Nalgene of diet coke

Shoes have become increasingly more difficult to pick out these days after working at the Boys and Girls Club. After days of making horrible decisions, my poor feet are purple and blue and blistered from wearing inappropriate footwear while playing some seriously intense indoor soccer. Though my dungeon of an office is freezing, I'm currently sporting some flip flops, the only shoes that do not apply pressure and strain on my broken stumps.

I'm giving three cheers for the weekend being over. That lapse into emotional messiness was more than I could handle, and trying to think at every passing minute whether that would be when I would start my descent down the hill for the big celebration of ending my collegiate career was thoroughly depressing. Wednesday marks the day of my second to last test for the term, leaving only one more and a paper before I finish my last social work class. Summer term entails Book of Mormon and a weights class, so I'm not exactly concerned about putting a lot of work into my final days as an official student. Tomorrow is also the first day of Peli's intermediate dog training class, so I'll be able to mark the passing weeks with something to look forward to.

An apology seems trite for my previous entry, as it seemed entirely too negative of my current living situation (though I assure you that was not my intention). Those close to me never believe it, but the truth is that I am quite shy, and the structure at KU was perfect to remedy that problem. With the succession of each class determined for us by the social work program, we inevitably were in the same class with the same students each semester, rather than having a wide assortment of individuals each time. While some may find the variety refreshing, my insecurity and low self esteem leaves me scrambling to start over each time, and my struggle to trust anything with ovaries easily prevents me from opening up in the times I meet with my peers once a week. I can provide the occasional wise crack and bring about laughter from those around me, but the public shunning experienced in classes previous when I attempted to offer my experience from another university leaves me terrified and unwilling to volunteer my true self. My experiences in Kansas, where I was considered more conservative as a result of my religion, were met with respect and understanding from my peers. To me, that is at the root of social work, where we are trained to meet clients with a grasp of cultural sensitivity as well as social justice, and starting where the client is, we help them with what they need. Here, with an absence of the strengths perspective, much of what is taught or expressed is through looking at individuals as things that need to be fixed rather than survivors of circumstance that just need some help getting even further than they've managed to on their own.

This weekend was hard. Coming into work and going to class these past couple of days have been little battles against drained motivation. But I've made it here 10 months. I guess I can handle a few more.