Thursday, October 22, 2015

The Waiting Game: A Story of Stress, Learning Patience, and a lot of Support from those I Love

    I have been meaning to write this post for a while now, but midterms are this week (side note: Im halfway done with my last semester!). I thought my last semester was going to breeze by, but oh how wrong was I. This by far has been the busiest and most stressful semester yet. Not only have classes been so busy, but working on top of it all is crazy as well, especially with my position right now. However the thing causing the most stress has been trying to find my dream internship.
    At the beginning of August I got all of my Child Life Practicum applications submitted. Then I waited. And waited. And waited! I knew from the start that it would be a while before I started hearing back, and I figured I would just kind of forget about it for a while. Well that definitely didn't happen, instead I obsessively checked my email every ten minutes hoping each time I opened it there would be a response from one of the hospitals. It wasn't until the middle of September that I started getting responses. I thought once I started hearing back from people it would relieve some stress, but no it just added on because I started setting up phone and skype interviews. It was all starting to become real.
    I got through all my interviews, I felt really good about some and not so good about others. Im just glad I have a little while until I have to do it all over again. Then it was just another waiting game to see if I was going to get an offer. This was the scariest part of it all. But I knew all the work and all the waiting would eventually pay off.
    I have learned a lot throughout this whole process. Patience truly is a virtue and one that I've learned I need to work on. I found myself getting angry that I hadn't heard anything yet and realized I can't get angry, it was all out of my control. I learned that yes I can do hard things, even when I think I can't anymore. This whole being an adult and doing scary things on my own is not something I am particularly fond of, but this whole process has really allowed me to grow and gain confidence in my own abilities.
     Now there is no way that I did all of this alone! So here comes a little shout out to my wonderful and amazing dad, who really supported me throughout this whole thing. Whether it was calling him telling me not to apply somewhere because it wasn't the classiest of places, reviewing my resume, offering to help me with interview questions, to me calling him on the phone and crying because I was stressed and feeling like there was no light at the end of this very long and dark tunnel that is finding an internship. I really have relied on his great knowledge and strength and could not have done it without him (you too mom!).
     The waiting game is pretty much over. I have received and accepted an offer, but am just waiting for a few more legal things to get settled and then I will be able to reveal where I will be headed come January.
Stay tuned!

"Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting."
-Joyce Meyer