During these months besides working full time, I was
spending quite a bit of time studying for my PT exam. During one practice exam I was on questions
18 out of 200 and was about ready to cry because I didn’t know 14 out of the
first 18 questions and there was no way I would ever know enough to become a PT
and I might as well curl up and die. I
didn’t curled up and die but took the real exam, did just fine, and was maybe
even a little upset I studied so much.
In addition to working and studying, I was also searching and
interviewing for jobs. I accepted a job
to work in the outpatient physical therapy department at a regional health
center. It will be primarily orthopedics
and sports medicine with no hospital responsibilities—basically it sounded just
like my dream job so I said yes. So when
I wasn’t working, studying, or trying to find a job, I was spending my free
time planning a wedding. So truthfully,
my mother was planning the wedding, doing most of the work, and I was advising
and pitching in on occasion. It was
going to be a small, simple country wedding.
It tends to be less small when you are related to a large portion of the
church. A wedding also tends to be less
simple when your mother is crazy and decided to do almost everything
herself. Instead of DIY standing for
do-it-yourself, we changed it to DYI—do-yourself-in. My mom may have made 3 wedding dresses--of
course I only wore two of them. She also
made all the floral arrangements, bouquets, corsages, etc. We then planted our wildflowers and I was out
picking wildflower arrangements the morning of the wedding getting eaten alive
by mosquitoes. We might have made 700
wedding mints (at least this was a good study break) and 17 dozen brownies. It was crazy but surprisingly enough everyone
survived. I owe both my mom and dad a
huge thank you for letting me live with them but also putting up with
everything going on in my life during those months. I think they might have a few sleepless
nights and were incredible supportive.
As my mom put it later, “Alex, your life has been my life lately.”
Next, graduation weekend finally arrived. I’m not sure who was more excited- myself or
my dad who was dancing around our hotel room wearing my ridiculous graduation
tam the morning of graduation. I also think it is ridiculous that we all dressed up in the doctoral regalia with the funny hood (it is amazing how long it took several soon to be Doctors of Physical Therapy to figure out which direction the hood is attached to the gown-- it may have even required the assistance of a YouTube video), the floppy hat, and the lovely black gowns that none of us would be caught dead wearing any other time, but by golly we were very proud to be dressed outrageously and graduate- no fashion police were going to keep us from our diplomas. So,
actually KU Med has three graduations—I suppose they think you should get your money’s
worth after so many years. I attended
two of the ceremonies and was graduated out by then and refused to attend the
third in Lawrence. It was a lot of fun to reunite with my
classmates after several months. It was
also exciting to hear about all the life changes—especially new jobs (once
again we were all thrilled by the idea of getting a paycheck to work). There have been so many great memories over
the past three years of PT school. We
are all glad it is done, and truthful unsure if we would want to do it again,
but I don’t think I would trade the people in my class who I had the privilege
to experience it with and being involved in each others lives.
 |
| I'm sure we were suppose to be doing something more productive in lab than drawing mustaches but I'm sure we had a bad case of senoritis that day. |
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