The Year in Review

Coming soon, I'm adding a couple of more links, and I have a couple of articles I want to comment on. Also, I finally finished The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living, and will be posting a book review. For tonight, however, I want to follow a bit of a tradition of mine and do a bit of a 2010 in review post.

The first two months of the year, I spent with a head cold-turned-sinus infection-turned-bronchitis. I took antibiotics, which of course made me worse. Easter weekend I spent in the Emergency Room with a horrible stomach virus, with a roommate who, as I heard whilst drifting in and out of consciousness, was a homeless guy who had supposedly been slipped crack. Surprisingly enough, I didn't really get sick the rest of 2010, aside from another head cold in August. My dad and sister are currently sick though, so here's a little *knock on wood* that I don't catch that before I go back to the real world on Tuesday.

School was hell. By the end of Spring Semester 2010, my GPA was down to a 2.9. I need a 3.0 to remain in school. I retook one of my classes that summer and brought it up to a 3.0 even. For the Fall Semester, I somehow managed to bring it up to a 3.1 - I made a B in the class I thought would be my easy A, an A in the class I thought I would do terrible in, and of course had no problems with my grade for the internship. My internship started in August of 2010, and it's been busy as hell, with a caseload that seems to me to be very large for an intern. I feel bad complaining about it sometimes, and try to work it out, since they seem to really like me, and my supervisor told me that she normally only gives interns a caseload 1 case because that's all they can handle, but I do so well, so she's given me the 6ish I have now. On top of that, the most recent incidence of changing my caseload/reassigning clients, she actually worked the caseload around 4 or 5 different times to keep from having to take me away from my cerebral palsy client, because she said I've connected with that kid and his foster family in a way that is very unusual for that particular family, who usually are kind of skeptical with the caseworkers that work with them. This unnerves me some, because it seems that when people start bragging too much about my capabilities, or complimenting me too much, that's when I start doing worse, because even now, I just don't know how to handle that kind of positive attention.

Work has also been crazy. One of the hardest decisions I made was quitting my part-time job in June 2010, to give more time for school endeavors. A few colleagues from that job also work at my current place of employment, and as recently as November, they have mentioned the kids missing me and asking about me. Indeed, on my birthday, a kid and his roommates called me and left me a voicemail telling me happy birthday. A month after quitting the part-time job, in July, I went part-time at the full-time job. This means I basically make my own calendar of availability, allowing for even more time for school and working just enough to pay the bills.

Socially, my life has continued to mostly be on hold. I didn't really interact with any of my classmates outside of group projects/assignments and an occasional lunch together between classes. Scheduling didn't allow me to see most of my work friends outside of work, and most of my closer ones have quit the job at this point anyways. I had a total of 3 dates during the year, all of which seem to have turned out to be what I call "one hit wonders" - having a date, and then never acknowledging my existence again, or at least only rarely doing so. On a positive note, I do have a very good work friend who has become more of a travel/activity partner, which makes things more fun. Also, I saw one of my best friends for the first time in six years.

Here's to hoping that 2011 continues the trend of actually having good (or at least, not devastatingly bad) years, something that hasn't really happened since 2006. Happy New Year's, everyone!