Success Story

I’ve been a bad blogger… I know. I want to write more, but I’ve been busy playing with the little guy and catching up on my sleep. It has been a LONG week and all I wanted to do every night after Ayden was in bed was to unwind with a little bit of TV and then crash! I’ve been asleep by 9pm almost every night this week and for me that is early. Although I am not a night owl staying up until midnight every night, I do consistently stay up until 10pm or later… just not this week. Oh well, I haven’t been overly stressed either that I’ve needed to sit down and just a lot off my chest. So although it has been a LONG week, it hasn’t been overly stressful like some long weeks can get and for that I am grateful!

I had clinic on both Tuesday and Thursday this week and both days went rather well I think. I did all of the speech audiometry on Thursday and I think it went well. It definitely wasn’t perfect by any means, but it wasn’t horrible horrible either and for doing all of it knowing that the supervisor that I like the least of the three was watching through the camera I think I was rather successful. In any case, I won’t have to do it again for another two weeks because we don’t have any evals until then. Well that isn’t necessarily true. I won’t have to do it again for clinic until that time, but I will have to do it seven times this weekend when I am doing hearing evals for the undergrad students. But for them I am not getting nervous at all for those.

Today I am ‘stuck’ on campus for the majority of the day because my second year has hearing aid duty. I thought I might as well finally take the day and stay here (in the grad room at this moment) with her in case something does come in and although I could be at home doing laundry, I’d probably also be sitting on the couch watching TV and not getting any studying done. Not that I’m getting a whole lot of studying done while I am blogging and on facebook either, but well I probably wouldn’t be blogging while I was at home either. So yeah…

I had an hour and a half study session this morning with the other first years with one of our professors for our test on Monday. I am feeling very confident about it. We only have three topics to know for the test… acoustic reflexes, speech audiometry, and masking. Don’t be fooled though because within those topics is a lot to know and it is getting it all straight that is the hard part. I think I finally have the masking stuff done, only after almost two weeks… but it feels good to know and understand something and then put it into effect for clinic as well! Our professor started asking us some stuff about reflexes and for a minute I had no idea what she was talking about. I had been concentrating so hard on masking that I pretty much lost all of the reflex stuff that I knew… but after a minute of quick review it all came back and I was answering the questions pretty confidently, lol… for the most part. I’m going with… lets stay positive and confident for this upcoming test. I’m not hoping for another 100% like the last test, but at least a 90% or better and I have no worries that I should be able to pull at least that off.

I got a call from my BFF today regarding an internship that she interviewed for this morning. She is hoping to work at a home for teenage mothers next semester as part of her schooling. This is something that she is really passionate about and I really hope that she gets the internship because I think that she could be a positive influence on these girls. Somehow during her interview the fact that she had a best friend who was pregnant in high school came up and that she is a ‘success’ story. Like you had to guess that that friend was me. Anyways, the lady she was interviewing with wondered if I might ever consider coming to speak with the girls at the home. When my friend asked me, of course I agreed to. I think it is a great idea.

After I got off the phone with my friend I was thinking about it a little more. I’m still more than willing to go and talk to these young women and share ‘my story’ with them if only to let them know that they can make it as well, but what kind of hit a nerve per say was the fact that I’m considered a success story. The fact is that teenage pregnancy is one of those things that people look at and think that the girl is screwed for life… there really is no way around it, but then the ones who do continue on with life in a ‘normal’ way are considered a success. It’s normal for any other teenager to graduate from high school and then go to college, but when you are talking about a teenage mother… well all of that is no longer normal, but a success. Why are these girls held to a different standard?

Maybe I don’t know what I’m saying or I’m not getting what I’m truly feeling out in the way that I want to or maybe I’m just not normal. But when I became pregnant, of course I thought that my life was ruined for a while, but then I became to realize that it only would be if I let it. So I did what everyone else in my senior class was doing, I went to class and graduated. And then I went to college. I had a baby, but I also didn’t let that interfere with how I wanted my life to play out. Obviously things are different with a child, but that stigma of being a teen parent is who you have to become. I don’t consider myself a success because I did what I had planned to do either way, go to college, graduate, and well then continue with college (maybe that second round of college wasn’t planned from the beginning, hehe), and continue on with my life. I didn’t end up pregnant and think, well should I follow the norm of what society says these girls end up like or be a ‘success’ and continue on with life. I won’t say everything was as easy as it would have been without a child, but for me, I didn’t know it any other way and did what I needed to in order to get the grades I wanted, to get where I wanted to be. I don’t know…

In any case, I’m excited to go some place and offer some teenage mothers some support and let them know that they don’t have to be the norm, that if they set their mind to it, they can achieve anything that they want to, their desires before they got pregnant. But they have to believe in themselves because if you don’t believe in yourself then you won’t get anywhere. Have faith in yourself!

Okay, enough about that… getting too serious for me and it’s Friday… Friday the 13th and a time for fun, not seriousness, hehe! I’m so ready for Ghost Whisperer tonight and Jay is making manicotti for supper and I cannot wait. Ayden probably won’t eat a whole lot of it because for some reason he doesn’t really like lasagna or manicotti, but that just means more for me! But just because I  know that he would prefer not to eat it doesn’t mean that he will have to eat at least some of it. I’m not a short order cook (most of the time) at our house and so if he doesn’t like what is made then he doesn’t get supper. Although most nights he is allowed to pick what the whole family eats.

Off to study some (maybe)!

CIAO! LOVE ME!