurous and Iowa City has made me more responsible, but also more fun :) I find great joy in having the chance to work out, the chance to spend time with my friends, the chance to have one glass of wine with dinner. Those are things young Rachel Clark might not have stood for (the working out, yes. the wine, no). Anyways, this post wasn't supposed to be all about me. I don't know what it was supposed to be about though, so I hope you enjoyed it.
Onto the upcoming events of life. Starting tomorrow life is going to get a little crazy. The next few weeks include our second med neuro exam, an oral presentation for a conference on campus (which I have yet to create), a draft of my section of a review paper our lab is writing, a few projects for classes, starting an experiment with our newly developed iPad app, giving my "rotation talk" for neuroscience seminar, a trip to San Francisco for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, a visit from my Europe travel-buddy Michael (which will inevitably include more planning for our epic trip!), our second lab exam for med neuro and....that's as far as I can see. Just a few weeks beyond that and it will be finals and then I will be in Europe. Phew! Okay, so I just have this feeling that all of that is going to go very quickly. I kind of already can't believe how quickly this first year in grad school has gone. But then I think about how little I knew before I started about the kind of work I'd be doing and it feels like a lot of years have been crammed into these few months.
OH! Earlier I mentioned that the first weekend was me packing up my room. That was supposed to lead into how this weekend was spent with a trip to Waverley to see Abby and Kyle and that I thoroughly enjoyed my sister (and brother-in-law) time. I don't want to brag too much but I kind of have the best sister and brother-in-law. We went shopping, slept in, ate good food, watched movies, ate more good food, did homework/real work and pretty much I didn't ever want to leave. Not a bad problem to have, if I do say so myself. I'm just grateful they are within driving distance and that they like me enough to let me crash at their place for a weekend :)
I think the hypothalamus really is calling my name now. Until next time... (I'll try really hard for it to not be a whole month before I write again! That was ridiculous. Seriously. I'm sorry it's been so long. For how much I enjoy writing these, you'd think I'd do it more often. )
Stay safe in that lovely spring weather out there and enjoy the end of the week, because it might actually get up to 45 degrees!
Hej hej!
