Be on time? Check!

One of my Day Zero goals was to be on time to every class for three weeks.  This is something that I've really struggled with since coming to school.  I was raised by a mother who believes that if you aren't 15 minutes early,  you're late.  I think she views the fact that I didn't take this policy to heart as her greatest failure as a mother.  I felt guilty for not representing her well...but I guess not guilty enough because I didn't change.

So I made this goal: Be on time to every class.  And it sat on the Day Zero list unattempted for an entire semester.

Then I made a deal with a friend.  Every time I am late to school, work or church (for the record, I am not late to church...that is one area where my mom did succeed...) I owe him a quart of ice cream.  Effective for the entire semester.  Apparently that's what I needed.

We are now three weeks into the semester, and I have not been late to ANYTHING for the ENTIRE time.  So I am officially checking this goal off the list.

In my time of punctuality I have felt unexpectedly empowered.  I feel like I'm in more control of my life.  I also have lost that annoying nagging in the back of my mind, placed there purposefully by my mother, reminding me that it's rude to be late.

Mission accomplished.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

Back in September I blogged about a paper chain I made to count down the days until my graduation.  It was so long back in September, but the semester flew by and the chain got shorter.

This is what it looked like then:

And THIS is what it looks like now:

Where did the days go?

My Last First Day

Well folks, this is it.  Today was my last first day of college.  I cannot wait to be finished, although I'm not really sure what my future has in store.  Sometimes that makes me nervous, but I suppose that I should not worry about things that I cannot control.

I am so, so, SO excited for my pathophysiology class this semester.  I just bought my book today and I have spent most of my evening perusing it.  It's so great!

(To clarify, pathophysiology is the study of diseases and how they affect the human body.)

At the beginning of class today, my professor quoted an address that Gordon B. Hinckley gave at BYU in 1992.   I found it very enlightening, encouraging, and validating.

"Have you ever contemplated the wonder of yourself, the eyes with which you see, the ears with which you hear, the voice with which you speak? No camera ever built can compare with the human eye. No method of communication ever devised can compare with the voice and the ear. No pump ever built will run as long or as efficiently as the human heart. What a remarkable thing each of us is. We can think by day and dream by night. We can speak and hear, smell and feel.

Look at your finger. The most skillful attempt to reproduce it mechanically has brought only a crude approximation. The next time you use your finger, look at it and sense the wonder of it. While sitting in Symphony Hall in Salt Lake listening to a concert, I was in a position to see the fingers of the performers in the orchestra. Whether playing the strings, the percussion instruments, the brass, the woodwinds--all involved the use of fingers. One does not have to use one's fingers to sing or whistle, but beyond that, there would be little of musical harmony without the deft action of trained fingers."

I really enjoyed the entire address actually, not just the part about bodies, though I am partial to them.  You can find the rest of it here.

Sweet, Sweet Victory!

Today, after much coaxing and begging and pleading, we *finally* got a new dishwasher!

This, my friends, is what sweet, sweet victory looks like: