Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts!

Aaand we're back!

    After what was too long of a summer break, Our Thoughts Are Stars has returned on this fine September 1st.

    I (Laura) am immensely excited that we (The Foursome) are back to blogging. I had this nagging fear in the back of my mind all throughout June, July and August that we would never come back after our brief sabbatical. However, after minimal consideration, we decided that September 1st would be the best day to get back to writing, because it is the day all the other kids go back to Hogwarts, after all.

    

My reaction to not blogging this summer

and my reaction to starting posting again

    Things seem a little different this fall. At this time (last year for her, two years ago for me), Grace and I would be getting ready to board the Hogwarts Express start home school with Rosie and Mercy. Now, Gracie is a high school grad, taking a brave gap year in order to explore her own little world and become the young woman God wants her to be. I am a college sophomore, embarking on day two of my fall semester classes later today with an 11AM Global Studies lecture.

    Rosie and Mercy are  sixth years. How did that happen? I always thought sixth years were so old going into their junior years of high school. They are still in the throes of awkward high school drama and Algebra and SAT prep. Gracie is working and driving and reading good books in her spare time.

    And then there's me, and I'm turning twenty on January twentieth (my golden birthday!). These next three years will be the most difficult, intense years of my life, education-wise. We have had the pants scared off of us here in the Sacred Heart nursing program, by fierce, motherly professors who remind us that Foundations is overwhelming and we might as well kiss our social lives goodbye, because our Friday night plans now have to involve black coffee and an NCLEX practice book.

    I have given up a lot, but I am not giving up on my dream of nursing. I have decided to commute to SHU for the sake of my own sanity. I have forsaken some of my involvement in clubs on campus, in order to have ore time to study. I have traded my crazy weekend activities with my friends for organized study groups with people who have the same passion as I do.

    I have said goodbye to the boy I once thought I loved, but that had less to do with nursing school and more to do with irreconcilable differences, mostly on my part because I have the audacity to want more, and feel as though I deserve it.

    I have no regrets in regards to what I have let go of. If it is God's plan for me to be a nurse, then bring on the nonexistent social life. I welcome the familiar waters of singleness, treading water in them with the remarkable skill I have not forgotten these past six months. I'll give up on my personal appearance, come to class without makeup and with bedhead. I'll gain the rumored Nursing School Ten, and maybe then I'll learn to love my awkward, occasionally malfunctioning little body.

    God would not bring me to anything He thought I could not handle, therefore I shall press on through these upcoming years with as much courage and grace as I can muster.

    Anyway, that's where I'm at. I am so glad we have this method of communication once again, and I can't wait to hear from the rest of you girls this week.

    Mercy, now it's your turn.

--Laura :)