Accomplished.

Today I successfully submitted the one and only assignment that I had the entire semester. My Internship Portfolio was due at 11:59, and I pressed the "submit" button on blackboard at exactly 11:59 on the dot. I don't know if I have ever felt more proud of myself for a school assignment. This portfolio was a reflection/exploration/load of BS at times/evidence of the work I have done all semester at my internship. There were different sections (overview of the organization I was interning at, my specific responsibilities, how I completed the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the semester, a self evaluation on how I've grown and changed over the course of my internship, plus "artifacts" or proof of all of these, which included photos, certificates of trainings, weekly reflections I wrote, scholarly articles relating to the population of interest that my organization serves, etc.) The entire written portion of the portfolio came out to 29 pages double spaced. I've never written anything so long in my entire life.

I have been stressed out beyond belief these last couple of weeks. I think I've shed tears almost every single day, and not always because I was frustrated/stressed/sad... sometimes it was a tiny thing that just set me off. But I've just been so exhausted... my sleep schedule has been ridiculous, I keep getting sick because my body is angry at me for pulling all nighters and completely thriving off of red bull and coffee all day and night. I model for an 8am class, and after an all-nighter on Tuesday night, I slept through my alarm and the class on Wednesday morning. I feel like lately I've been in a perpetual bad mood, which is unfortunate for those around me. I feel like I haven't seen and really hung out with my friends in weeks. The only real time that I've been getting to spend time with my girlfriend is at the end of the day when one of us is awake enough to drive the 50 minutes across I-40 to the other one (it's usually her), and we sleep (or stay up all night doing our own work), then wake up and return to our normally scheduled insane lives.

However, now that my portfolio is finally finished and turned in, all I have left to do for the next two weeks is complete my hours at my internship (I'm so close!) and finish up transcribing for the research team that I've been working with. I'm past the point of caring about my productivity there, because for the last week it has taken a major backseat to my internship and everything I have needed to get done in order to pass it and graduate.

Graduation is in less than two weeks. For awhile, I felt like this semester was moving too fast and that I wasn't ready to give up being a college student. But now, I am counting down the days until graduation, until I can sleep in, until I can clean my room and do my laundry that has been sitting in the basket for two weeks, until I can clean my car out, until I can welcome Sydney home because I have been so incredibly busy that I had to ask my mom to take care of her for the last month of school because I leave the house sometime between 7:30 and 9am and sometimes don't return until midnight or one or two... or three.

I can't wait to be a real person again.