The Good

If everything had gone as planned, as I imagined it when I first started graduate school, I would be finishing up by now. I would be handing in my portfolio and would have a plane ticket to Arizona booked to take the Child Life Certification Exam. I would be applying for jobs and hopefully going on interviews. But I'm not. I chose to stop.

I can't honestly say that I don't feel any remorse over the fact that I won't be getting my Master's in a few weeks. I have thankfully stayed in touch with everyone in my program and I envy them. They've pushed through, done their best and now they will graduate and have Masters degrees. The next chapter of their lives are beginning and I couldn't be happier for them. I'm happy to still be included in their group. I think it comes with the field. We stick close because not many people know what we have been through. The Child Life world is a small one. Almost like an island. Isolated, but still a driving force in the world. It exists even if not many people know about it. I look at these amazing women and I envy them but more than that I am grateful for them. They made my first year at grad school unforgettable and they made my last few months of grad school manageable.

I try to find the good in every situation, no matter how horrible it was. I think that there is always something to learn and you always come away with some good. They are the good. They are the gifts that I will carry with me forever. I wish them all the best.

And as the weight of grad school is slowly lifted from their shoulders I find myself not any more clear about what I want to do with my future. A new career pops into my head everyday and on same days I think I could just be a waitress forever. All I know, and all I've ever known, is that I want to help people. As a little girl I wanted to be a teacher (but mostly just to write on the chalkboards), then I wanted to start my own magazine for teens, then I wanted to be a writer (but who really knows what that means), then I switched to being a psychologist and then eventually landed on being a CLS. But now I'm back at the beginning- back to being just like that little girl who sat on her bed dreaming of what she will do when she grows up.