goodbye for now

As mentioned in the previous post, I will be studying abroad soon and will thereupon be using a different blog for a while.

You can find me at http://grantinmanchester.tumblr.com/

I will return here after my English excursion.

Cheerio!

Alive, sanity intact.

I am finished with my last semester to be [physically] at Belmont. I can only describe this as "the epitome of bittersweet."

I moved out of my Nashville residence, and am a Bolivarian once again. Being home is good. I have hung out with wonderful friends and family, begun painting my room, and celebrated the Christmas season. I am very much glad that Jesus was born.

Being home, I hope, will provide me with a month's worth of relative stability in the midst of an otherwise fragmented, transient, liminal space in my life at the moment. Allow me to explain what I mean by this:

My college experience has been fairly unconventional. Having accumulated the necessary amount of college credits during high school, I will complete college in three years instead of four. On top of that fact, the three years of college did not happen all at the same place, nor in the same major. I spent my first year of college, which was technically my sophomore year, at Samford University (not a great time...), then transferred to Belmont (great times!), where I spent my junior year and the first half of my senior year. I am now preparing to study abroad in Manchester, England for my final semester. That being said, I will graduate from Belmont having spent only three semesters/1.5 school years on its campus.

The future looks fairly sketchy, as well. After studying abroad, I will do some traveling with one of my oldest friends, and then return to the States to attend my brother's wedding. In August, I will graduate from the one-and-only Belmont University. Then, I will live at home and attend SBU for a year (or maybe two?) as a probably-non-degree-seeking, post-baccalaureate student in order to do my medical school prerequisites. If I am no longer interested in going to medical school, I will have to rethink my life. If by that point I am still interested in going to medical school, I will apply to many schools, get accepted by few (if any), make a choice and go to that choice of medical school, and then in four years I would have to decide what residency to do at which teaching hospital in which city in which country, and then decide whether or not to subspecialize in an area after that, and then decide where to do my first few years of practicing, and so on and so forth.

Of course, I probably made all of this sound more dramatic than it actually has been/is/will be, but I have made my point. It seems unlikely that I will have stayed in any one place for more than four years straight between the ages of 18 and 30. Having spent the first 18 in the same town, it will be quite a change if it does indeed happen in that fashion.

I'm not totally consumed by all of this, but it's definitely a hot topic in my mind.

Grant: "Trust Jesus, Grant. Take Him at His Word."

Grant: "Oh, I so will."

It will be a feat...

...if any shred of my sanity is still in my possession by Friday at noon.

If I do not accomplish this feat, visit me in my asylum.

Thanks!

Snow:

I approve of you.